What Is Human Potential (and How to Actually Unlock It) – Transcript

00:00 – Intro: What Is Human Potential?

full episode

Brent: Your potential is the capacity that you have to learn, grow, and change over time. It’s the unrealized possibility of your life. All the versions of you that could emerge with the right time and attention. Now, thinking about your potential might feel uncomfortable, like somehow you missed out on all your best opportunities. But your potential does not come with an expiration date. In this episode with Camille Diggs, we explore what human potential is and what it’s not, how fear, comfort, and negative self-talk can lock it away, and how to tear down the barriers to growth. I’m Brent Diggs, and this is The Full Mental Bracket, where science and storytelling meet to help you level up and tell a better story with your life. Good time period, Bracketeers. We’re coming at you again with another episode. Joining me today in the stunt host chair is Camille Diggs. And today, we’re going to talk about potential, what it is, and how to unlock it. Now, Camille, you always have an interesting definition for our terms. Do you have a take on what potential is?

Camille: I have several takes.

Brent: Do you?

Camille: I do indeed.

Brent: What? Is that my grandfather’s 1952 Webster’s Dictionary?

Camille: Indeed it is, my love.

Brent: You’ve come packing for bear today.

Camille: I am. We’re going to get to the proper definition of potential.

Brent: Well, let’s hear it.

Camille: We’re going to start with gravitational potential.

Brent: There’s more than one?

Camille: Yes, there are a myriad of definitions for potential.

Brent: A myriad?

Camille: Yes. We are going to start with gravitational potential.

Brent: Bring it on.

Camille: Yes. Things that are not currently falling, but could, such as a roller coaster or a skydiver.

Brent: Oh, I like that.

Camille: Yes. Then there’s elastic potential. such as a bow and arrow or a rubber band. You pull it back and it has the potential to (pajam), hit you, oh yeah.

Brent: You shot me in the introduction.

Camille: I did.

Brent: We didn’t even get through the introduction.

Camille: It’s so great.

Brent: You’re a potential shooter, wow.

Camille: I had great potential and I fulfilled my potential.

Brent: Fulfilled, wasted, one or the other. Yeah, there you go.

Camille: Then we have chemical potential.

Brent: OK. Like the energy and gasoline and stuff.

Camille: Yeah.

Brent: Yeah. OK, I like that.

Camille: Don’t steal my definitions.

Brent: I was just trying to understand.

Camille: Don’t steal my definitions. That’s just rude. Don’t go there.

Brent: I was just borrowing them. I’ll turn them back in.

Camille: No. No. So chemical potential is the energy that’s stored between atoms and molecules, such as in fossil fuels or food, things of that nature.

Brent: Like chemical bonds, atomic bonds.

Camille: Yes. And then we have physical potential. and not like, let’s get physical. It’s not that kind of physical, okay?

Brent: It’s not?

Camille: It’s not, no. I know that sometimes your mind has a tendency to wander.

Brent: Not me.

Camille: Yes, absolutely.

Brent: This is a very platonic podcast.

Camille: So physical potential is the quantity determining the energy of mass in gravitational field or of a charge in electric field.

Brent: Oh yeah, electric potential.

Camille: So there you have it. Potential.

Brent: Yes, and I will just briefly add to your definition that when I went to electronic school, we dealt a lot with electronic potential. We’d measure that voltage, but the voltage was a potential voltage between two points. You put one point of the meter on one and the other. It’s like, if these points were connected, there’d be 62 volts right now. But they’re isolated. They’re not in action. It’s just sitting there and not doing anything. It potentially could zap, but it is not zapping currently.

Camille: Did you get zapped?

Brent: I can neither confirm nor deny any electrocution…

Camille: I think maybe you did.

Brent: In my years of electrical work.

Camille: I think maybe you did. Oh my goodness.

Brent: So, I like the multiple definitions, and I like what they have in common is across all these different domains, is some energy or ability or future state that’s contained.

