on trading potential for something actual
just make a choice
One of the clients I worked with this year was such a powerful portal of reflection for me in so many ways. She is young, intelligent and absolutely full of potential. Like: really young and really talented. Unreasonably so. When we would talk through what she was considering in her life, it would be all about these different options that were available to her; how to weigh so many different things that all felt so compelling… in exploring these options, I recognized something in her that I no longer experienced: the very compelling sense of potential that everything has when you are still fairly ‘undifferentiated’ in your life. As in: when you haven’t yet decided who you are, what you do, what you are into, everything feels (almost equally) compelling. There is a unique sense of pure potential that you feel when you are so young and talented and full of potential. When you haven’t yet traded who you could be in for who you are, for who you have decided to become.
Of course, nothing is finite, not really. Most choices are reversible. But it is hard to fully internalize that when you are in the process of trying to pick something that feels important in relation to how your life will unfold. Everything feels so big, so significant. Every choice feels existentially important, and somehow so final. As though choosing one thing disqualifies you from a thousand different paths and permutations of yourself. There is a truth to that feeling, of course. I am choosing to write this right now, and there are infinite other things I could be doing that I am implicitly not doing because I have chosen to do this instead. Choice is a disqualifying mechanism. But also: ruminating in and indulging in the ‘protection’ of one’s own potential is its own trick, stealing you away from actually making things happen for yourself by latching onto what ‘could’ happen if you don’t commit.
There is a freedom to choosing; a liberation that comes from committing to things. I have written about this several times this year: here on committing to where I live, here on the novelty of commitment, and here about how commitment is the only secret knowledge. But in seeing the blank canvas in this brilliant young woman and the anguish she was experiencing around having to choose, around having to disqualify options that felt important, tempting, compelling, I was finally able to see how much pressure I had put on such choices when I was in a similar phase of life, how precious I had been with the potential I felt I possessed then, how everything felt bigger and more significant than it actually was.
I notice that I no longer feel that way now — that clinginess to my potential. This is revealed to me in subtle ways: I want to go to the ballet and enjoy it instead of fantasizing about what my life could have been like if I had been a ballerina. I like collecting inspiration and curating my taste, but I don’t feel like everything I resonate with is some secret code or path that I need to follow to its ultimate end. I can notice resonance or admiration, acknowledge it, and move on. I can feel a pang of desire or get a flash of what it would look like to go (or to have gone) down a completely different path, and then do nothing with that vision. I can return to my life, unscathed by this jolt of seeing who I could have been had I made different choices, with the understanding I can only be in one place at a time, so I might as well be there (or here, rather) as fully as possible.
When I was younger, I used to think that committing to something would feel oppressive, limiting, restrictive. But I now realize that the opposite is true — that commitment is freeing. It lets you focus. It collapses the need for you to continue considering options endlessly and instead grounds you to where you are, and helps you enjoy the rewards of living out one of those options. In other words: the value of commitment is that you get something tangible in exchange for it. By making a choice, you get something Real. Whereas stewing in your potential and refusing to transform it into something Actual leaves you living more in your head—weighing and considering and thinking about all of the things you could be doing, but not actually doing any of them.
This is one of those things I wish people talked more about when it comes to maturing, aging, choosing. Commitment is liberating because it entirely changes your relationship to what you like, appreciate, and feel drawn to. You can move towards something without the same seeking energy that is present when you have not yet traded your potential in for something actual — when each jolt of resonance, attraction, temptation, or consideration contains a whole universe in it that you feel the need to consider or understand before moving on with your life, before you let yourself fully return to where you are.
If I were to say something to my younger self, who felt a little too attached to preserving (and optimally using) her potential and a little too unaware of the gains of making choices, of committing to things, it would probably be: don’t be afraid of the Actual. Don’t be so precious with your potential that you don’t make commitments. Making choices and letting go of options can be just as rewarding as “keeping your options open” — more so, in fact! Because you actually get things from commitment. Rewards. Meaning. Depth. Richness. Intimacy. Progress. Skill. Clarity. Confidence. These are valuable, important things! Things that living in the world of optionality and postponing these ‘choices’ that feel so essential and defining to your future does not offer you. And in a way, the options you are so worried about losing don’t really disappear. Not if they are something that is truly for you. If they are compelling to you in the future, you can probably reopen them. But be cautious about indulging in the dangerous idea that options are the whole point, that commitment and choice are the enemy.
Commitment is where all of the juice is! It is in choice, in intention, in trading options in for something you’re genuinely excited about, something worth doing, something that feels Right—and using all of the energy you were putting towards analyzing those options into making what you’ve chosen truly great.
links to learn more about my work:
1-1 Clarity Coaching: figure out what you truly want out of life and start taking action towards it. A good time to explore this with new year / fresh start energy ripe and available for us to harness!
Men to Kings: 1-1 coaching for men based on the four key masculine archetypes: King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, to cultivate balance, alignment and direction in your life.
Creative Liberation: my course to help you unblock yourself, act on your ideas, and share your gifts and creativity with the world.
related essays: commitment is the only secret knowledge, find novelty through commitment, slowness, taste and living well, on being selective. Also find me on Twitter and Tik Tok.
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How did this essay land with you? What is the balance you try and strike between optionality and commitment?
Wow, incredibly timely. My word of the year this year is Commitment (and last year, funnily enough, was Courage).
I can’t tell you how much your writing has spoken to me, Isabel! These topics of commitment and choice and potential have been stewing for a while in my brain and I’m so grateful to read your work. Thank you, and here’s to 2025 being the year of making choices!