---

Personal Reflection

There is something almost uncomfortable about Maslow’s sentence.

Not might be.

Not could be.

Must be.

It turns potential from a possibility into a responsibility.

Most of us know, somewhere beneath the noise, that there are versions of ourselves we’ve never fully explored. The book we haven’t written. The skill we keep promising to learn. The conversation we’ve rehearsed but never had. The strange little dream we protect by never testing it against reality.

Potential is comfortable that way.

As long as we don’t attempt something, we can always believe we could have done it.

That’s the dirty little secret nobody puts on the motivational posters.

Sometimes we’re not afraid of failure.

We’re afraid of finding out.

There is safety in saying, I could.

“I could have been a writer.”

“I could have started that business.”

“I could have gone back to school.”

“I could have learned to paint.”

Could is wonderfully forgiving. It asks nothing from us.

Becoming does.

Becoming means being terrible at something before becoming competent. It means producing work that embarrasses us. It means changing our minds, abandoning old definitions of ourselves, and occasionally discovering that the destination we’ve been chasing isn’t where we belong at all.

But perhaps that’s part of the bargain.

We don’t owe the world every ounce of our potential. That would turn life into another productivity contest, and God knows we have enough of those.

But I think we owe ourselves an honest attempt.

Maybe that’s what Maslow’s must means.

Not achievement.

Not fame.

Not becoming everything we possibly could.

Just refusing to spend an entire lifetime standing outside the door of our own possibility.

Yesterday’s version of you brought you this far.

Thank them.

Then keep walking.

---

Reflective Prompt

What possibility have you protected by never giving yourself the chance to fail at it?