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Crossing The Plateau of Latent Potential: The Arduous Endeavor of Discovering Our True Passion

 


         Do you feel that your result either of habit or skill somehow is not yet apparent? Or perhaps the things that you are working with on a daily basis seem tedious & monotonous? Well, it resonates with me as well; or even the vast majority of people may feel that way too. Indeed, sometimes you may try to figure out what’s wrong with your progress by the time you want to achieve something. Let’s say you start learning something: new skills or new languages. At first, you may find that it will go pretty well as you are fully determined to keep on doing it. You spend more time on the sort of activities that captivate you as you perhaps set other things aside other than your current interests. Consequently, it can lead to the pseudo notion in which you may think that you can achieve what you want in a short period of time. However, it isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. In fact, it is essentially only the beginning of your learning journey that will cost you everything!


           Now, let me introduce you to the concept so-called “The Plateau of Latent Potential”. It basically deals with both the gap and lag time between what you think (your efforts) and what actually happens (the results). To put it simply, a habit that you do seems feasible and convenient in the first place, but you will gradually lose interest in it as time goes by. Many people are struggling to keep their habit last longer thus it ends up ceasing. So, it’s no surprise that they give up their habit due to the fact that their efforts take too long to be paid off. Needless to say, they arguably undergo “the valley of disappointment” in which most people fail. It is also often associated with the point in which your journey is in limbo, which requires whether you have to maintain your habit or not. At this critical point, people have a kind of tendency to cut down on their habits. Every time that they spend supposedly comes for nothing as they keep pushing their habit over and over but they still feel no change. Even though the result is not yet tangible, it is actually accumulating anyway.


         Consistency and determination genuinely help to put up with the boredom that you may come across during learning, working, or doing habits. Well, it sounds easier to do so despite the fact that reality doesn’t favor it.  How do you deal with it, then? The answer technically lies in this analogy: “By the time a woodpecker taps on a branch of a tree hundreds of times, it will eventually cut down the branch. It implies that the tap cutting down the branch isn’t necessarily the last tap, but all the taps that persistently cut the branch over and over.


           It turns out that the result will eventually kick in by the time you break the critical threshold of the plateau. Once you can make it out alive to this point, you may come to realize that all of your endeavors is paid off. Moreover, you definitely deserve your reward for everything that you go through solely on preserving your habit. This is the last destination of your journey, as you make every time count and you enjoy the process at any cost. Meanwhile, don’t let your guard down just because you succeed in achieving what you want because maintaining habits can be a double-edged sword. It can either work for you or against you. That’s all that matters.


Writer: Mochammad Dimas Ferdiansyah

Editor: Septian Paradesa


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