Camille: Right it’s not yet but it could be.

Brent: It’s waiting to be released at the right conditions.

Camille: That’s right.

Brent: So when we talk about human potential, it’s like we have this power or ability or future state, but it’s just waiting to go.

Camille: Just waiting.

Brent: Just waiting to go.

Camille: Just waiting.

Brent: I believe one of the phrases I came across was “existing in possibility.”

Camille: Yes, so good. There’s so many possibilities and sometimes we don’t see them. We need other people to help us see them or we can look at the dictionary and figure out.

Brent: Well, the dictionary is good for the definitions, but you’re right. We harp on tribe all the time, but we need a tribe. You don’t know what blind spots you have because you’re blind to them. That’s the definition of blind spots.

Camille: I Yes.

Brent: And people are like, hey, did you know that you’re good at that? Did you know that you’re not so good at that? Did you know you could be a lot better at this if you just shifted your focus a couple degrees? And you’re like, oh, I didn’t even think about that. Thanks for that.

Camille: I mean, we do that, you and I. Yeah. Because we’ve known each other a very long time. And we do that. But there are also people in our lives who help us to do that.

Brent: That’s true.

Camille: And hopefully, they do it in a nice way.

Brent: Yeah. I mean, we talk about finding your tribe. And part of the tribes is finding, being a mentor, finding a mentor, is giving that back.

Camille: Absolutely.

Brent: Yeah. So even, I think we were talking earlier that even your life experience and wisdom can be a potential that’s wasted if you don’t actually share that with people.

Camille: Yeah, you gotta share it.

Brent: It’s like, I lived through the school of hard knocks, I learned a lot of stuff, but I’m not gonna tell you, you gotta hard knock it too. Like, what’s the point of that?

Camille: No, please share. Don’t make us do it the hard way.

Brent: I’m sure there’s people out there that would do that. But I can’t imagine that. Speaking tactfully, I think my personal frustration is having lived through the school of hard knocks and having people that are close to me or possibly related to me, and I’m trying to give them the wisdom of mine, and their like, no, I’m going to hard knock it myself. And I’m like, I really wish you wouldn’t. I did all this so you don’t have to.

Camille: Absolutely. You know, you got a few stubborn people in your family. That’s all I’m saying.

Brent: I wouldn’t know. Where do they come from? There’s no stubbornness in my family.

Camille: Yes.

Brent: You know, I was thinking about this, and when I was young, when I was growing up, more like high school times, people would talk to me about potential, like, oh man, you got to live up your potential. And it would always seem kind of stressful and kind of shameful. It was something I wasn’t living up to. It was an expectation that was held for me. I didn’t agree to it. No one told me what potential was. It was just another way that I was disappointing everyone.

Camille: Yeah. It doesn’t even sound good. You’re not living up to your potential.

Brent: I know. I suppose someone meant that well, but it was just another way I was screwing up my life, so I didn’t really listen to it. I didn’t think anything about it. When I started talking about potential, I just went the other way.

Camille: Yeah. You really didn’t get an opportunity to grow in that because you were living under a false weight of Potential not realized.

Brent: I could have potentially understood potential, but I failed. So we’re trying to fix that, Bracketeers. We’re going to go on— We’re trying to talk a little bit about what potential actually is. Maybe you’ve got a confused version of it, or like me, you just with something that was always embarrassing. We’re going to talk about what it is, and hopefully you can get excited about it. Because once I learned more about it, I got excited about it.

Camille: Yes, especially if you can shoot rubber bands at other people.

Brent: Yeah, I didn’t see that coming. Thanks.

Announcer: This is Full Mental Bracket. – 08:13

Brent: I found that it’s exciting when you realize that your potential is not some weight that you have to carry, some should or shame you’re supposed to be doing, but it’s some energy or ability that’s actually in you at some level waiting to explode out into the world. Now, as we’ll cover, it is not like a chemical explosion. It’d be nice if we did a one and done. We could have some of Camille’s instant success over here. It could be just like, ooh, my potential. That took 30 seconds. But, it’s more of an incremental approach.

