Soapbox: "You have such potential" Isn't a Compliment

As my students and I begin another academic year, I think about the words we hear when we are feeling fresh, renewed, and motivated. Words like: excited, pride, optimism, and potential.

This word, “potential”, is the subject of this brief Soapbox post today.

My professorial colleagues and I often talk about students who “have potential”. When people who are young (like pre-pubescent young) are described as having potential, it is a compliment. It means that we see in a person raw material – talent, skill, intellect, whatever – that can be honed, cultivated, and harnessed into something possibly spectacular. To be sure, to be seen as inherently talented or gifted, is a compliment.

Unfortunately, we never reevaluate what it means to be told that we have potential as we move out of childhood, through adolescence, and into adulthood. I would contend that for a 20-something year old person to be identified as having potential is not quite the compliment that it might have been a decade earlier.

Here’s the thing about potential in adulthood: by the time we’re 20 or 30ish, should have met or harnessed it by now. That we still have potential in our adulthood means we aren’t working, executing, or getting the job done.

Don’t believe me? Think about the way language changes when we talk about people of varying ages who have potential. In reference to children, we often use a big adjective to describe potential, like “enormous” or “unlimited”. As we refer to people in late adolescence or early adulthood, the modifiers associated with having potential become less big, as in, “he has such potential”. Once a person gets past their early thirties and that person still has yet to meet or unleash their potential, we start talking about potential in the past tense – “he had so much potential. If only he had [insert action never taken to meet said potential here]”.

My point: as we come to the beginning of a new academic year (or wherever you are in your own life) consider whether you’re meeting your potential. Are you actively engaged in tapping every bit of raw material you possess, or are you letting it drift increasingly far away from your grasp? Potential isn’t limitless. We do have a window in which to begin to harness it. If we wait indefinitely for exactly the right impetus or circumstance to present itself before we begin our work, the window begins to close. As more time passes, the open space in the window shrinks, and the window becomes increasingly difficult to hurl open.
 
Don’t waste whatever raw material you were gifted. Seize it. Wield it. Use it to become more excellent than you are. It seems to me that if you do, you’ll end your life with no potential whatsoever, and I do believe that’s a good thing.