This episode of Plot Twist, the curse of Living for potential, is about the seduction of possibility and the price we pay when we build our lives around what could be instead of what is. This is an episode about the emotional cost of betting on future promise, the ways potential can keep us stuck, and what it means to finally come back to what is actually here at some point.

Potential stops opening for you. It starts pulling you away from yourself.

I think there’s a very specific kind of person who ends up living for potential. It requires a certain combination of optimism, imagination, and willingness to sacrifice. Spoiler alert I have all three of the trifecta over here. And for all of you out there who have these same rare attributes. No, we’re going to be in this episode together. We’re the ones who can see what isn’t there yet, and it is a gift.

We hold vision. We can believe in something before there’s even proof. And you have to be willing to surrender control, to stay, to wait, to trust that if you just keep going, just keep loving, just keep believing, something will eventually become what you feel it could be. There’s beauty in that. It can feel meaningful, like purpose, like strength.

But there’s also a quiet shift that can happen where dedication can learn to self abandonment or even self betrayal. Not all at once, but in small, almost invisible ways. I believe they call this death by a thousand cuts. You override what you feel. You explain away what doesn’t make sense. You stay just a little longer. You give a little more or a lot more.

Okay, that’s a signature move of mine. Giving a lot more. And slowly, without realizing it, you start living in what is. And you start living in what could be, what might become what you’re hoping one day will finally arrive. You start living for the almost. Because sometimes the hardest things to release are the things that almost felt like they could become everything.

That kind of almost can keep a person going for a really long time. It keeps you hoping. It keeps us waiting. It keeps us justifying. It can keep us interpreting small signals as proof that the future I’ve been holding on for is still possible. And if that’s ever happened to you too. I think we all deserve tenderness because there’s nothing foolish about wanting something to grow.

There’s nothing weak about believing in what could be. And there’s nothing shameful about trying to love something through to its fuller form and almost, almost can feel powerful. But it’s not something you can stand on. It’s not something you can build a life on. It’s definitely not a guarantee. Sometimes, honestly, it’s closer to a Hail Mary pass than anything real.

And still we try. We’re gonna try it into existence. We’re going to dig deeper, we’re going to give more. And we tell ourselves that if we just stay committed, if we just believe enough, it’s going to turn, it’s right around the corner. But at some point, something quieter starts to surface, a question that you can’t keep pushing away.

When does seeing potential stop being hopeful and start to reveal its darker side? The curse, the curse of it is this when you become more loyal to possibility than reality, it’s when you stay because you could see who someone could be. It’s when the imagined future becomes so emotionally powerful that it starts out ranking the present truth. And that’s where micro self betrayals begin.

Not always in one dramatic moment. And it hurts little moments where you silence your intuition, where you explain away chronic disappointment, where you keep giving because you don’t want all the time, love, effort, or sacrifice to have been for nothing. Where you double down because walking away feels like admitting you were wrong. And what is it costing you to stay?

Because the future you’re holding on to is not a sure thing, but your time, your energy, your life is already being spent. Before I go any further, I want to protect and honor something. Seeing potential. It’s a beautiful thing. It means you’re still open. Seeing potential is not a mistake. If anything, it says something good about you. It says you’re someone who can hold vision.

Someone who can believe in people. Someone who doesn’t reduce everything to what’s immediately visible. You’re not hardened. You’re not closed off, you’re not cynical. And in a lot of ways, the world needs more of us. The problem isn’t that we see potential. The problem is when we start living and what we hope will eventually become true. First, what is true.

So I don’t think seeing potential is something we should lose. I think it’s something we’re meant to hold more carefully. Potential is compelling because it lets us tell the truth and avoid it all at the same time. Potentially seductive because it lets us fall in love with the future. And that’s what I want to explore with you today.

The curse of living for potential, in love, in work, and the things we try to will into becoming while slowly asking ourselves to live with less than we actually need. The curse of living for potential shows up powerfully in romance, because in love, potential can feel intimate. It can feel compassionate. You tell yourself you’re not judging someone by their worst moment.

You’re seeing their heart, their wounds, their capacity, their future. Let me tell you, that’s beautiful. But there’s a difference between loving someone and loving who they might become. There is a difference in witnessing growth and surviving chronic disappointment because you believe their growth is coming and a lot of people get stuck there. I surely did earlier this year, not with the person you are actually with, but with the promise of who they could be.

