Lost Potential – The Vicious Cycle That Limits The Majority

In our youth, we were told that we have amazing potential inside each and every one of us. Adults asked us a common question to jumpstart our curiosities:

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Excited youth with their imaginations running wild respond with answers such as astronaut, doctor, athlete, rockstar, and many other highly prominent positions. Some might not be sure of a profession, so they’ll default to John Lennon’s answer of being happy.  Others might blissfully smile, say they don’t know, and ask for ice cream.

Adults love children's answers for a clear reason: children lack the life experience that adults have gained. Naturally, children respond to these questions freely since they don’t have practical considerations to weigh.

Unlike adults, children’s imaginations are not morphed by health, material, or social constraints. Whatever occurs in their mental theatre forms the child’s foundation for reshaping the reality surrounding them.

Moreover, children don’t evaluate their abilities by years of experience or past accomplishments. They simply venture out to engage in activities, often to enjoy themselves, laugh, and play. They learn through their adventures, playing in the mud, accumulating a few bruises on their knees and elbows, healing their injuries, and then setting out to do it all over again at the next sunrise.

As adults, we’re conditioned to translate years of experience into skills and abilities. When a child who hasn’t yet learned multiplication performs a demanding Beethoven Sonata on the piano flawlessly, it astounds us. Depending on our perspective, we’re either filled with awe and inspiration from their performance or become resentful, thinking we could have achieved that too if only… (insert your reason here).

If we’re resentful, the question beckons: How did we arrive here? Was there an event that made us drop everything and go on the defensive, or did the aggregate sum of thousands of different instances lead us to go from a hopeful youth to a regretful adult?

Our Conditioning Limits Us

For most of us, a single event doesn’t flip the switch on us to go from offense to defense.  Likewise, it isn’t the sum of thousands of experiences that dulled away our vibrant little light.  The answer lies in a blend of both hypotheses: a series of little instances that suffocated our flame, coupled with a few major instances of failure.

Does this sound familiar?  It makes for a sad story, but it’s all too common.  Consider the following:

Life in elementary school involved a lot of playground time, coloring pictures, arts and crafts, and learning about various subjects to keep us curious and engaged. However, as we progressed into higher levels of education, our scope narrowed to tunnel vision as the rules became stricter. The freedoms that we took for granted in the beginning started peeling away.

Somewhere between our first day of kindergarten and walking across the stage to receive a piece of paper that declares our completion, our conditioning creeps in and takes hold of us. During that time, we heard the word “no” countless times from hundreds of adults, leading us to expect it to be the default answer in the real world. Rather than exploring possibilities, we were taught to follow directions and do only what we were told, and then we would be rewarded for what they defined as success.

Due to enduring this conditioning for over a decade, we transform from curious and youthful spirits into confused young adults.  Reflexively, we spend more energy raising guardrails to prevent failure instead of taking risks on a rewarding journey.  The memories of that flame we held fondly when we were younger become buried under our conditioning.

Whenever a nostalgic memory surfaces in life or our newsfeeds, we recall the subtle taste of our repressed feelings, only to revert to our conditioning. Now caught between our programming and our aspirations, an internal struggle emerges that will accompany us throughout our lives.

Why are we encouraged to run wild when we’re young and hopeful, but as soon as we reach adulthood, we experience waves of endless commands that chastise us for dreaming while requiring us to accept reality and follow directions?

If any of us reading this feel shaken, we are certainly not alone. We will not be the first or last to feel it. What we need to recognize is that a socially engineered design keeps us in these cycles.

The Cycle That Limits Us

Earlier, we examined and simplified the string of events occurring to us growing up.  However, despite an unquantifiable number of occurrences, these events can be broken down and categorized as parts of a cycle designed to loop on repeat until we are trapped or run out of steam.