Camille: That’s true. It’s kind of like if you spend your life saving up money, and you start really young, and let’s say you save $5 a year, and over time, all that money adds up, and it’s compounding.

Brent: Yeah, we’ll give credit to James Clear in his book Atomic Habits. He talks about if you can improve 1% every day, it seems slow at the time, but it grows incrementally, steadily, it compounds over time. You look back after a year, after two years, and you’ve just come amazing distances, just 1% at a time. And we talk about the elastic potential of the bow, and we’re going to release the arrow. And it’d be great if you could just fly through the air like, I’ve got my arrow. I’m looking at all my potential. But we just kind of do it one day at a time. We’re going 60 minutes an hour into the future working on our potential.

Camille: There you go.

Brent: There’s no good way to speed that up. I looked into time travel. There’s really no good way to speed that up.

Camille: Oh, OK. You looked into time travel. OK.

Brent: Yes, yes. Alright, so going a little bit back to Tribe, you know, when we’ve mentioned on the show before that we packed up stakes from the West Coast and we moved so that I could go to music school, and an interesting thing happened when I was in music school. I met all these students and without realizing it, we formed a tribe. You know, I was, unlike most people, I was like in my 30s. I’d already lived, I’d spent all this time in the Marine Corps, I spent this time driving forklifts, and I was always the weird, odd, creative guy in the corner trying to write song lyrics into a voice recorder instead of like cheering on the sports team or whatever.

Camille: I was always… We had some really good movie nights.

Brent: We did, yeah. But I’m just saying, before we got to music school, I was this weird, isolated, creative person. We got to music school, I found a whole bunch of people like me.

Camille: That’s true.

Brent: Suddenly, I wasn’t the exception. People like me were kind of the norm. People got my references, they got my jokes, they understood my passion. And it was great to have a tribe like that. But what was the most specific service that they did is that they saw things in me and they called out things in me that I didn’t recognize. I did a lot of, I played a lot of songs in music school. Turned out we’re not all that good. But you know, people said, you know, I noticed that you’re a great storyteller. You wrote that story. It was great. You told this different story. It was great. You got up and did public speaking and we were mesmerized.

Camille: And you had a great sense of humor.

Brent: And I did, you know, and I was like-

Camille: You still do.

Brent: Yeah, I don’t know what happened to it.

Camille: no, you still do.

Brent: It fell out on the way here today. But I was like, well, what about my songs? they were great, right? And they were like, Yeah, those stories were amazing. Like, and the songs? Yeah, and a great public speaker. And I was like, oh, oh, okay.

Camille: It took you a minute, but you got it.

Brent: Yeah, but that was, that was, That was good. People were pointing out potential that I didn’t even recognize. And then it was exciting. It was exciting for me to be good at something. There was something I could work. Instead of beating my head at, I get something that I wasn’t really good at. It’s like, here’s the thing that you’re already halfway good at. What if you tried this? And so I was really excited about it, but it wasn’t an instant success. I still had to put in the work every day. I read books on storytelling, books on writing. I took courses. I worked on my, I practiced every day, getting better at it.

Camille: You know, there’s another piece to this, too, is that you took it, okay? You listened to what they were saying, and then you decided to develop from that. You didn’t just go, oh, I’m not a good story— I’m not a good musician, and I don’t know how to do this right. Let me go sit in my pity party because I wasn’t as good at music as everybody else around me. You were still good at music. You just weren’t in the same realm as everybody else. So you took what they were saying.

Brent: I appreciate that.

Camille: And you move forward with it.

Brent: In full disclosure, there was a moment like that. It just wasn’t very long. I got back up after that. You had a pity party? Oh, OK.

Camille: I did.

