Deadlifts, books, and cinnamon rolls

If you're like me, you read this title and thought 1) what the hell kind of title is that and 2) that's a pretty awesome combo (especially if you add pizza - pizza and cinnamon rolls is tough to beat). I'm not trying to be cute with this title, it was honestly my first thought after thinking about the question: how important is it to reach our full potential?

Asking myself this question and thinking about it for a moment, the answer was "well potential encompasses a lot". I thought of fitness or bodybuilding, etc. - I've always loved to lift weights. There was a time when I was extremely disciplined on everything I did in order to be in the best physical condition I could (I played football so it was largely related to that). Overtime, I have backed off of that. I still have discipline, still exercise regularly, but I also eat cinnamon rolls. I see people that are in extremely great shape and think "well good for them but I'll take a cinnamon roll on occasion over that". Not a judgement statement - just a preference statement, for me. But it wasn't that way when I was younger.

I then thought, well that is perfectly reasonable. You don't, can't, pursue full potential in all things - right? That would be extremely burdensome. What was interesting is as I thought through that, I felt a weight lift from within. So that made me think - well, why? It's pretty obvious you can't reach full potential on everything. You have to allocate your efforts. So then I thought about my life and things I beat myself up about. Standards I hold myself to. I realized that by default, I have tended to hold myself accountable to many standards that would be full, or at least nearly full, potential. Even things that aren't actually that important to me.

I have mostly just operated as though "well, of course we want to reach full potential". I'm a growth minded person. So potential is everything. Pursue it. I tell myself that and believe that. I judge myself by that in many things. But not so much with cinnamon rolls (well, I actually do judge myself pretty hard in the older days and even now still to some extent) - interesting...

Is that a bad thing? Is there a peace that can come with realizing and accepting that full potential in all things would likely be a miserable existence? Or at least, for most of us.

Is it more appropriate to think about potential through the perspective of accepting that we are powerful and have ceilings that are essentially extending upwards forever. But to hold ourselves to that standard in all things is like choosing to take the place of Atlas and putting the world on our shoulders. Isn't it more appropriate to determine which facets of life you care about the most and then to focus on fulfilling that potential? But to be accepting of the facets in life that you don't need to reach full potential at and allow them to be as they are?

I'm not quite sure, but I'll probably think about this over a cinnamon roll. Or in the gym.