 The cycle can start from anywhere in the loop shown above, but the most common place for the cycle to start is:

We Try Something / Ask For Permission

We have an idea of something we want to accomplish and desire nothing more than to see it realized. Depending on our personality, confidence, and the context of our situation, we start in one of two ways.

If we’re ambitious go-getters who are bursting at the seams, we just do it — whatever that is. As young hopefuls, we don’t worry about the nuances of permission and bureaucracy — we simply act to make it happen. Sometimes, we think it’s too easy, and we're often right because we don’t have the constraints that adults face daily.

On the other hand, if we’re more polite and reserved, we might ask an adult for permission to begin. As young idea generators, we have no idea how to anticipate how adults will respond to our requests or whether different adults might give us different answers. We just want to get that green light from somewhere to begin!

Some people successfully bypass any safeguards that adults put in place. Either their idea works miraculously, and the adults in their lives celebrate with them, or they get the support of the right adults to try their idea, as long as the outcome doesn’t adversely affect others.

However, some aren’t as fortunate. For that enthusiastic child bursting with ideas, they may be hindered by an adult who makes it their goal to stop them from acting. The more subdued child might mistakenly ask the wrong adult — someone who doesn’t have their best interests at heart — for permission to do something they believe has great potential.

In both cases, these actions are the spark that could ignite the adults they upset in the next part of the cycle:

We Get Reprimanded / Told No

As go-getters, we hustle only to see our ideas crash and burn right in front of us, or they work out wonderfully, yet we remain unaware of the real or perceived consequences that arise. Alternatively, as polite and diplomatic dreamers, we fall in love with an idea and feel the need to consult an adult, only to find out that they are utterly disgusted by it.

When our ideas irritate an adult, we are pulled aside and told to stop. These tyrants remind us to follow the rules and be on our best behavior, like everyone else. In higher-stakes situations, we might lose treasured privileges such as recess or sitting with our friends.

Adults are quick to tell us how our ideas won’t work by listing all the problems they will cause. Unfortunately, we don’t realize that some adults aren’t qualified to teach and mentor us, but are in these positions for a steady paycheck or ulterior reasons.

What happens next in the cycle is when the damage truly takes hold.

Inner Confidence Begins To Fade

After being criticized for our visions, conflict brews in our minds with ourselves, our peers, and the adults we once viewed as our advocates. The energy we should devote to pursuing these ideas is now spent figuring out how to overcome resistance. By wasting time on unlikely scenarios, small fragments of our ambition are chipped away as the flame that fuels our aspirations grows dimmer and dimmer. 

Sometimes, our rejections are so dramatic that our ambitions are devastated. The years it took to build our confidence can be destroyed overnight. As a result, complacency fills the void once occupied by ambition, and our actions shift toward doing whatever it takes to fit in, get along, and avoid conflicts that might arise if we deviate from that path.

Every loss, big or small, takes its toll until we can no longer justify keeping the flame burning. When the rewards of following the crowd and living a modest life become far easier to obtain than the alternative, it’s natural to pursue the low-hanging fruit. 

High school cliques and cultures are a great example of how it pays to fit in rather than live as an outcast. Once we graduate, the desire to fit in doesn’t disappear—it just looks different. We pursue finding a company with an approachable culture that will pay us in exchange for our time, energy, and individuality.

No wonder so many people extinguish the flames of their youthful aspirations.

We Lose Steam For The Next Opportunity

While most losses don’t dramatically impact us, their long-term presence influences our capacity to endure mental hardships. Shaped by past failures and experiences, we transition from being risk-takers to risk-averse individuals. As new variables arise, the resources we once depended on to tackle these challenges must be reallocated for our survival.

One of the greatest misconceptions about life is the expectation that things will become less painful once we overcome a certain hurdle. Nothing could be further from the truth, and this preconceived notion is often contradicted by both nature and society. 

It isn’t that we don’t learn from our mistakes; it’s that pain is always a part of change. Every season is different for us… in some seasons we’re powerful, and in others, we’re on the run.

