One of the most insidious ways we get trapped in lives that don’t suit us is pressure to live up to “our potential”.
If you were hailed as smart at a young age I bet you heard a lot about “your potential” - some important but perhaps vague sense of the success you might achieve through some combination of genes, hard work and luck.
And there was likely extra pressure if you come from a family trying to break out of poverty or escape other tough intergenerational limitations. For the designated smart kids in these families reaching their potential is not simply an opportunity not to be missed or a way to earn parental approval - it’s literally how your family “gets out”.
What constitutes your potential is fixed in your at a young age in your psyche by a combination of your parents, your peers, and your culture.
For many of my clients, their parents and peers could only imagine versions of success that looked like doctor/ lawyer/ accountant/ CEO/ the next Steve Jobs/ similar.
There might even have been a flavor of athletic potential you were pushed to meet (especially if that would make college less expensive).
And for most women, this vision of reaching your full potential probably included marrying a certain type of person (likely a man) and having kids.
In my family, I faced a lot of pressure to get top grades (B’s were a failure, not getting into Oxford was so awful my mother literally couldn’t face that I was not going to her alma mater for months). And after school, the unspoken assumption was that I would reach the pinnacle of any field I chose, a field that would of course be traditionally prestigious, intellectually rigorous and well renumerated.
I share my own “potential pressure” without a hint of shade at my parents. They wanted the best they could imagine for me, and there was no reason that I couldn’t hit all these aspirations with my brain, personality, work ethic, manners, looks, and - let’s be real - the connections from fancy schools they sent me to.
But what if I didn’t want to?
This question did not occur to me until my early 30s. It was only faced with my mother’s death and the accumulation of pain from a series of fascinating but really difficult roles that I stopped and asked myself whether this image of success actually resonated with who I am inside.
So, what do you do when you get to a point where you can touch your fully realised potential, and you still feel empty?
When you figure out how to climb the ladder, get the promotions, make great money, even get respect from “the establishment” - and it still leaves you flat or unfulfilled? Or worse, burned out and depleted?
The thing is as a woman, a person of color, or any other minority, the very system you grew up told to crack into doesn’t know how to respect you back.
And at some point, the hollowness of your professional achievements may become impossible to ignore.
You look at your life and think, “this doesn’t fit”.
You think, if I stay I’m going to become a version of myself I don’t like - hollow, bitter, cynical.
And some part of you knows that sooner or later if you don’t walk out on your own terms you will be forced to leave through burnout, ill-health (or, in your day dreams, some wild act of self-sabotage).
So you gotta go.
(Or like I did you push and push professionally even when it all feels increasingly against the grain, and eventually get forced out by the burnout.)
But then what?
Here we face innumerable challenges:
Obviously, there are financial challenges…
You’ve probably increased your spending in line with your earnings, and taking a break to figure out an aligned career just as you have responsibilities for kids/aging parents, etc feels impossible.
Are you really allowed to use your savings to “f*** around and find out” for a while?
What if it takes multiple years to reach your previous level of earnings?
Frankly, what if when you get quiet and listen to yourself, the things you’re ultimately called to do in this life result in less income for the foreseeable?
Then the identity/ego challenges are rough….
Are you willing to take your foot off the gas and say “I don’t know who I am or what I want to work on”, just when your peers are hitting their big stride? When they’re making partner, getting C-Level titles, selling their companies etc?
In my case, the biggest wtf-am-I-doing moment came on a flight home from the first tech conference I went to after I left my “big job” in a maelstrom of burnout and heart awakening. I decided to take my freshly unemployed self to a massive conference looking for ideas and connections. Instead, with nothing to put on my badge and no clear story of what I was about for anyone I met, I endured three straight days of being punched right in the most raw part of my psyche every time someone shook my hand. Brutal.
And the relational challenges are often the hardest…
What happens to your relationship with your family and friends, when you got everything they wanted for you and themselves - and you then turn around and say “Actually, I don’t want those things”? Some folks are going to be inspired, most will be very confused, and some may well take it very personally indeed.
You’re probably going to hear/feel some version of “so you think you’re better than us”? And I bet you don’t think that, but you also don’t know how to articulate your truth in a way that doesn’t sting.
It can be really tough, but you’ve got to remember that you are not a proxy through which other people get to fulfill their dreams.
And all that doesn’t include the biggest challenge of all:
How do you go back to a blank piece of paper and ride the uncomfortable waves of uncertainty as you feel your way to a totally new life/work/existence?
What do you even want if you can apply yourself to literally anything?
What would it even feel like to live where you don’t “have to” do anything? A life of total choice - where you actively choose every single thing on your calendar, every person you spend time with, every piece of content you consume?
Here’s a thought experiment for you: What if “your potential” didn’t exist?
What if it’s an ideological construct that doesn’t serve us anymore?
What if you get to choose a new yardstick of success and achievement that aligns with your heart and gut and soul - as well as your head? And the only thing you’re measuring yourself against is: “Am I being the most me I can be” or “Am I having the most fun I can have” or “Am I finishing most days with a fuller heart than when I woke up”?
For most of us on this path, there are moments of deep, deep self-exploration - one or more periods of many months* where we untangle the life we didn’t choose and figure out a new path forward.
* Seriously MANY months. I met a female founder this week who was stepping back after 7 years of growing her company and taking 3 to 4 months to figure out what she wanted next. I doubt 3-4 months would be enough time to get her nervous system back to baseline, let alone to really envision the future.
That’s why I do the work I do.
I know that while my own life re-write was scary - and wild and liberating and terrifying and heart opening all at once.
The ability to unpack the old story about who I was and write something new was possible in no small part because of the people who cheered me on along the way.
And as I was trying on different futures for myself it was unbelievably helpful to jam with smart, kind folks with no preconceptions of who I was.
Now I help women executives and entrepreneurs with world-changing dreams to rewrite the story of their lives - and their lineage. I support them as they do the deep work of entertaining big bold reimaginings and escape the matrix.
And even once we have found our way to our own path, the siren song of our families of origin, our culture, the media etc will keep pulling us back.
So I also offer periodic “tune-ups” for women who are mostly living wildly joyful aligned lives, but - like all of us - benefit from a space for periodic reconnection to their biggest vision and deepest truths.
And if you’re ready to chat with someone about making a crazy big change that’s been calling you - you can book a free chat with me here.
This week I was on the Savvy Session podcast talking about a few of the most typical challenges I see when corporate women make the leap to entrepreneurship and when entrepreneurs fall out of love with their businesses.