Living to your potential
What does it mean to "live to your potential"?
Come with your opinion on the following questions:
Question 1 How do we define “your potential”? Even if we want to actualize the maximum amount of our potential given the time we have, a pressing question remains: Which part of our potential should we try to actualize? Your “highest potential” is extremely relative and ambiguous. Rank the following according to which is the best definition for living to your potential.
To realize one's potential and ideals
· To chase dreams.[143]
· To live one's dreams.[144]
· To spend it for something that will outlast it.[145]
· To matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.[145]
· To expand one's potential in life.[144]
· To become the person you've always wanted to be.[146]
· To become the best version of yourself.[147]
· To seek happiness[148][149] and flourish.[3]
· To be a true authentic human being.[150]
· To be able to put the whole of oneself into one's feelings, one's work, one's beliefs.[145]
· To follow or submit to our destiny.[151][152][153]
· To achieve eudaimonia,[154] a flourishing of human spirit.
Question2 Would it be unethical if we did not use the skills we were educated with? How many here have a personal life philosophy of living to your potential? Of the below, which best describes your life philosophy?
1. To realize one's potential and ideals
2. To achieve biological perfection
3. To seek wisdom and knowledge
4. To do good, to do the right thing
5. Meanings relating to religion (e.g. to serve God)
6. To love, to feel, to enjoy the act of living
7. To have power, to be better
9. One should not seek to know and understand the meaning of life
10. Life is bad
Question 3: Compare “living to your potential” to other popular philosophies of life above
Compare living to your potential (which is a desire to be efficient in not wasting your strengths) with “living to biological perfection” which is living as long as possible and reproducing.
Compare “living to your potential” to “to do good” or “to love, feel and enjoy living”
Question 4 Is living to your potential now, a desire to avoid regret in hindsight when we are old?
Question 5 Instead of having one life philosophy, do you think we need a balance between all aspects (health, financial, career, relationships, and personal development)? For example, there is a concept in David Chapman’s work called “enjoyable usefulness.” The most balanced approach to living is simply to do things that are enjoyable and useful.
Question 6 How do we judge if we are doing the right thing if we aim to live to our potential? What if we said at the end of our life where we lived to our potential, “Phew, I am glad that is over?” One test of whether living to your potential is reasonable is the idea of living a life you would voluntarily relive many times over? Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence. Eternal recurrence refers to a hypothetical state of affairs in which one is forced to relive one’s life over and over, an infinite number of times, for all eternity. But nothing is okay if we do it eternally. So say same thing but for many times.
Question 7: Does fixating on “live to your potential” sabotage your happiness? Does it lead to depression as we can never live to our potential? In his 2009 book The Tyranny of Dead Ideas, journalist and author Matt Miller makes the argument that there’s a downside to all this belief in high achievement and “meritocracy.” The corollary principle being that if you can’t make it, it’s your fault.
Question 8: Is your potential determined by internal factors independent of your situation, or does it need to be adjusted for your situation such as your family income? Can we adapt our potential to allow for our life situation to overcome the problem in the previous question? Many people feel dissatisfied by not having a career they dreamed they would as a child (vet, neurosurgeon...). Psychologists say if we have adaptive preferences (adapt goals to your environment and life situation) you will feel more fulfilled. e.g. if you are poor so cannot study to be a neurosurgeon, then study to be a radiology technician. Also start associating negatives with old goals and positives with new goal e.g. have more time for hobbies if technician than if neurosurgeon.
Question9: For living to your potential, compare Fast Fail thinking (aim to try lots of different things and learn quickly), to aiming high (aim to achieve the most ambitious/difficult challenges).
Question 10 Is someone who had high marks at school, but then is poorly paid and leading a simple life or partying a lot not living up to their potential?
Question 11. Is living to your potential a way:
1. for parents to use guilt to motivate their children? I met a young Dutch woman surfing along the NSW coast. Her mum told her she is not living up to her potential so she felt guilty, reducing the duration of her surfing holiday.
2. society motivates our young people to aim for more socially valuable careers? My son said he would be happy with the income from a low skill job. But he would feel he was not living to his potential. However meaningful jobs like medical research require long hours in the lab with low job security and 10 years of costly university education. Are our children trying to live to their potential to meet cultural expectations just modern cannon fodder?
3. for each individual to live a better life? Refer to the readings on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, McClelland’s Need for Achievement and Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow. Highly successful people have what psychologists call “self-efficacy” or an “internal locus of control” that allow them to perform difficult tasks that give them meaning and happiness.
A case for living to your potential benefiting the individual
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from his article “A Theory of Human Motivation” https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
Says there are universal needs across cultures, with basic need (food safety, shelter, etc) then emotional needs for feeling love and affection then onto need for self-actualisation. Underachievers have a need for social love and affection, but a self-actualized person has these "lower" needs gratified and is able to pursue his or her own path towards self-actualization.
Flow
Large-data studies of flow experiences have consistently suggested that humans experience meaning and fulfilment when mastering challenging tasks, and that the experience comes from the way tasks are approached and performed rather than the particular choice of task.
Need for achievement is defined as “an enduring and consistent concern with setting and meeting high standards of achievement” Can be caused by internal “intrinsic motivation” or expectations of others “extrinsic motivation” High achievers seek challenges at the edge of their abilities.
Question 12: Is your “potential” relative to others or an absolute standard of achievement? A competition assumes that everyone has an inborn ability to reach a personal best. If you stop competing, you stop wondering what that inborn ability is. You are really talking about your ability to beat others. It’s not a pleasant thing to say. When you stop looking at the world as a competition, then you can stop wondering why you’re not coming in first place.
Question 13: If we choose aiming to reach our potential as a goal, how do we do so? HBR article says it is about knowing your strengths and weaknesses and what you enjoy, prioritising the critical tasks, and saying what you truly think rather than what is popular. Another views say it is better we challenge ourselves out of our comfort zone, rather than sticking to our strengths. Need for achievement says it is about aiming for and achieving a lot of challenging tasks. Which is correct?
Question 14 Managers use people’s desire for actualisation to motivate them for work. https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/human-motivation-theory.htm Is this ethical?
Read from the below readings for reference
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from his article “A Theory of Human Motivation” https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
Jordan Peterson: a biological basis for living to your potential. 3mins:39 seconds length https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEVsmXApNho
Flow and happiness
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/one-among-many/201502/flow-and-happiness
Need for achievement as a motivator
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/human-motivation-theory.htm
Comparing living to your potential v materialism v enjoyable usefulness
https://meaningness.com/purpose-schematic-overview
Managers use people’s desire to motivate them to do work
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/human-motivation-theory.htm
“Reaching your potential” Harvard Business Review article (attached below).
Table Various philosophers’ views on what living to your potential means