In seasons when we’re in fight or flight mode, we tend to let pain put us on autopilot, steering us away from golden opportunities that we should pursue. Consequently, we minimize risk as much as possible, settling into our comfort zones. Over time, we lose the physical and mental energy needed to tolerate risks that could bring big ideas to life, leaving many unrealized ideas to rest in the grave with us.

Steps Towards Breaking The Cycle

The key principle we must recognize as adults is that reigniting youthful dreams is within our grasp. However, due to the conditioning we experienced, breaking the cycle and rekindling these long-forgotten aspirations won’t be easy. Regardless of the harm endured, it’s ultimately our responsibility (though not necessarily our fault) to undo our conditioning.

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all recipe for reclaiming our dreams. Our strengths, situations, and environments shape our unique circumstances. If we’re fortunate, it may just require a little bit of dusting off, but in the most extreme cases, it may require a profound, long-term transformation.

The ultimate question is: What is the price of the opportunity to return to a youthful state? Does the cost justify the reward? Are my aspirations mere pipe dreams granted by others, or is the true North Star embedded in my life’s purpose?

To answer these questions more accurately, let’s consider the following steps to set us up properly:

Understand That Failure Was Once Demonized

In a different time, failure was seen as a black mark and a curse. It filtered out the dirt in the field, leaving only the diamonds. Anyone who experienced a major failure was seen as a hopeless project that should be abandoned.

Today, we live in a completely different world. Now, we view failure as a crucial stepping stone to success. We don’t press the panic button if something doesn't work out. Instead, we ask why it didn’t succeed, learn from it, and try again differently.

Unfortunately, the school system still operates as if perfection is necessary for truly inspiring success. Students become stressed when they receive a grade lower than an ‘A,’ fearing that their opportunities are disappearing before them. Just in case we need this reminder:

Nobody has a perfect batting average.  No one.

As a professional outside the school system who has worked closely with students for over a decade, I can tell you that having straight ‘A’s isn’t sufficient or a sole requirement for most things in life.  It’s better to demonstrate improvement on a transcript than maintain a golden standard because the real world is about persisting through adversity.

Nowadays, we’ve recognized and improved our ability to equip children to handle failure and bounce back from setbacks. However, improvements in the current educational system do not retroactively affect adults. Thus, we need to be proactive and recognize the work we must do for ourselves.

Recognize The True Role of Failure

Failure is just as important as success. Bill Gates himself has said that success is a lousy teacher. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for success; we should pursue challenging goals that bring out our best. All it means is that when we win, we must avoid becoming arrogant and continue to be as sharp today as we were yesterday.

It’s easy to forget that many great innovations resulted from failure. Sticky notes were born from a failed adhesive experiment, and penicillin came from improperly conducted experiments. Jazz music is simply a collection of mistakes that harmonize beautifully.

While it’s true that some innovations were intentional, we must remember that planning for success isn’t the only path to achievement. Thus, asking ourselves how to harness failure is crucial to using it as an opportunity and teacher rather than a gatekeeper.

Respond Mindfully to Failure

There’s an old saying that life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we respond to it. While it’s true that some events have dire consequences for our well-being, the reality is that we often perceive them as worse than they actually are. The saying goes: don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.

Therefore, whenever we experience failure, we have two choices. We can either throw in the towel and accept defeat, or we can leverage the situation and create something new.

We must avoid adopting a black-and-white view of failure. It’s easy to fall into the mindset of being perpetually victimized by failure or constantly attempting to turn it to our advantage. There are times when accepting a loss is more appropriate than trying to salvage it, just as there are occasions when making the most of a failure is essential.

The key is to be mindful of failure and not let it dictate our responses. If a setback has little realistic impact on our well-being and overall goals, it makes more sense to focus on more significant matters. On the other hand, if the culmination of several years of hard work leads to this moment, we should do whatever we can to turn the tide in our favor.

