The Devastating Effects of Unrealized Potential
I’d like to shed some light on what I believe is silently one of the greatest contributors to anxiety in today’s world.
This culprit runs especially rampant in our younger generation — those just now coming into adulthood and those who have only been adults for a few short years — however, make no mistake, it’s a problem everyone deals with.
What I’m referring to is unrealized potential.
What is unrealized potential?
Let’s break the term down into its individual pieces.
First, potential. Potential energy is a concept in physics that means stored energy. This energy has a certain value of potential work or change that it can cause, hence the name.
For example, a penny held over the edge of the Empire State Building has a good bit of potential energy. If dropped, it has a predetermined amount of damage it can cause based on this amount of energy. However, a bowling ball held over the edge of the same building has much, much more potential energy. If I had to choose which I wanted to be hit in the head with, I’d obviously take the penny every time.
Now let’s look at the other half of the term — unrealized. This just confirms that the potential energy of the object, in this case you, has yet to…
