What is it that prevents people from living to their full potential?

I, personally, thought about comfort.

One could agree what I'm about to write is another aspect of fear and I'd be inclined to agree - but I believe is it that, and a bit more.

We are creatures of habit. Once a habit (a routine) is solidified, it is extremely hard to get rid of. Living life on autopilot is comfortable and provides a sense of security - there is a reason we have the concept called "comfort zone".

Living life to full potential (for me) means you have to overhaul your habits, take risks, dedicate time to knowing yourself and assessing your strength. That requires effort, while routines do not. It's easier to enjoy their warm embrace and let life simply pass by.

My thought is that it's the stories we tell ourselves, versus just living in reality.
A friend is unable to meet for a chat and I make up a story that they don't want to spend with us. In reality there are a million possible explanations that aren't about me.
I have a doctor's appointment and I make up a story about him judging me or giving me bad news. In reality, the future is non-existent and by the time it's the present, anything could happen.
I make up limiting stories about my frailties, my capabilities, and my weaknesses all the time. In reality, I am the Force and the Force is in me.

As to why we make up limiting stories, I think there are probably mearly 8 billion reasons, one for each human. For me personally it's fear, and the fear has three main flavors. The first is, my past taught me that being too seen gets you hurt and that's a belief that I'm still working to get rid of. The second is, I'm afraid that if I am too capable, I will be given or get too much responsibility and it will be stressful and the resulting break down will make me lose all I've worked for. And the third is, I'll make too mistakes that are too big and hurt people.

...But honestly, reading it over, those fears are still just stories I'm telling myself instead of living in reality.

Tolerance to frustration could expand my range of productive action to do gradual experiments. Discipline, training and processes are always necessary, I can use imagination to motivate myself but there is no magic. And I need to focus, sustain my goals, schedule and complete my training in a timely manner, also assimilate errors and develop learnings/adjustments.
I can think of obstacles and springboards...

What else Allow, Cause and Encourage us to develop more skills? Skills are specific in their definitions and the Bloom's taxonomy could give us hints to "watch" the threshold between "Full potential and subcomponents".

I feel that it is in two parts. The first is ignorance arising from the inability to recognize an awareness of self. We see it often. People go about their lives seemingly blind of this life we chose of self-growth and progress. Their view is outside of themselves, to the beauty and wonder this temporal world has to offer. Sometimes they get unhappy, but this mode of life is all they’ve known for a lifetime. They are not illuminated, the darkness of unawareness blinds them. Why would they change unless they’ve seen the state of themselves, introspectively observing the needs of the mind and spirit, and ultimately realizing their potential. I argue often that awareness of self is the foundation of a better life. You cannot finish the IP, much less anything else, if you fail to recognize “the self”. Until then, one is stuck in the limbo of the ignorance of even having potential.

Second, I feel full potential does not exist. Maybe it does, I don’t know for sure. Daily I contend with this choice: shall I continue to improve today, or shall I allow myself to stall in my progress. It is a commitment. Everyday somehow, someway we become better, we progress our understandings, we find our center, and even discover something a bit new about ourselves. We don’t stop learning, because we know the world doesn’t stop teaching. Maybe our full potential is only recognized in our finality, when we pass into the Force; but, even death is a new adventure of its own. We can always do better.

Thank you for a great discussion, I learned a lot reading from the responses.

Jedi_J wrote: What is it that prevents people from living to their full potential?

The way this question tends to be worded makes me think we have come to expect life to work like some sort of RPG, where you start out with a low-level character and consistently level up in different skills until we reach max power and can basically "play the game" without risking losing.

Even in RPGs, certain characters can only develop in certain ways.

I feel the illusion of "full potential" keeps us navel-gazing the "best" way to live, rather than simply tackling life, one battle at a time, levelling up in those skills which we actually find useful as adaptation to the particular battles we face.

We act, receive feedback, and adapt. There is only so much "basic training" we can go through before we need to decide what we actually want from life, and what we are willing to endure for those particular things. And that passion rarely manifests all over the board.

So, rewording the initial question, what stops us from living to our own particular version of our full potential? The paralysis from second-guessing whether we are there yet, which prevents us from simply moving towards it.

Now, does the Human Potential count as navel gazing ? Asking for a friend Manu.. smiley face !

Carlos.Martinez3 wrote: Now, does the Human Potential count as navel gazing ? Asking for a friend Manu.. smiley face !

The problem with "Human Potential" is that is so giganticly broad and abstract that it does not lend itself towards constructing a hypothesis that can then be tested. So, many will fall into the trap of gazing out forever into space searching for some sort of definition, some sort of "form" for it, while ironically wasting away any actual human potential during the futile exercise.

A better approach is to forget "Human Potential" and instead start with "What do I want to achieve (and why)?". Potential, in this context, is both meaningless and irrelevant.

Perhaps society itself.

By not accepting that we are already living up to our potential, we are unable to take stock of our lives. Without a clear picture of who we are and why we do what we do, we can not hope to formulate any sort of reasonable plan. It is a lack of critical information. It is akin to trying to fly but not accepting that our arms are not wings. That is to say, you CAN succeed, but not by doing what your doing now. So what are you doing now that detracts from what you want to be?

Everyone fears of the unknown. Even though we say it’s an illusion everyone gets afraid from time to time no matter how strong you are a controlling fear. Our society fears risk, doesn’t see the rewards in taking risk. Sure, taking too many risks can have very harsh consequences if you don’t turn up on the positive side of the situation whether it be stocks, loaning money, leaving a good job to start a business, standing up against the odds of situations, etc.

Another that hinders IMO is patience. We live in a society ,” I want it now.” I gotta have the latest gadget now, I cannot wait! Why are fast foods, Amazon, credit card companies, weight loss/supplements shops successful? Because we cannot wait.

Our better version is today. If we work on ourselves today we are slowly becoming our better versions but it takes time, effort and Needed risks.

One last thought does one plant a tree thinking it will shoot up in a day, a month, a year? Or never? Yes. Because society has taught us that. But no, in reality in ten years time that tree will show results.