Brent: I’m like, I came over here to be amazing, and then I’m not amazing. And then I had to, we talk about the growth mindset, getting back up again. About like, you can fall in love with this dream, but if it’s not working, maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board. You’re still trying to get there. I’m trying to find a life of meaning where I’m helping people.

Camille: Well, it must not have been a very long pity party, because I don’t remember you having it.

Brent: All right, well. Anyway, it was a struggle. We made a lot of… We quit our jobs and moved across the country to achieve this specific dream. And then it’s like, so we did swap the dream a little bit, but it stung a little bit because I had my heart set on that thing.

Camille: Well, don’t be afraid to encourage other people and draw things out in other people. just like your friends at music school said, hey, this is what you’re good at. And they didn’t tell you, you suck at music. No. No, they said, we see these things that you’re really good at. And they encouraged you in that. So please Share that with people. If you see something in someone that they’re good at, make sure you call that out in them, because they may not have ever heard it before. Somebody may have said it to them before, but then that’s just confirmation.

Brent: Yeah, and it’s your chance to try out the mentor role. You get to encourage and help someone.

Camille: Absolutely.

Brent: And in hindsight, some of my friends did play music with me. They’re like, you’re good at jokes and music. And so we did music with jokes. And so that worked out pretty well.

Camille: It was. It was really good.

Brent: They were good at music. I was good at jokes. It kind of worked out all right.

Camille: That’s right.

Brent: It did. They were good at jokes, too. That’s fair.

Camille: Yeah. So as a human being, your potential is all the things you can learn, all the skills you can develop, It’s all the ways you can grow. It’s all of the things you can accomplish. It’s all the wisdom you can accrue. Keep it coming, keep it coming. All the relationships you can build and all the meaning that you find in your life. So it’s not, potential isn’t just in one area.

Brent: Not a single path.

Camille: Right, it’s not. It’s all of the things together that make up you as a person and working through all of those things. All of the versions of you all added up together.

Brent: Oh, and I think we’re starting to see that in movies with like some of the superhero movies. It’s the different alternate version of this and alternate version of this. I watched the Loki show and there was 27,000 Kangs. Like, oh no, it’s the army of Kangs. You don’t have to be an evil villain, but it’s all the different ways that your story can come out. It’s like, instead of a, it’s like a choose your own, you’re at the beginning of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. If you’re not old enough to understand a Choose Your Own Adventure book, we still like you, but you should figure that out. You’re at the beginning of that, and you’re like, I could go this way, I could go this way, and it’s all open ahead of you. Even as you get later in life, even as you get in the middle of your life, even if you feel like your life is, oh my gosh, my life is over, you have so many choices, so much potential, you have no idea. Matter of fact, we should talk about that.

Camille: Let’s talk about it.

Brent: You know, when we talk about the potential, I think we need to clear something up. This is not this toxic positivity. We’re not saying, you can be anything you want. You’re a magical uniform…unicorn butterfly. Uniformed unicorn butterfly.

Camille: That’s right. You gotta have your uniform.

Brent: You’re farting potential and rainbows and glitter is all around you. We are real people in the real world. We’ve been knocked down a bunch of times.

Camille: Yes. I’m not going to be an NBA women’s basketball player, never was going to be an NBA women’s basketball player, never had the potential to go that route because I don’t have the height. Right? There’s potential within the realm of your possibility.

Brent: And that’s a good thing, because a lot of times when we talk about potential, when we talk about growth, the first thing that naysayers say is like, right, so a short guy like me can be in the NBA? And it’s like, that’s one of the few exceptions. It’s like, sure, there’s some skill and height and athletic and genetic things that can exclude you. But what about the other 98% of things that you’re not excluded? Well, because I’m looking for an excuse not to try. Oh, did I say that out loud? yes, that’s exactly what it is.

Camille: Yeah.

