The Art of Self-Sabotage: A Meditation on Human Potential

Shall I call the lack of construction, as destruction? Maybe in a war zone, the statement stands incorrect. But, in life, if you are not actively growing, you stagnate. If you aren't actively exercising, you lose fitness. If you are not actively learning (btw, unlearning something is also learning), you become a dumb fuck in no time.

The word "potential," comes from the word "potent," meaning - being able. So when you do not do what you are capable of doing, you destroy your potential. Some people are unaware of their potential. Some misuse their potential. And then there is a tribe of people, who simply do not use their potential. I feel I belong to the third category. My potential, lying dormant for so long now, that it has mummified itself. I see the bones and realize, it was there. But neither do they have a recognizable face, nor life, to spring back.

I wonder, when did they die? Did they even grow old and die? Or did I starve them to death?

Starving your own potential and potentially killing them is such an underrated potential of high potential beings with low self-esteem. You question yourself so much, overthink everything so much, that even the thriving potential takes a back seat.

The Origins of Self-Destruction

But when did it all start? Was it because of the way social media mis-motivated me? Was it for the way my parents never embraced my potential in the creative field, and rather perpetually craved for the missed potential I had in engineering? Was it for the negative self-talk, I would have of potentially not being enough? Was it for the potential privilege I had, to not worry about a high-paying job? Why did I never ask for the things I potentially deserved? Why did I never realize my own potential and break through the obstacles?

I remember the first time I deliberately sabotaged my own work. I was seven, drawing a landscape that my art teacher had praised midway through. "This could be something special," she'd said, hovering over my shoulder. By the time she returned, I had scribbled over half of it, claiming I'd made a mistake. The truth was simpler and more complex: I couldn't bear the weight of her expectations.

We are strange creatures, humans. We can envision magnificent futures for ourselves, yet simultaneously work tirelessly to ensure they never materialize. I've watched friends with brilliant minds retreat into comfortable mediocrity, not from laziness, but from a peculiar form of existential self-preservation.

Potential as a Quantum State

Perhaps potential exists in a quantum state—both there and not there until observed. By refusing to observe it directly, we maintain the comforting possibility that greatness remains within us, untested and therefore unrefuted. How many of us prefer the dream of what could be over the stark reality of what is?

Science tells us that potential energy—that stored force waiting to be released—diminishes over time if left unused. The same physics applies to human capability. We are not static beings; our neural pathways either strengthen through use or wither through neglect. What we don't exercise, we lose.

I once met a composer who had stopped writing music for fifteen years. "I'm just waiting for the right inspiration," he told me. When he finally returned to his piano, his fingers remembered the keys, but the musical language he had once spoken fluently now came out in halting, primitive phrases. His potential hadn't been preserved; it had atrophied.

The Violence of Comfort

There is a quiet violence in comfort—a slow, painless deterioration that occurs when we choose the known mediocrity over the unknown possibility. I've felt this violence against myself each time I've chosen Netflix over the blank page, social media over deep work, distraction over creation.

Some philosophers argue that to waste one's potential is a moral failing—not just against oneself, but against humanity. What insights, solutions, or beauty might you have brought into the world that now remain unborn? The mathematician who never pursues their theories might have held the solution to problems we don't yet know how to articulate. The writer who never writes deprives the world of perspectives it needs to understand itself.

The Mirrors of Others

What about the people who were inspired by me? Were they inspired by my potential or my reality? Perhaps, my potential. Reality seems potentially bleak to me. Will I disappoint them if I never reach my potential? But who decides my potential? What if I am already doing well potentially?

I remember a former student who once told me, years after graduation, "I became a writer because you said I could be." I had no memory of telling her this, yet my casual affirmation had altered the trajectory of her life. Meanwhile, I was still deliberating over whether I myself had what it took to write seriously. We see in others what we cannot see in ourselves, and sometimes our most significant impact comes not from fulfilling our own potential, but from recognizing it in someone else.

The Self-Reflective Paradox

What if I am utilizing my potential to my best and self-reflecting on my destroyed potential and writing this thoughtful essay on it, which potentially could break the internet, or at least make someone take time to read this till the end, and potentially make them self-reflect on their untapped potential?

Here lies the great paradox: the very act of lamenting our wasted potential becomes, itself, an expression of potential. The ability to look unflinchingly at our failures and articulate them is a manifestation of consciousness that most species will never know. Perhaps the most human potential of all is this capacity for self-reflection—to step outside ourselves and assess the gulf between what is and what could be.

The Liberation of Action

I've come to believe that potential isn't a fixed quantity we're born with, like a trust fund we can either spend or squander. It's more like a muscle that grows stronger with use and atrophies with neglect. The tragedy isn't failing to reach some predetermined height; it's failing to stretch toward any height at all.

Last month, I began writing again after years of silence. Not because I suddenly believed in my potential, but because I grew tired of questioning it. The words came slowly at first, then faster. Some were good, most weren't. But in the doing, something shifted—I stopped thinking about the person I could potentially become and started being the person who simply does the work.

Perhaps that's the secret: potential is realized not through contemplation but through action. Not all at once in some magnificent revelation, but incrementally, through small, daily choices to create rather than consume, to engage rather than withdraw, to risk rather than ruminate.

In the end, our potential might not be a destination we reach, but a practice we cultivate—the practice of bringing what is within us into the world, however imperfectly, again and again, for as long as we're here.