Three Questions to Unlock Our Potential

We tend to assume a very dark – though quietly calming – story: our condition is out of our hands. We are being held back by an economic and political situation that cannot be changed. The unfairness is beyond alteration; the corruption, endemic. Some people may win, but they do so within a rigged system. We were not born with those advantages. We never went to those schools. The level of opportunity that has come our way reflects an inherent, non-negotiable set of external factors.

It’s a sad perspective – but not without a certain degree of comfort as well. By contrast, what if we were to think that our lack of opportunities, in part, came down to something internal. What if our situation had to do not only with politics and economics, but also – to a crucial extent – with psychology?

Perhaps, whatever the hurdles out there, we are also suffering from a feeling that we don’t deserve more. A feeling that doesn’t take its reference point from anything unchangeable or objective out there, but that relates to something we learned within our family of birth. What if the way we behave reflects a loyalty to a vision of what we believe is right for us to have – a vision that tracks an emotional script we grew up with? What if we have unknowingly come to associate safety with modesty, and danger with triumph? What if we are trying to shield ourselves from our own fabulousness so that we can still have access to a love that we depended on in our early childhood? What if we are trying to be meek, lost and defeated simply to know that we still belong?

We have decided that the odds are inherently stacked against us, but we have omitted to notice that we didn’t ask for someone’s number, didn’t send in an application, didn’t push ourselves forward, showed up late for every meeting and then retreated behind the melancholy line: ‘it’s not for me …’

We’re not being lazy. We are being inhibited by an emotional tripwire. We have been frightened away from our own power. We have been invisibly educated that to be loveable means remaining small.

Those who act otherwise – who apply, daydream, hustle – may not have come from a much better place. It’s just that their difficulties pointed them towards a different moral: impress, or I will never notice you. Make a mark, or you won’t count in my eyes. Do something outsize in a hurry or forever surrender any chance of love. These aren’t pleasant strictures, but they may, at least somewhere down the line, enable one to explore their real talents.

Politics is dominated by a concern to spread opportunity. The desire is crucial and noble. We need better schools and universities. What this analysis may miss out on is the extent to which the difference between success and failure can – in key cases – have little do with the social system and everything to do with psychology.

We should continue to fight for broad, macro-level political improvements, no doubt; but we should also remember to probe at the emotional scripts we follow by asking ourselves three fundamental questions:

— How frightening would it be to succeed?

— Who might be upset if I was strong?

—What threatens to be lost if I stop being submissive and cowed?

Success might have to start with a psychological shift. In the name of what remains of our lives, we may need to stop being loyal to an unfair – perhaps even obscene – demand for meekness that got us through our early years.