Ever-shifting potential

With a quick google search, you can find thousands of articles and websites with explanations on how to "achieve your full potential" but none of them every explain where your potential comes from and the fact that it changes every day.

I'm not a big fan of the idea that everyone has a set path in life and all you're doing is following it. I prefer to think of life as a series of paths where each decision you make is a junction that can send you in multiple different directions. Hence why two people born into completely different circumstances can end up in similar situations, though they started at different points the decisions they made, situations they lived through and people they met would have given them the chance to cross paths at some point while luck can give you the chance to skip multiple junctions at a time.

When you think about life in this way it is easy to then think of your potential as fluid It's never the same one day to the next because tomorrow you could meet someone new who ends up being a business partner or you could win the lottery which makes money less of an issue in your life. My belief is that no person has only one potential. They have had and will have hundreds of potentials in their life and their current potential may only last for another couple of minutes.

Think about your own life for a moment. How would you describe your prospect in your career and relationships? No matter what the answer is, what do those prospects look like if you decided to spend time learning a new skill like coding or starting a new hobby like rock climbing. From your starting position you have just opened up a whole new set of pathways and directions you can take your life in; maybe you will develop your own software or app that sells for millions or you enjoy rock climbing so much you travel the world finding new spots to test your skills, and that's just from two decisions that you can make today, right this minute. These examples aren't even touching on the fact that you might meet some new people who end up being your closest friends or people you end up travelling with, buying houses together, who knows what might happen?

While all of this sounds very grand it starts from a very simple idea; what do you want to do? How could it affect your life?

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Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash