What do Michael Jordan, Albert Einstein and Arnold Schwarzenegger have in common with oysters, apple trees and spiders?
Well, each found a unique way to turn natural potential into reality.
Potential means nothing until it becomes something real.
It’s an idea of a future possibility, like looking at a future version of ourselves that’s locked in a time capsule waiting for us to do something about it.
Actually understanding what that trapped potential could be for us, and figuring out how to get it into the real world can be an involved process.
It’s not as simple as putting a magic amount of hours into a task or being born with natural talent. Those are necessary components, but bringing potential into the world relies on the interaction of internal and external factors.
Potential in the World Around Us
Less than 1 in every 10,000 oysters will produce a pearl in the wild. Pearls are the only gemstones that are produced by a living organism.
Every oyster has the potential to produce a pearl, but not all of them realise that potential. A pearl is only produced when an irritant – like a piece of shell – gets stuck inside the oyster and it begins to coat the fragment in a substance called nacre. It can then take up to 3 or 4 years for a pearl to fully develop.
Unless that process happens, the pearl never forms.
Every apple contains seeds with the information and potential to produce a million apple trees and many more millions of apples in the future. But not every seed gets to realise that potential.
It takes at least 4-8 years for a seed to become a tree, and for that tree to produce fruit, and once it does, it can live for 100 years or more.
Every web-spinning spider instinctively knows the complex elements that must come together to design and build a spider web from the moment they hatch.
These animals are never taught how to do this, and they don’t live for very long, but they somehow know how to produce these webs, with silk that is five times stronger than steel and able to withstand hurricane-force winds.
What this shows is that potential can be brought into the world in a combination of different ways. Some potential is realised through past experiences that motivate the creation of something unique, some is realised through ongoing continual repetition and persistence, while others bring it to the world with an innate inner ability.
Human Potential
Our human potential is limited only to what we can think of in our minds. That potential can be channelled into unlimited areas depending on our creativity and drive.
I love reading autobiographies and studying people who have achieved incredible things in their lives. I also love to examine how people close to me are bringing their own potential in the world.
I’ve identified a few common traits I believe they all share. Here they are.
1. Self-knowledge
To produce something of great value or benefit to the world, you need to understand what it is you can potentially do. Just like an oyster doesn’t produce apples and apple trees don’t produce pearls. We each have our own unique skills which we are able to bring our potential into the world with. Understanding what those skills are comes through self-knowledge.
We are naturally drawn toward those things we love to do most. It could be teaching, writing, singing, working out, building rockets, literally anything you can think of that you are naturally drawn to doing without anyone having to influence you to do it.
Whatever these skills or activities we are drawn to are, they are hints toward the potential we have inside of us. We need to trust those them.
As a young boy, Arnold Schwarzenegger was naturally drawn to working out and bodybuilding. Despite his friends and family telling him that he was crazy and that he should become a farmer or policeman, he followed what he knew he was born to do and dedicated himself to bringing it out in the world.
2. External Motivation
Like an oyster that creates a valuable pearl out of the irritation in its shell, the things that happen to us can be important catalysts and motivators in bringing our potential into reality.
When Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, he talked about that experience as being a catalyst for driving him to become the player he was.
If that moment had never happened, would we have witnessed one of the greatest basketballers and sportspeople the world has ever seen? Maybe not.
There are thousands of examples of people who have achieved incredible things in response to something that occurred to them in the past. The scars of the past can be pivotal in motivating us to create something new and extraordinary, like a pearl that forms out of past tragedy or injury.
3. Create an Environment for Success
If you are going to bring great things into the world you have to create an environment for success. Like planting a seed and growing a tree there are many factors that combine to help that tree produce good fruit.
in 1905 when Albert Einstein made the greatest breakthroughs in physics the world has ever seen, in what was later known as the annus mirabilis or year of miracles, he was working as a patent clerk.
He spent most of his time in solitude, playing his violin, taking long walks and thinking about complex problems.
He wasn’t distracted by what other people were doing or what was on Netflix, he put himself in an environment that allowed him to spend time on the problems he wanted to solve, because that’s what he loved to do.
It’s so easy today to become distracted and to get caught in different forms of procrastination.
Our environment is a reflection of the things we value the most, and if we aren’t 100% sure of those things, our environment can fill up with distractions and things that other people value.
4. Persistence
Probably the most important factor to bringing potential into the world is persistence. Nothing great happens without continual repetition and perseverance. The seeds we plant today often won’t show any result for long periods of time, the ideas we begin to build will not go the way we thought they would initially, and sometimes it will feel like nothing is happening. But persistence is what turns potential into reality.
Potential is all around us, but it’s completely useless until we take the steps to bring it into reality.
No matter what it is you are trying to create, that process will involve setbacks and periods of uncertainty. But if you understand the skills and potential within you, and can create an environment to keep working toward it, that potential begins to grow into reality.