Brent: There are so many things that we can do, that we can… like me. I wanted to be a great musician. I probably could have if I was as stubborn as other people I know. But I instead I rotated to a different dream that was also very meaningful and satisfying for me.

Camille: That’s right.

Brent: Which culminated in this show after a long and confusing path.

Camille: That’s right. You’re doing great, too.

Brent: Long and confusing in path? Yeah, okay.

Camille: No, no, no, you’re doing great now.

Brent: I’m doing great at being confusing or just doing great in general?

Camille: You are doing great, yeah. Okay, okay, thanks, thanks.

Announcer: This is Full Mental Bracket. – 17:43

Camille: So should we, is it something that we should always strive to do, or is it something that you may want to think about and choose to do sometimes? Because yes, we may have the potential to do something, but is it worth our time, energy, effort?

Brent: That’s true. That’s true.

Camille: Is that fair?

Brent: Is that something that you should… Yeah, I could quit my job and train to swim the English Channel, but is that the best use of my time and energy and what’s left of my lifespan? Maybe, maybe not.

Camille: Right. Because just because you have the potential doesn’t mean that…

Brent: Yes, where have I heard that before? Just because we can do all of these things doesn’t mean we have to do all of these things at the same time at the same day.

Camille: I don’t know hat you’re talking about

Brent: This is a list of options to pick from. It’s not required to do them all. No, no. Okay, yes, your potential… what we’re saying is, is that you do want to pick what you want to be when you’re grown up, even if you’re already grown up, But the list is bigger. Your list of options is far bigger than you think. Like, oh no, I’m too old to go back to school. I’m too old to start a business. I’m too far out of shape to do this. I know how that feels. I told myself that. I was sitting there like, oh, you’re too old. You’re too old. It’s too late for you. You’re too old. And I was 30. And I came back at 40. I’m like, oh no, now you’re really too old. And then I didn’t do it. Then I came back at 50. Oh man, now you’re really too old. I’m like, Would you shut up? You’ve stalled me for decades. If I hadn’t listened to you, I could be like 20 years ahead of the game.

Camille: Talking about your inner self?  Not listening to your inner self?

Brent: No, there wasn’t someone actually saying that to me, but my doubts were like that.

Camille: Yeah.

Brent: And so now I’m in my 50s, spoiler, and I’m like, no, you can shut up. Excuses gone, we’re doing this.

Camille: Yeah.

Brent: We’re doing this.

Camille: Yeah.

Brent: Surprise vacation. Excuses gone, we’re doing this.

Camille: Get in the car. We’re gonna go. Yeah. We’re gonna go.

Brent: So your self-protecting fears are not accurate assessments of what you’re really capable of.

Camille: Man, those fears will really tie you down and not allow you to reach any kind of potential, especially fear of failure, fear of looking ridiculous.

Brent: Ooh, that’s a good one.

Camille: Yeah, the embarrassment factor.

Brent: We talk about that a lot on the show, the fear of failure and being humiliated.

Camille: Yeah. There’s other barriers too.

Brent: There are. Yeah.

Camille: Let’s talk about the barriers.

Brent: There’s some barriers to unlocking your potential or unlocking the potential of people around you or in your charge. Never leaving your comfort zone – It’s going to be a barrier to unlocking your potential. You have to, as we mentioned on the show, you have to answer the call of adventure and leave your comfort zone to grow and develop.

Camille: I’m sorry, introverts, but you do kind of have to do that sometimes too.

Brent: There could be an introverted adventure, I’ll have to think about what that might look like, but I’m going to say it’s possible.

Camille: Other barriers moving on.

Brent: Going to a loud party is not necessarily an adventure, it could be a torment, who knows. So if you’re not positioned for constructive feedback, how are you going to improve if you don’t have any feedback coming out letting you know how you’re doing? If you’re not connected to support and resources, if you don’t have a good tribe, it’s going to support you and encourage you and help you get back up again. Also give you feedback on how you’re doing, what’s working, what’s not working. If you lack a safe environment, you have to feel safe to try.

