Time takes on a different variable when it comes to pursuing transformation as opposed to just achievement.
I think this is also the case for realizing that one's living below their potential and decide they want to reach their potential.
This concept of untapped/hidden potential is a bit vague in my mind currently, yes, I know I can always do better but does that mean on the other side of the spectrum I should perpetually feel insufficient? That everything I am now is merely a fraction of what I could become?
Arguably, if one wants to do more, they have to be more first. The wider the surface area or deeper the immersion into the craft, identity and way of being, the better for sustainable doing that doesn't feel performative.
In practice, I can do gardening without strictly being a gardener, at some point however and if I keep at it, I will be gardening as a gardener gardens.
The lines do get blurry between the intersection of being and doing on a long enough timeframe, even though in my mind, being will always come upstream of doing, I'm sure that I can hack my way via doing into being.
Say, acting confident until the neurons rewire and confidence becomes my baseline mode of operation.
This is to say that being is a platform of sorts where all doing exists, perhaps pre-exists is a more correct term, given that our actions are always constrained or enabled by what we believe ourselves capable of.
This innate internal drive that we can always do better, I wonder what direction is pointing towards, I asked myself. I mean, chasing destinations isn't that different from chasing one's potential.
Both are perceived as somewhere to arrive at as a finish line of sorts.
Basically, the underestimation game is systematically underestimating how long transformation takes while also simultaneously underestimating how much transformation is possible.
Put in a more simpler way, when I look back at how much I've unlearned and relearned about who I thought I was, generally over the years, identity shifted beneath my conscious awareness. I recognize I was playing a completely different game back then. Yet when I also look forward towards the compounding potential of my current trajectory, I compress decades of potential into tomorrow's expectations.
Either way, the trick is falling into thinking potential is fixed, when really it's more like a garden that grows larger the more you tend it, revealing new sections you couldn't see from where you started.
Also, I can speculate sort of that reaching one's potential has more to do with staying in motion long enough to realize the goalposts were always an illusion(something to improve upon will perpetually exist) and because the version of ‘you’ who set them no longer exists by the time you think you’ve arrived.
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