What if the key wasn’t to focus on fixing what is negative, but to amplify what is positive? This is the foundational idea of all positive psychology, and it is central to the thinking of the personal growth expert and globally renowned author, such as The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari or The 5 AM Club, Robin Sharma.

“The potential you don’t express becomes invisible pain,” says the author in a talk he gives for the BBVA project ‘Aprendemos juntos’. The line comes to him in response to a question from one of the attendees. What is Robin Sharma most afraid of? “I fear wasted potential,” the aforementioned replies.

The Potential

We are all born with potential, that is the central idea of Robin Sharma and many other experts in positive psychology. When we are children, that potential expresses itself in its pure form. What we do naturally, without social or cultural norms or expectations imposed, is tied to our natural gifts.

Thus, a nervous child who can’t sit still may be expressing potential for a physical talent, while a child who draws on the walls points to an artistic gift. In my own case, I began writing stories when I was only four years old.

Robin Sharma, for his part, summarises his potential in a sentence that his father told him when he was a boy: “When you were born you cried while others cheered. Son, live in such a way that when you die others cry while you rejoice.” His aim is that no one wastes their potential.

“We are born with a sparkle in our eyes, a heart full of courage and strength, with incredible dreams, but then we become adults,” explains Sharma. And this is where the problem begins.

 

The Betrayal

“We are born in brilliance, but we abandon ourselves to mediocrity,” Sharma declares in his talk. “Someone once said that adults are nothing more than spoiled children,” he adds.

Adulthood arrives, and with it, the betrayal. “There are studies backing this up: people use their potential very little. That’s why I believe one of the greatest wrongs is betraying oneself,” the writer states. This betrayal happens when we turn away from our potential.

And it happens because, as Sharma explains, “as children we knew we could do great things, we had a certain intimacy with our gifts and talents, but as we grow older we are told not to dream, not to dare, not to follow our hearts, not to be kind, not to be overly enthusiastic, not to be very affectionate.”

A este proceso la sociología lo llama enculturation. Un proceso por medio del cual, a medida que crecemos, nos empequeñecemos, nos adaptamos a las expectativas externas. “Hablamos como los demás, nos vestimos como los demás, caminamos y pensamos como los demás”, reflexiona Sharma. “Empezamos a creer que el mundo no es un lugar seguro y olvidamos quién somos realmente”.

The Pain

After the betrayal comes what Sharma defines as an “invisible pain”. One that stems from that cruel act of denying what we are. And it happens quietly.

When you decide to devote yourself to something only because it offers better prospects, and not because you are passionate. When you stop believing you have something to contribute to the world.

When you change the way you laugh because you are ashamed. When you choose colours that are fashionable, rather than those you enjoy wearing in your clothes.

When you speak as others expect, not as your heart would have you speak.

Little by little you maim yourself, you erase yourself, you soften yourself. And your potential is lost along the way. “The potential that isn’t expressed becomes pain,” Sharma asserts, “and many of us feel pain because we have not fulfilled our promise, have not utilised our gifts and talents.”

Here a double problem arises. On the one hand, the pain causes suffering. But that suffering may be a warning sign if we do not heed Sharma’s next point. For in today’s world it is very easy, and tempting, to flee from pain.

The Escape

“When we feel pain we try to run away from it,” says Robin Sharma. We don’t sit down to dialogue with the pain to understand its source; we escape without thinking too much. “And how do we escape pain?” the expert continues. “By worrying too much, snooping too much, spending too much time on our phones, working too much, complaining too much. We try to run from what we feel.”

And this leads us into the void. We become, as Sharma defines, “cyber-zombies”, addicted to avoidance.

“I fear that many magnificent, potential-filled people waste their lives, spending their days on their phones, watching videos of dogs and cats dancing,” the expert notes. The figures are clear: “An average person consumes digital content for 4.37 hours a day. That’s three months a year. And that time will not be recovered,” the author states.

Time flies, potential is wasted, and the only thing we can do to prevent it is to sit down and talk with the pain. What is its source? What is its origin? What is the lost potential? Only in this way, and with the courage needed to stay true to oneself, can one live a life of hope and happiness.