Camille: Yes you do.

Brent: We have a whole episode on try-fail cycles, and try-fail cycles are required for mastery, but if you feel like someone’s going to laugh at you or humiliate you or secretly record you and upload you to the internet while you’re trying to do something, you’re not going to get very far. Once again, we mentioned before, if you’re stuck in the fear of humiliation, fear of failure and humiliation, that’s not going to help you unlock your potential. And then if you don’t have people who are pushing you gently to try new things, to try new skills, you might get comfortable right where you’re at. And like, this is my speed. This is what I do. But you could do different things, more things, better things. No, no, no, no, no. Vanilla is my speed. It’s like, but there’s 52 flavors. You can do this.

Camille: There’s a lot of flavors for sure.

Brent: And then you need people also encouraging you to use your autonomy, become the protagonist of your story. If you’re sitting there waiting for the real hero to come in and change your life, it’s going to, as I mentioned with that voice that delayed me for decades, it’s going to be a long wait. You have to realize that you are the one protagging. You are the one that’s doing this story. Someone has to get off the couch and live your life and surprise, that person is you. That’d be a great service. Now from the full metal bracket, Virtual Couch – We’ll someone to get off my couch and live my life for me. I can just sit here and review the highlights.

Camille: That’s no fun. That’s definitely no fun.

Brent: It was a great idea.

Camille: Yeah, you do have to work sometimes to overcome Some of these barriers, they’re not…some of them are a lot harder to overcome than others Yeah, that’s where you really do need those people in your life to help you

Brent: Yeah, and as we kind of hinted at it’s a part of those barriers come in in the form of the self-talk. Or the self-talk, or the inner talk, the little inner narrator.

Camille: Yeah.

Brent: Like see, you’ve always been bad at that. This is, you know, this is, again, this is the theme of our life. This always happens to us.

Camille: If you find yourself talking negatively to yourself, flip that script. Start talking positively to yourself. You can even send yourself text messages telling yourself how beautiful you are. That’s OK.

Brent: And something we like to bring up, like practically every episode, a great way to get past this is to journal. Take that negative self-talk, that nagging little chatter voice, write it down, and then look at it objectively.

Camille: Put a big X through it. Cross the lines through it. No!

Brent: Punch it in the face! But listen, hey, is that logical? Is that rational? Why does that sound so much like my mom? Because you’re quoting her in your brain. Oh, that’s right. That’s not necessarily true.

Camille: It’s very therapeutic to cross lines.

Brent: To cross things out?

Camille: To cross things out on paper.

Brent: So just thoughts or individual people?

Camille: Just the thoughts. Just the thoughts.

Brent: Don’t be crossing people off.

Camille: No, don’t be crossing people off.

Brent: And if you did, don’t say you heard it here because we’re not recommending that.

Camille: Don’t do that.

Brent: But we do have some takeaways.

Camille: Do you have people in your life that you see potential in?

Brent: How can you encourage and help them to unlock that potential?

Camille: Are there areas in your life that you have given up on yourself? Oh, please don’t. Please say no to that. That you have stopped exploring your potential?

Brent: In those areas, did you hit actual limits or just perceived ones?

Camille: Where is a fear of failure keeping you from making your potential growth and ability real?

Brent: Now, these are good questions. We want you to ponder these, maybe even journal on them. This is a great way to have this conversation with yourself and see where you can get unstuck. Because it’s never too late, you’re never too old, you’re never too far gone.

Camille: And you’re beautiful.

Brent: Thank you. All right, that’s all we have for this time. Thank you very much. We’ll catch you for our next episode and goodbye.

Announcer: Full Mental Bracket podcast hosted by Brent Diggs. Logo by Colby Osborne. Music by Steven Adkinsson. Learn more at FullMentalBracket.com. This is the Full Mental Bracket.

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