Living up to your potential?

While some of us are barely being able to do as little as keeping the floors scrubbed and the dishes washed, it said that Shakespeare was able to write his magnum opus, King Lear when the world was hit by the deadly Bubonic Plague in the 1300s.

Now there are one of two explanations for this- either Shakespeare’s wife (in my case, my mother) did not coerce him to dust the cracks and crevices of his home with the threat of having to cook dinner for himself or he just figured a way to master the art of Working from Home.

I would like to believe, of course excluding the days that I’ve binged watched a whole Netflix show in a day (come on, what kind of psychopath doesn’t watch the entire season of ‘You’ in one sitting), that I am a semi-productive person.

As an avid user of social media and someone who likes to stay ‘on-trend’, I found myself having bought into the latest productivity bug -- you can find tons of online content by various YouTubers, Instagram influencers all telling you how to be your most productive self. I find this thought exhilarating: thinking that I want to be productive helps me procrastinate by tricking my mind that I’m actually being productive.

Halfway into writing this article I am beginning to realize that with the outbreak of Covid19 and the government urging people to relax at home and almost every third post telling you “20 binge-worthy shows to watch this quarantine”, the timing of this post may not be exceptional. These are, indeed, difficult times.

But I digress.

I have to confess.

A ubiquitous thought has maintained its slow incubation in my mind viz the idea that “Am I living up to my potential?”

After an intense Zumba session via a Zoom call with my friend, several online games, a two-hour fall into the rabbit-hole of YouTube and after baking about six loaves of banana bread, I realized that I would finally give this question the thought it deserved. I sat down and started justifying everything I did.

The human brain has the unique ability to rationalize almost anything.

I am blown away by the ability my mind has to make excuses and justify everything I do in the present to make my unproductivity feel productive.

In a moment of illumination, it hit me. Just like the way the cold Antarctic winds hit the underbelly of a Chinstrap penguin. It’s like that same disappointed feeling when the biscuit has been dipped into the milk for too long that it falls into the cup before you can pull it out.

But that’s enough about Chinstrap penguins and biscuits in milk. My point is that if you are not living up to your potential, you will know. You will know even if you do everything in your power to avoid knowing. You will know because you will find yourself convincing yourself that you are doing your absolute best.

You will constantly remind yourself of all the things you’ve done and achieved.

‘I passed my exams with flying colours last semester’, ‘I finished this online course’, ‘I won that award’, ‘I’ve made this much money’, ‘I paid off my debt’, etc.

…and the list goes on.

Once you’ve inflated your own ego and convinced yourself that you are working to your potential you, automatically, will feel better. In this moment, you will appreciate all that you have done for yourself, maybe feel happy about the life you have been able to give yourself, etc.

But don’t delude yourself, being satisfied with what you do is different from doing well for yourself. I do not deny intersectionality between these two ideas but I have noticed associating my potential with certain markers or goals for myself. Once these goals are achieved, I move on to chasing the next thing and feel I have tapped into my inner potential. I find that I get confused with success and working to my potential.

I end up correlating my success in completing an activity to my potential.

If you think this is one of those “7 skills to tap into your inner potential” or “3 things you MUST do to unleash your potential” type posts, then I’m sorry to disappoint you because I truly have no idea how to tap into my potential. As a matter of fact, I’m not too sure how one defines potential.

I do not think I am working to my potential. The fact that I often find myself having to offset something I do with something I’ve done in the past is reasoning enough for me to believe it is true.

But then again, the beauty of the human mind never fails to amuse me because every time I being to feel like I am not working to my potential my mind convinces me that defining my potential would be to limit it!