Why You‘re Not Reaching Your Potential: How to Know How Far You Can Go

What if you’re capable of way more than you know, but you quit before you ever find out?

Starting a new career, business, creative pursuit, or anything that matters can bring up a weird mix of hope, fear, self-doubt, and excitement. You see a little evidence that maybe you have real potential. Then almost immediately, the pressure kicks in: What if I’m wrong? What if I’m not actually good at this? What if this becomes one more thing that didn’t work out?

In this episode, I’m digging into why pursuing your potential can feel so emotionally loaded, why being a beginner messes with your head, and what happens when your identity and self-worth get tangled up with whether you succeed.

If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re wasting your potential, questioned whether you should keep going, or felt tempted to quit because you weren’t progressing fast enough, this one’s for you.

Topics in this episode:

• Why starting something new can trigger both hope and fear
• The emotional roller coaster of career changes and new pursuits
• Why uncertainty creates so much anxiety around your potential
• The fear of failure when something feels tied to your identity
• Why small signs of talent can raise the stakes
• Untapped potential and the fear of never discovering what you’re capable of
• Why beginners often judge themselves too early
• The difference between your current ability and your future potential
• Why progress gets harder after the initial excitement wears off
• Knowing when to keep going and when something genuinely isn’t for you
• The role commitment plays in discovering how far you can actually go

Transcript

Over the years I’ve made some pretty big career changes. I left a cushy job at Amazon to start a photography business, and when that business was finally making decent money, I left to become a coach. And the thing that made each transition super painful that I didn’t realize, is that you’re not just starting a new thing. You’re signing yourself up for an emotional roller coaster.
 
Because you feel all the things at once. Part of you feels like you’ve stepped into a whole new world, and part of you is worried it’s not gonna work and you’re stupid for even trying - maybe you should stay where you’re at.
 
So we can sense the roller coaster is lurking in the shadows. We know this is going to be hard. We can feel that this is waiting for us. We can feel a little hint of it. Which is why so many of us won’t take the first step, because we don’t know what we’re getting ourselves into. That’s why taking the leap is scary.
 
And even if we do take the leap, we hold back. We get stuck and then we tell ourselves, it wasn’t meant for me.
 
If this sounds familiar, if you’ve ever wanted to start something new, a new career, a new business, a new anything, or maybe you’ve already started but stalled out - this episode is made extra special for you. We’re gonna talk about what’s happening behind the scenes so you give it a fair shot, instead of sabotaging it.
 
You’re listening to This Is How You Think, the show that remodels your mindset. I’m your host, Jule Kim. Let’s dive in.
 
So I recently realized that every time I venture into something new, I’m feeling two things at the same time.
 
One of the feelings is what I refer to as my delusional optimism, like omg what if this is it - what if I’ve finally found the thing, my untapped well of genius? Maybe this is the thing I was supposed to be doing all along.
 
And the other feeling is I’m scared this is just gonna be another thing I add to the long list of disappointments. All the stuff that didn’t work out.
 
So I’m feeling both hope and fear at the same time, which is most of us.
 
Now, why am I talking about this? I know this is abstract, so let me explain.
 
Imagine a wrapped present appears in your living room. It has your name on it.
 
You have no idea what’s inside.
 
You pick it up. You shake it. Maybe the weight or the sound gives you a tiny clue. But until you actually open it, you don’t know what you have.
 
That’s what starting something new feels like.
 
You’re holding this unopened box thinking:
 
Maybe there’s a diamond in here.
 
Do I actually EXPECT a diamond? No, but there’s a small part of me that hopes there’s something really cool in the box.
 
And at the same time, I’m afraid I’m going to open it and find something weird or gross, like dog shit or just garbage.
 
And the funny thing is, both feelings exist because I don’t know what’s in the box. It’s the uncertainty that also creates space for possibility. The hope and the fear are coming from the same place of not knowing.
 
And this is where people will argue that you shouldn’t have the fear, but hope and fear kind of go together like light and shadow. The fear is there because of the hope. The greater the hope, the bigger the fear.
 
This is part of the rollercoaster when we do new things, because we carry both emotions within us. And that’s what we have to learn to manage if we want to make it through the journey.
 
But where does the hope come from?
 
I think it’s because there’s usually a little bit of evidence, just enough, to make the hope feel possible. Or at the very least, you have a lack of negative evidence that you can’t do this.
 
Like, if I already knew I was terrible at something, that means I’ve already opened the box and looked inside. We’ve crossed over from the uncertainty of the unknown into reality.
 
For example: let’s say we’re talking about singing because I’ve always wanted to sing.
 
If I were completely tone-deaf and couldn’t hold a tune to save my life, I wouldn’t be walking around secretly wondering if I have some incredible singing ability waiting to be discovered, because I would already know that singing is out of my realm of possibility.
 
But because I’ve had voice teachers tell me there’s something unusual about my voice. Something that could be really powerful. That gives me this little trickle, like just enough to keep the hope alive that one day I could be a good singer.
 