Everything comes down to perspective when it comes to failure. Make decisions wisely, as there’s a profound difference between correcting a small imperfection and addressing a fatal flaw.

Keep Pushing Against The Status Quo

Once we recognize the power of responding to (not necessarily against) failure, it’s time to figure out ways to keep it going. As we realized before, failure was once demonized in society. Although we’ve made progress in changing our views, there’s still much work to be done.

Because the fear of failure is ingrained in us to this day, subliminal messages to avoid failure will still pop up from time to time. This could happen through advertising, a performance review, losing a key client, or some other event that causes us to retreat.

While setbacks are never desirable, they are simply that — setbacks. We know we can change the way we view failure, but we must acknowledge that changing our perspectives will not eliminate failure from our lives. It’s all about harnessing and leveraging it.

So instead of giving in to fear because one aspect of our business isn’t working out, let’s be grateful for the other aspects that are going smoothly. Feel free to replace business with career, relationships, skills, and other important areas of our lives.

A technique I’ve often used to maintain resilience in the face of failure is the If-Then technique taught by Heidi Halverson. Simply put, it’s an effective way to reprogram ourselves like a computer so that when we encounter an undesired situation, our default response is chosen in advance. An example goes as follows:

If I do not secure venture capital from investor X, then I will improve my pitch deck and secure it from investor Y.

The If-Then response automatically determines how we react to adversity. After writing down our If-Then statements, we need to review them consistently to counteract our conditioning. The repetition from reviewing results in gains that program our desired responses to become second nature.

By proactively reprogramming our responses, we defy the status quo, increasing the likelihood that we will respond favorably. Of course, there’s no need to be rude about it. Just say, “Thanks for the opportunity; next!”

Learn From Others

The likelihood of experiencing something that someone else hasn’t is nearly nonexistent. The Internet makes it easier than ever to confirm that without fear of judgment. With just a two-second search on Google, Reddit, or other search engines, these stories come to light quickly.

In these forums, we encounter different types of responders. Some are inquisitive and ask additional clarifying questions, and at times, internet trolls can infiltrate the conversation.

Fortunately, some people genuinely want to help by sharing details about a similar situation they’ve been through. The best responses usually follow a prompt like this:

I experienced X as well, and I tried Y, but ultimately succeeded by doing Z.

In their responses, they highlight the similarities between their situations and ours. Ideally, they will also share what strategies they tried that didn’t work, but ultimately, their responses convey what actions led to their breakthrough.

The key is to learn from how the other person responded to their situation. While their suggestions are not guaranteed to work for us, they provide a solid starting point. Once we have that, we can build momentum to overcome our current challenges.

Additionally, with the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, we can narrate our stories and receive suggestions on tackling our problems. Many of AI’s features are currently in beta testing, so we should approach whatever results we see with cautious skepticism.

Ultimately, there’s nothing quite like having a good old-fashioned conversation with a real human being—a friend, a stranger, a professional, or a mentor. Most people inherently want to help and be seen as valuable to those they interact with. Therefore, we should leverage that to create a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Secure Your Own Oxygen Mask First

We have explored new ways of handling failure, which have allowed us to shift our perspective. Failure is no longer the dreaded beast it once was, and we now have more opportunities to make progress than ever before.

For those of us embracing this rewarding paradigm shift for the first time, it is tempting to have a strong desire to share the new gospel of leveraging failure. However, a key takeaway we must apply is that if we want to help others, we need to take that advice ourselves first.

Of course, we don’t need to wait until we have our lives completely together before assisting others. What we need to do is ensure that if we face any major obstacles or roadblocks in addressing how we deal with failure, we shift our focus to where it matters most. 

Nothing is more disheartening than watching someone who has helped many while neglecting their needs. We must create new narratives of self-realization where we have successfully made that shift ourselves, allowing us to teach others by leading by example.

What is the first thing you plan to tackle on your journey from fearing failure to embracing and utilizing it?