Don't let potential be written on your grave

Identify

Your identity is holding you back; The identity you have created for yourself through your own experiences and other people's comments about you has created a box in your mind. Many of the ways we choose to identify ourselves are secretly detrimental to our growth. Whether your identity is "positive" or "negative," it is holding you back from reaching your full potential. The person who says, "I’m dumb," does not put themselves out there to develop intellectually, and the same is true for the person who identifies with being smart. They struggle to persevere when competing above their perceived intellectual level, so they settle for a lower class where they are still in the top 1/3 of students but are not learning as much. Either way, both individuals limit their potential by putting labels on their identities.

The way we think of identity is flawed because it does not encompass who we could be. Consider the person who identifies as someone strong, because they are the strongest person they know. They unconsciously limit themselves to the strength metrics of the people in their circle. That same person will eventually peak because of how they created their identity. In fact, that person is more likely to be discouraged when they start to compete with people above them (those that can lift more) because their identity is rooted in past performance, and it no longer holds true.

In this way, many people would rather succeed in the hypothetical than fail in the actual. This is the definition of "hiding in the fog": you are reluctant to define yourself through tests so that you can stay vague potential instead of limited reality. If you want to know what something is made of, you test it, but you refuse to test yourself because, in doing so, you trade everything you could be (potential) for who you actually are (reality). But the silver lining is that who you are can be improved while who you could be cannot.

A fantasy life ends in tragedy—this is the story of Peter Pan, the boy who never grows up—which is why it is better to live in reality because reality can always be improved upon, while fantasy is perfect but absent of meaning.

Self-improvement can only follow after self-acknowledgment. You do this by embracing your weaknesses and facing your fears. What are you afraid of? Life? hardship and struggle? Do you not realize that is exactly what has made you? Who would you be without challenges? The answer is a shell of yourself. The alternative is staying comfortable, succeeding in theory, telling stories of your past prime, and living in your own shadow. If you do this, you will deteriorate slowly and not realize when the fog completely blocks your vision. At the end of your life, you will wallow in regret, and worst of all, "potential" will be written on your gravestone.

Choose the right path. Shed your narrow-minded notion of identity and contend with yourself. Stop hiding your flaws. If you are to identify with something, let it be something that transcends time: tell yourself you are "aiming up,", a part of mankind, that you are a son or daughter of God, or that you are a student of life. If you can do this, you'll encounter more of life.

Play at the edge of your perceived ability, and don't be afraid to compete upward. Don’t be discouraged by failure because every loss can be a lesson. And realize you are now more of a person for contending with hardship, struggle, and the negative emotions that come with reaching outside into the unknown because those feelings are at the center of being human.

In good faith

Kene Ezeaputa