So you stay with the inconsistency because you’ve seen an experience, glimpses of their tenderness. You stay with emotional availability because you know they do have depth. You stay with misalignment because the chemistry is strong and the story feels unfinished. You stay because you think if they would just heal, commit, communicate better, become who I know they can be.

But your life, it’s happening now. Your nervous system is living now and your needs, they’re real now, and loving someone’s potential cannot substitute for being met. In reality, I’ve only had a boomerang relationship once. First round was in 2024 and the second round was earlier this year. I met him at the first and only alumni event I’ve ever attended and he was, of all people, the chapter president.

He was very handsome, boyish, which is likely because he’s 16 years younger than me. Such kind eyes, wicked intelligence. He was warm and funny. He stopped at my table last and we were at a wine tasting event. I was sitting with three recent grads, all ladies, and we had been the table of no rules, honoring all the fun and making sure to laugh louder.

I could tell he was interested in someone at the table, but assumed it was one of the beautiful 22 year old ladies sitting there with me. To my surprise, he asked for my number. And yes folks, that was the start of round one. It lasted about six weeks total. He ended it and I was devastated. I was outside with Duke on a cold night in February when he left on his bicycle.

I dropped to the sidewalk watching his tail light get further and further away from me. That night I could barely breathe through the tears. I was gutted. We saw her again in July of 24 and had some very strong margaritas on a patio at a neighborhood place. We fell right back into each other and ended the night with a movie star level kiss on the sidewalk.

He set a second date that he ended up canceling and rescheduling many, many times. So I finally had to ask him, should I be seeing this as simply a short term scheduling challenge or as a signal from the universe and him? He replied. Unfortunately, both. He wanted to see me again, but he was not in a place for a relationship.

He did understand that that could mean the door closes for us, but he didn’t want to risk things not working out when he was working towards being in a better place in the future. I should thank him right now. Look at that foreshadowing. If only I had known. Fast forward to November of 2025. I had such a tough year.

I was sick almost all of 2025, and I almost forgot about these tickets I bought in 2024 to opening night of the Smashing Pumpkins Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness at the Lyric Opera House, I got brave, I texted him to invite him. I know this is a bit out of nowhere, but I have an invitation for you. Would you like to join me for the CSO Chicago Symphony Orchestra?

Smashing pumpkins opening night, Friday, November 21st. To my surprise, he replied, hey, this actually sounds like a great time. Definitely interested. And what do you have in mind in terms of attire? All right, this is how I knew this guy is likely my guy immediately planning that outfit. I adore him and I think we all know that’s how round two started.

That night was beautiful. Our reunion, the performance. He seemed different in a good way, and I seemed different in a good way. As one of their songs said, while we were walking home, arm in arm, the impossible felt possible. That night, the lead trombonist even met us and took a picture. But slowly, from that high until late January, I had to reckon with connection versus capacity and I had to learn a tough lesson.

They’re not the same thing. We had moments like New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, where we awoke in each other’s arms, and there was clearly no place either of us would rather be, and we didn’t want moments like that to end. It was abundance. We were so full of care, tenderness and beauty towards one another. But then he couldn’t carry the relational thread, so it ended up a series of episodic, although perfect moments, which was not enough for me.

He suggested a relationship document to outline mine and his expectations, and I knew then he was trying. He wanted a romantic relationship with me, but he could not intellectualize his way through his capacity and limitations. But you know what? I wasn’t ready, I doubled down, I started the draft relationship document for us. Questions became really hard for me to ignore.

Could I stay with him while he grew his capacity? Could I help him? Could I live with what was available to me in the present? I couldn’t, I wanted to, but I couldn’t. It was one of the hardest breakups I’ve had, and I had to hold two truths that I felt completely contradictory. What made this so hard is I wasn’t trying to convince myself something was there.

When it wasn’t, something was there. The connection was undeniable, deeply felt, deeply real and genuinely meaningful. I could see his tenderness, his intelligence, the longing, the almost there quality. I get exactly who he might become. And that made it very hard to accept that his unrealized capacity still functioned for me as absence. There was no emotional continuity, no relational capacity to hold when the connection opened over time.

