The basketball player you see above is LeBron James. For those of you who don’t follow the sport, LeBron James is arguably the most gifted player to have ever played the game. The amazing thing is that he is only 23 years old, has many years left to play, and can only get better. I really can’t wait to see how good he gets.

Imagine for a second that LeBron James decided not to pursue basketball as a career. In fact, let’s go as far to imagine a scenario where he did not train on a regular basis, was completely out of shape, and could barely play basketball for five minutes without running out of breath – let alone playing 48 minutes of intense basketball every other night with the best in the world, which is what he’s doing right now. In that world, he would not even come close to being one of the best basketball players in the world.

Nonetheless, his potential to be one of the world’s best basketball players has not changed. In our hypothetical world, he simply hasn’t gone out and achieved it.

What is Potential?

I’m sure you’ve heard many stories of teachers telling parents “Oh your son has the potential to do well – if only he worked harder!”, or something to that effect. What does that really mean?

Dictionary.com gives two pretty good definitions for potential: (1) Possible, as opposed to actual, and (2) Capable of being or becoming.

From my perspective, your potential for a specific activity are the levels of achievement you are capable of obtaining, given your natural abilities. I don’t think circumstances (e.g. resources available to you) are involved with determining someone’s actual potential; rather circumstances are factors that affect your ability to achieve that potential.

Case Study: Potential for School Performance

For example, let’s look at the potential of a student for doing well in a course. In general, I would say that your ability to perform well in school is dependent on two major factors: (1) School smarts, and (2) Preparation.

School smarts involves things like test-taking abilities, being able to separate important from unimportant information, etc. In general, school smarts are naturally developed/honed and can’t be actively controlled.

Preparation involves things like taking good notes, work ethic, how much/hard you study, etc. Unlike school smarts, preparation can be improved by putting in more effort for the most part – that is, you can actively control this.

Of course, while things like taking the right types of notes is a cross between school smarts and preparation, I’m going to separate the two factors to make explaining the example easier to understand.

Now, in this case, your potential to do well in school is essentially determined by your school smarts. In fact, one way to look at this is that for a given course, your school smarts determines an initial range of grades you could possibly achieve – this range is your potential, and you will achieve some grade in that range. The actual grade you achieve is determined by the second factor, preparation. That is, the harder you work, the more likely you will achieve a course grade at the upper end of your range.

If that’s a bit confusing, let’s use an actual example with numbers. I’m sure you have all met an amazing student who is able to ace course after course with what seems like little effort – let’s call such a hypothetical student Jane. Someone like Jane has a lot of school smarts, and let’s say she has the potential to score in the range of 80-100. That is, with next to no preparation/studying Jane can get an 80 in the course, and that if she worked as hard as she possibly could, she would theoretically get 100.

Conversely, a student who is a bit less school smart, might have a grade range of 65-85 – let’s say Mike was such a student. Again, this means that if Mike worked his hardest, he would get an 85; if he didn’t do any preparation/studying, he would get a 65.

Potential Isn’t Everything: You Need to Work Hard!

An interesting thing to note from the above example is that even though Mike is not as school smart as Jane, he could still get a better course grade than her if he worked his hardest (85) and she didn’t do any preparation (80).

The fact of the matter is that hard work is absolutely essential for achieving your true potential. It irks me a bit when people just assume that people who are very talented and successful or something were just “lucky that they were born with those talents”, and assume that they didn’t have to work hard at all.

While it is true that those individuals may have been born with a higher potential to achieve something, they could only have achieved the upper range of their potential through hard work. If you look at the top ranked athletes in the world, for example, I would bet that they work just as hard, if not harder, than anyone else in their sport.

We Should be Encouraging People to Achieve their Potential

In general, I tend to be disappointed in myself when I get back a test mark, especially when I know I could have done a lot better if I had just worked a bit harder. I bet everyone feels like this when they get back a test mark they aren’t satisfied with. But some people seem to think that this concept only applies to them, and not to everyone – which doesn’t make much sense to me.

For example, growing up there were times I say got a 90 on a test, but I knew with a bit of hard work I could have done a lot better, say close to 100. Some people would say to me: “A 90? Wow, why would you be disappointed with that? You should be happy, I would kill for your score!” And in some cases, people might think I was a super insensitive, arrogant person for thinking about my mark at all.

The reason why this problem exists is that we often generalize things, without recognizing that each person has a different potential. In my opinion, it makes sense for someone (with a range of 90-100) who scored a 90 to feel equally as disappointed as someone (with a range of 70-80) who scored a 70. I don’t think anyone should settle for anything if they think they could, and want to, do better.

Being Realistic About Your Potential

“If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.” While this is a really inspiring quote, and without trying to sound too cynical, the fact is that this simply isn’t going to be true for most things.

I can work has hard as I want, but it would be extremely unlikely for me to have been able to become the best basketball player in the world. I simply not physically gifted enough to do it.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t shoot for your dreams. What I am saying is that some point, you need to be realistic with your goals and your vision.

That being said, I do think that people tend to underestimate their potential in some things, so I would generally take more chances than not – I mean, life’s too short to not try!