Unfulfilled potential

Bruce Emond ,  The Jakarta Post - WEEKENDER   |  Thu, 02/26/2009 11:39 AM  |  Life

In the big race of life, talent and potential can take us far. But why is it that the slower and determined tortoises often end up winning the race while the flashy hares run out of steam? Bruce Emond reports.

Agus has a lot to be thankful for. With a middle-level position in a communications company, he enjoys the occasional night out on the top and holidays both in country and abroad.

Sometimes, though, the “what ifs?” come to mind. What if he had accepted that job offer all those years ago? What if he had decided to go back to get his master’s? A high achiever in high school and university, he wonders if he coasted along life’s easy route instead of pushing himself a bit more.

At his worst moments, the Jakarta resident, now in his early 40s, feels he settled with being second best.

“I like to joke sometimes that I peaked too soon,” says Agus (not his real name). “I see people who were at the same stage as me in their 20s, in the same positions and with about the same capabilities, and where they have gone. And sometimes I see that they went a bit further than me.”

Many factors play a part in where we will eventually end up in life: background, basic intelligence, talent, capabilities, opportunities and drive. Talent is only part of the quotient, and some think it really doesn’t count for much. Author Stephen King reportedly said, “talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of the new book Outliers, which examines how successful people became that way, cites opportunity as a major factor.

“Their own greatness is not the salient fact about them. It’s the kind of fortunate mix of opportunities they’ve been given,” he told New York magazine, as quoted in The New York Times.

However, Times columnist David Brooks, while praising Gladwell’s book as important, argued that individual belief and determination, and focus, really make the difference.

In his view, will is really the way to getting ahead.

“We can’t control the opportunities and luck that we are given, but of course it’s clear that talent only functions if there is an integration of competence, contribution [drive] and commitment, or will,” says human resources expert Eileen Rahman from the Experd organization.

She adds that people can acquire the “attitude and values” that are needed to be a success.

“Stella” is one example. Top of the class in grade and junior high school, she failed to make it into the social or sciences streams in high school; instead, she was placed in the less prestigious “language” section. It was a rude awakening; even now, in her early 30s, she speaks about it in hushed tones and jokes that she gets sweaty palms every time she has to do calculations.

But she quickly determined that she should make the best of what she had been given. “I thought to myself that I’m good at art, so I focused on painting and things that I enjoyed,” she says.

She studied graphic design and has become successful in her field; juggling family and career. One colleague describes her as, “thoroughly dedicated and conscientious. She kind of amazes me with her drive. I’ll get an email from her, sent at 3 a.m. when she’s still working after putting her kids to bed.”

“I really believe life is about choices,” Stella says. “You can choose to work hard and do what you want, or you can choose not to do it.”

Perhaps the most significant choice she made was to change and grow, instead of being stuck in the past and not allowing herself to be defined by a poor test score years before. In Blind Spots: Achieve Success By Seeing What You Can’t See (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007), Claudia M. Shelton tells the story of Joey, a golden boy in high school who was finding life more difficult in his 30s and was recently passed over for a promotion. She finds he was still relying on the characteristics  – the class entertainer and cut-up – that won him friends in high school but were no longer sufficient to succeed in the adult sphere.

“If we don’t constantly update our adolescent perspective, we can be operating from an outmoded sense of who we are in a world pushing us to adapt to changing situations,” Shelton writes.  

The important thing is not to dwell on what might have been, Rahman says. Because it might just have turned out worse.

“Go onward, leave the past and face the future,” she says.

Agus thinks he could have done more in his career. He also has learned to look within himself and to be brutally honest about why he made the decisions of the past.

“To be honest, I was happy to get along in my comfort zone, and I really didn’t have the ambition to go further,” Agus says. “And I probably wouldn’t have wanted the responsibility and pressure that comes with going higher up the ladder.”

Illustration by Staven Andersen

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