You see what I mean? You get these little hits, these tiny signals, these little sparks, of evidence.
 
It can be anything. It can come from anywhere. A comment from a teacher, a moment where something feels really easy or natural, or you created something that was just absolute fire.
 
That’s when you see the spark, and you think: Huh. I wonder…
 
What if there’s something here? 
 
What if that was a glimpse of some much larger, untapped ability?
 
And that’s when everything changes.
 
Because now you’re not just trying something new like singing, or writing, or a new business.
 
Now there’s something much bigger on the line: YOU. This is about you, and the possibility that there’s more potential inside of you than you know. So it morphs into identity, and self-worth, which pokes at that painful feeling that you haven’t been living up to your potential. You know you’re capable of more, but for whatever reason, you haven’t done it, you haven’t found the right channel for it - so maybe this is it, maybe this is finally your time. 
 
All of this is lurking in your subconscious, and it raises the stakes even more. It feels like it’s so big, life or death. This is why it can’t be a failure, because then what will it mean about me?
 
That’s why so many of us won’t open the box. It’s terrifying.
 
Because maybe you look inside and think:
 
Well, shit. This wasn’t it either. Goddangit, that sucks. Oh well.
 
This is how a lot of us think. This is what we think will happen.
 
But this is also where I think we get it wrong.
 
Because we imagine talent like the box and there’s either a diamond or garbage.
 
But that’s not how this works. This is what I’ve learned over the last 20 years. Your talent, your potential doesn’t show up as this sparkly diamond that’s already polished.
 
When you open the box, what you actually find is a rough stone.
 
You have no idea what that stone can become or what’s inside just by looking at it.
 
You have to cut it and refine it. You have to work with it and keep working with it. It’s simple.
 
But instead of just focusing on working the stone, most of us are obsessed with the question of "Am I good at this?" when we’re a beginner.
 
It’s a weird question because we already know the answer: you’re not good at this, and in fact it’s gonna be all kinds of suck for a while, like maybe a long time, but that’s because you’re a beginner. It’s beginner’s incompetence. That’s how it goes.
 
So instead of asking "am I good at this," the real question we should be asking is, HOW good at this can I become?
 
And this is when it gets interesting and more useful, because as a beginner, you haven’t done enough yet to know the answer to this question.
 
You haven’t gone through the learning, the failing, the feedback and adjusting, and doing it over and over.
 
Which means you don’t have enough evidence yet of your future ability, or how good you can become, without committing to the doing. It’s not possible.
 
So if you quit during the part where you suck because you’re a beginner, you’ll never answer the question of how good you could’ve been. But unfortunately, this is where most people drop out - somewhere in this beginner stage. They quit and move on to something else, because they never stick it out long enough.
 
They haven’t learned that this journey has levels, and that you have to put in enough work and acquire enough skill to get out of the beginner levels , or what I call the muckety muck. This is when the journey is the toughest, because all you see is, "God I’m really bad at this."
 
Or maybe you’re really excited in the beginning and you’re making progress, until you get to the harder stuff, the stuff that’s not so basic and actually requires effort and sustained effort. This is the part that feels like shit.] This is the other part that makes people drop out.
 
What I’ve learned is that if you go on the journey, the goal is to get good enough so you progress to the level where you can say,
 
"I’m starting to understand what I can actually do."
 
And that’s the real fork in the road.
 
Because maybe you discover this isn’t your thing.
 
Or you see that you’re good at it, but you don’t actually love it enough to keep going.
 
Or maybe, you realize: Holy shit. There’s something here.
 
But you only get the answer after you’ve done the work. Not before.
 
And that’s what makes this a catch-22:
 
We usually start something with a few signs that give us hope that there might be some kind of hidden, undiscovered potential.
 
But those little signs aren’t enough to tell us how far that potential could actually go.
 
That’s where commitment comes in.
 
You have to put in the work long enough to see what starts to emerge.
 
But most of us want the evidence that it’s worth committing BEFORE we commit.
 
And that’s just not how this works.
 
Because the evidence we’re looking for can only come from doing the work we’re not sure is worth doing yet.
 
So if you really want to know what you’re capable of, like how much this potential is or what this potential is, then the real question to answer is: Are you willing to stick with this long enough to actually find out?
 
I think all of this is really about having a reason to keep doing it. You need something, whether it’s the fact that you love it, you’re obsessed with it, you want to improve and become an absolute beast of a master, or there’s some really complex problem you want to solve. It has to be something that keeps you going because the results aren’t guaranteed.

It’s a lot like the mindset of the infinite game. It’s not about reaching a finish line or winning, it’s feeling the meaning or the joy in the act itself that keeps you playing.
 
All right, that’s it for this week. If you have any questions or comments or concerns, text the link in the description or hit me up on LinkedIn. I always love hearing from you.
 
As always, thank you so much for listening. And remember, I believe in you. See you next time.