And I think that’s a very specific kind of heartbreak, because you’re not grieving something imagined, you’re grieving something real. At times, I had to hold the connection was real enough to be felt in my core, and the lack capacity was real enough to starve me. Both are true. It was not imaginary, and it was not livable. I was grieving because we had something real but not sustainable.

One of the deepest traps in love is not loving someone who has no depth. It’s loving someone with real depth, real feeling, and real potential, but not the present capacity to hold a relationship. The plot twist for me was that the connection was real and still not enough. Potential is not nothing, but it’s not a place for me to live.

And that was where the curse broke. There’s a difference between promise and pattern. Promise says, I can see what this could be. Pattern says I have to live with what this is. Potential is magnetic. Capacity is livable. It was devastating for me, but also liberating. There’s also the curse of living for potential in work, dreams, and especially something like a startup, because a startup is almost built on potential itself.

Vision, belief, risk, the idea that what doesn’t exist yet could become something extraordinary. That’s mythology, that’s fuel. And in so many ways, that’s beautiful. It’s the American dream to believe in something before the world validates it to build. When there’s no guarantees to stay true to a mission bigger than yourself. But that same idealism can become dangerous when your identity fuses with the mission.

Because then every setback becomes something to outwork. Every red flag becomes a temporary obstacle, every sign of misalignment, just a reframe that is part of the process. And walking away starts to feel like betrayal, not discernment. You keep chasing because it feels noble, because quitting is coated as weakness. Persistence is glorified because someone along the way suffering, starts to feel like proof that you believe enough.

And then there is that moment where the cost become impossible to ignore. You’re tired in a way that sleep can’t fix. You feel stuck even though you’re constantly moving. Your energy is leaking. Joy is gone. You’re technically committed, but spiritually disappearing. That’s the hidden cost of overrides with potential. You become so devoted to the dream that you abandon the dreamer.

It is the sadness of giving life to something that is no longer giving life back. So I started not one, not two, but three startups. And I hate to tell you, the third time wasn’t the charm. I probably should have taken the hint from the universe sooner, but I give myself Greyson that I didn’t. So I became a female founder.

I had to go to the doctor to actually get confirmed as a female. Seriously. I’ve never heard of a man founding a business. Have to literally drop his drawers to be identified as a man, but I digress. I started very quickly to have to dip into my personal bank accounts to cover payroll, but I told myself I’d put that money back.

I then had to go to nominal pay for myself as a founder to none. I started to have to just work more and more and more hours. There was no difference between night and day, weekend and weekday. I lost myself because I had people. I had the mission I had to honor what this could become. I didn’t want to give up to soon, but I had to admit my soul was so tired.

But then again, those tough questions. Could I shut it down? What would I do? Where would my team go? And the scariest one of all, what did I actually build? I faced it eventually, and I did make the difficult decision to shut down. You can be deeply committed and deeply disconnected from yourself at the same exact time. The plot twist is that you can stay loyal to the mission while losing yourself.

That’s the hidden cost of over identifying with potential, the life that does not get built because too much is invested in trying to rescue or realize something that remains unfinished. And if someone has lived inside that for a long time, I don’t think we need more pressure. I don’t think we need more judgment, and I don’t think we need to be told that we should have known better.

I think they need kindness, just like I gave to myself.

I now want to slow things down and come back to the narratives underneath all of this. Because the curse of living for potential is never just about the guy, the person, the dream, or the relationship itself. It’s also about the stories we tell ourselves that keep us inside of it, the stories that turn almost into enough. So we’ll take a look at narratives and consider, keep, revise, retire.

So for keep, I have two today. I’m going to keep my ability to see potential is a gift. I want to keep it. I don’t want pain to harden me. There is still something beautiful about being someone who can see possibility. I just want to hold this gift with more wisdom I’m also keeping. I can honor what was real without denying what was missing.

This one feels sacred to me because I think so much suffering comes from feeling like we have to choose. Either it meant everything or it meant nothing. Either it was real or it was fake. But sometimes the truth is more nuanced than that. Sometimes something was real. Sometimes it was meaningful. Sometimes it touches something deep inside us, and sometimes it still couldn’t be what it needed to become.

