the mixed blessing of potential
I think I’m finally about recovered from wrestling with my sinuses. As a preface, for those of you who don’t know, I’ve written articles for a magazine called The Light down in Florida for the last few months. Sadly, that publication has temporarily ceased, and it’s future is unclear. This would have been my topic for the June issue, had one gone out.
How many times have you heard, “That idea has potential.” Or, “He had such potential.” Few words carry as much emotional charge and connotation as the word potential. Everyone wants to know their ideas have potential, we all like to think we have good ideas. Speaking only for myself though, I never wanted to hear that I had potential. In fact, I considered that one of the worst things I could hear about myself, for a couple of reasons. First, that meant I needed to work a lot in order to fulfill my potential - it was usually the beginning of a long journey, and I usually burned out long before it was over. Second, it meant that I sucked, or maybe worse, that I was good but could be really really good if I ‘applied myself,’ which really meant sacrifice anything but school and whatever that was, which I had no intention of doing.
Even worse than that is the underlying expectation this label produces. If you have potential, suddenly people start expecting you to do whatever needs doing to realize or grow into this potential, and start judging you based on their expectations of your potential, rather than judging your accomplishments on their own merits. No, I’m not going to go off on some rant about something I did or didn’t do as a kid, but rather I want to make you aware of the implication of something or someone having potential and the damaging expectations that often come out of that.
Expectations are a huge problem for people. Not the expectation itself, but the way people react when expectations aren’t met. In the business world, people get fired, though that’s neither here nor there, just the way business works. A big source of anger, frustration, and other negative feelings for people are when their expectations aren’t met, usually because they are out of alignment with reality. It’s very easy to distinguish when that is the case - you’ll hear the word ’should’ or ’shouldn’t’ a lot.
I’m going off on a tangent, so I’ll wrap it up for the night. Next time you hear about potential, don’t forget to evaluate where something or someone is from where they started - not where someone thinks they could potentially be.
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:56 am
Wow. I needed to read this.