Ghosts of Unrealized Potential

How confronting your future potential can transform your present self

I became obsessed with person growth over the last six years or so, and I blame it on ghosts.

This obsession kind of stems from one of the worst days of my life. One of those days you wish you could sleep through from the moment you wake up because you already know what’s ahead of you.

But you can’t.

You hit snooze. Stay in bed long after your alarm gives up. Every part of you stalls, not out of laziness, but because getting out of bed makes the grief real. We buried my great-grandma that day.

Most people don’t get to grow up with their great-grandparents. I did. For the first 19 years of my life, she was our babysitter, our storyteller, our anchor, the matriarch.

The night I met my ghosts

If the day buried her, the night uncovered me.

I was forced to form a conception of death in my mind and wrestle with internalizing this idea (terrible for REM sleep, by the way). I lost the illusion that I had all the time in the world. For the first time, I realized I was going to die, too. Not someday in theory, but for real on some unknown date.

With that came a truth I couldn’t sleep away: I wasn’t just grieving her anymore, I was grieving the parts of me I hadn’t lived into yet.

That’s when the ghosts showed up.

Not of her, but of me. Hypothetical ghost of the ideas I hadn’t followed, the talents I’d ignored, the work I said I’d start tomorrow. They didn’t yell. They didn’t even speak. They just stood there in my mind. Visible. Front and center. Wondering what I was doing with the time I’d been given.

They weren’t dead yet. But they knew, better than I did, that they could be.

Maybe you’ve felt them too — the ghost. Not the kind that haunt houses, but the kind that will haunt you if you fail to realize your potential.

Haunted by who you were supposed to be

Even David Goggins, retired Navy SEAL, ultramarathoner, best-selling author, and speaker, says his biggest fear isn’t pain, or failure. It’s these ghosts. He tells the story of reaching heaven, only to be handed a list of everything he could have become: Navy SEAL, elite athlete, speaker, leader. Things he didn’t do. Lives he didn’t touch. And in that moment, God looks at him and says, “that’s who you were supposed to be.”

That’s what haunts him. The version of himself he might never meet. The ghost of unrealized potential.

The ghosts of what could be

We all carry ghosts. So here’s the exercise. Slow down. Picture this clearly.

You’re on your deathbed. The room is quiet. And one by one, the ghosts begin to appear. Not ghosts of strangers. Ghosts of your own unlived potential.

Every idea you didn’t act on, the talents you ignored, and the disciplines you abandoned are now around you. They’re not angry at who you are. They’re disappointed by who you could’ve been.

“We came to you,” they say. “You were the only one who could have brought us to life. And now, we have to go to the grave with you.”

Sit with that.

Who are those ghosts? What did they come here to do? What do they represent?

"That’s who you were supposed to be."

Those words haunt Goggins. They haunt me, too.

That’s why I became obsessed with growth. Because becoming who I’m supposed to be isn’t a luxury, it’s a responsibility. And I don’t want to meet those ghosts on my deathbed. I want to meet them now.

The question isn’t just who are your ghosts? The question is:

Will you let them stay ghosts? Or will you remain the person they’ve been waiting on?