I can honor what was real and still tell the truth about what was missing. Revise. I’m going to revise. From walking away means I failed to. Walking away can be an act of self trust because sometimes leaving is not a failure. Sometimes it’s the moment you stop overwriting what you know. Sometimes it’s when self trust returns to the root.

I’m also going to move from if something has potential, I should keep believing in it. To potential is not enough. If reality keeps asking me to abandon myself. Potential can be beautiful, but potential. It’s not presence, it’s not consistency, it’s not peace. And if staying connected to it requires me to keep betraying myself, even in small ways, then it costs too much.

And then I have two to retire. I’m retiring. That glimpses are enough. They’re not. I said it, they’re not enough. They may be beautiful, meaningful, and even hard to let go of. But glimpses are not continuity. They are living off scarcity, making your needs small to fit, and you pass along the cost of carrying to you. They’re not what allows us to exhale.

I’m also retiring. I just need to hold on a little longer. Sometimes that is hope, and sometimes it’s the story that keeps us suspended. At some point, holding on can no longer feel like devotion. It can feel like leaving a part of ourselves behind. And maybe that’s the shift. Not becoming someone who low longer sees potential, but becoming someone who no longer mistakes, potential for what can actually hold them, and just knowing that the story is editable.

That’s already a plot twist, and that’s enough for today. The curse of it isn’t the hope itself, it’s how it quietly asks you to leave yourself behind because it makes sense to stay where there is meaning. It makes sense to hope. Where there has been beauty, it makes sense to keep believing and once felt alive and true and important.

Sometimes it means we did not yet know that possibility alone could not hold the kind of life our soul needed. And I think that’s where Grace enters, not in blaming ourselves for staying too long, not in rewriting the whole story as a mistake. Not in turning our tenderness against ourselves, but in understanding that there are seasons where staying made sense, where loyalty, investment, belief, and endurance are the language a person has available.

But then, sometimes, very quietly, something can change. Reality can become harder to soften. And when that happens, if that happens, it deserves gentleness to it’s okay for something that once fell to line to no longer feel the same. It’s okay for something that once felt like purpose to start feeling like depletion. It’s okay for your heart to grow tired of surviving on glimpses like minded.

It’s okay for the soul to want something more solid than possibility. That is not failure, not weakness, no lack of depth, love or faith. Sometimes it’s simply the moment when grace gets louder than surviving. And maybe that is part of the plot. Twist to that, the ending of something is not always a collapse. Sometimes it’s a return, a return to self trust, a return to peace, a return to reality, a return to a life that does not require so much translation just to be livable.

Because seeing potential is still a gift. I really believe that. And it’s a gift I have and hold. It means there’s softness in you. It means there’s imagination in you. It means there’s hope in you. It means that party. You can still believe in growth, in healing, in possibility. And that is beautiful. But there may also come a point where the soul needs something other than potential, something present, something reciprocal, something steady, something that does not require constant over-functioning, just to stay intact.

Something that doesn’t ask you to disappear in order to keep believing in it. And if someone has been tired in this way, like I have, I hope you feel recognized. I hope you know there is nothing embarrassing about hope, nothing naive about loving deeply, nothing shameful about wanting things to work, nothing weak about reaching a point where almost is no longer enough.

Maybe that is not that end of strength. Maybe that’s the return of it. Maybe grace looks like allowing reality to be what it is. Maybe Grace looks like not needing potential to become a life in order for the story to have mattered. Maybe Grace looks like understanding that some things are meaningful and still not meant to be carried forever.

And maybe what you are building could be real one day. And still it may not be something you can live inside of. It may not be something that can hold you. It may not be something that can meet you in the way your life requires. And that does not make it nothing, but it also doesn’t make it enough.

Some things are felt deeply. Some things stay in possibility and never arrive in form. And maybe that’s a plot twist. Maybe the deepest plot twist of all is that a life can begin to feel more like your own the moment you start living for what could be, and allow yourself to be held by what is true. And maybe another plot twist is that the life that’s quote unquote right for you will not require you to portray yourself in order to stay loyal to its promise.

Take what’s yours. Leave what’s heavy. The twist. It’s you. I end every episode with a short piece of original music. Same motif, different expression. So your nervous system can digest what we just opened. You’re not going to do anything. Just listen.