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The Basic Framework

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A video format of this framework:

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Defining Potential

Potential is present. 

It’s the actual set of traits, skills, and possibilities within. 

Potential is chosen. 

This is true whether it’s consciously chosen or not. All potential is moldable. 

Potential is interconnected. 

Potential shifts and interacts with others. All impact each other. 

Origins

There are two types: inherent and circumstantial potential 

Inherent potential

This is a baseline of core, innate potential. 

In the “nature vs nurture” argument, this would relate to the “nature” part. It includes things like natural talents and aptitudes, as well as more deeply ingrained traits like empathy or integrity. 

Though there are natural strengths and weaknesses, inherent potential isn’t fixed. There is choice in developing, transforming, or diminishing them. For example, a child who loves art but lacks natural talent can grow their artistic potential through practice. 

Circumstantial potential

This originates from or is shaped by the external environment, experiences, and relationships. 

This would be “nurture” in the “nature vs nurture” argument. For example, trauma might result in potential for hypervigilance, and abuse may result in potential for reactive aggression. On the other hand, supportive relationships could result in potential for increased confidence. 

The initial events could be chosen consciously, though it’s rare. Most of these potentials come from situations without much choice. But, when they become conscious, awareness allows choice. 

Inherent and circumstantial potentials

Both are interconnected.

Inherent traits can influence how we respond to circumstance. 

Different inherent levels of openness could influence how people handle a circumstance of rapid life changes. 

Someone with strong inherent analytical thinking might tackle a problem differently than another person with different potentials. 

Circumstances can influence how we express our inherent potentials. 

Negative circumstances might cause certain inherent traits to weaken or strengthen to adapt.

Positive circumstances could also cause a shift, like an increase in creativity or agreeableness.

Building Blocks

There are 2 categories: individual and relational potential. 

Both categories include the types of potential (inherent and circumstantial).

Natural traits and life experiences contribute to both our relationships, and who we are. 

Individual potential

Individual potential is the entirety of who you are. It’s what you embody. 

This is what a person chooses and uses within themselves. The range of capabilities, traits, and tendencies within someone creates their individual potential. 

Relational potential

Relational potential is who you are to others, who they are to you, and how we impact each other.

This is a dynamic between people, created and contributed to by each of them. A unique energy and set of possibilities form from people interacting. It makes a blend of shared and unique traits, and the impacts of one’s choices on the other. 

Just like individual potential, it can vary drastically from person to person, and relationship to relationship. 

Individual and relational potentials

They also affect each other. Metaphorically, relational and individual potentials are always dancing. Each one’s dancing style, their steps and improvised moves all impact the other.

The stylistic choices of one might enhance the other, or improvised steps might set the other off kilter. Sometimes the dance is flowy and intuitive, sometimes it’s discordant and off rhythm. It could be energized and celebratory, or aggressive and choppy.

Three Keys

These are ways that we can have a say in our potential. When made conscious, potential can be transformed. It can move from an unknown or unexpressed aspect of self into its chosen form. 

The three keys are an ARC.

awareness, responsibility, and choice.

Awareness

When potentials lack awareness, they’re hidden from us. They’re a mystery that we both embody and are impacted by. Recognition is step one to personal choice and empowerment. 

Responsibility

Your chosen potential is another’s circumstantial potential. 

Chosen, lived potential has real and tangible effects on others. One person’s choices create circumstantial potentials in others around them. This responsibility is just as interconnected as potential itself.

Responsibility in this sense has wide reaching effects, but our responsibility is not in the choices of others. It’s in the impact of our own. We can understand the impacts relationships have had on our own potential, evaluate and if needed, choose differently. 

Choosing to act in anger or aggression can grow a potential for fear and anxiety in another. Choosing to act in kindness can grow a potential for trust.

Choice

Choice exists with or without awareness. But without it, it isn’t truly a conscious choice. 

Choice shapes potential, both in its expressed state and in its trajectories. Choosing to act or refrain from acting strengthens one potential while weakening another. 

When someone consistently chooses a path (whether a path of compassion or harm), they actively strengthen and grow that potential.

Our repeated choices make those potentials the biggest and most dominant parts of who we are.

Autonomy

True autonomy requires recognizing and accepting interconnectedness. Though it seems like a contradiction, it’s a key truth. The external becomes internal, and individual becomes the other. Only with understanding of the dance can you choose to free yourself of it. 

To believe that our environment doesn’t affect us would be ignorance of our own basic mechanics. To think we’re apart from the other, or that we don’t have responsibility for how we impact others would be immature. Not to mention, unethical.

How can we distinguish our own individuality if we assume we don’t carry parts of those we love and those we let go? If we assume we’re wholly apart, we can’t see who we actually are. We cannot choose for a self we don’t truly understand. 

By accepting the interplay, we actually see ourselves clearer. It brings a deeper understanding of what makes us who we are. We can embrace our complexities and recognize the influences that shape us. The differences are easier to see between which potentials within us are deeply embedded, and which are more easily changeable.

We can recognize the chains of potential that ripple through ourselves and others. Our liminality is something we can feel excited about, and even direct. 

We can choose how the external becomes a part of us, and what it becomes. We can choose how our potential is expressed, and (within reason) whether that expression has a positive or negative impact. 

We can choose to sever external connections that have negatively affected us. This might be inspired by recognizing the impacts on us, and how we’ve impacted others as a result of it.

Change can come with strong motivation when we recognize a chain of pain, unchosen potential, or diminished potential. 

Understanding how far that ripple will flow, we can become better versions of ourselves. Better friends, partners, daughters, mothers, sons, fathers. This type of agency is both for self and other. 

To choose, we have to recognize the connections that exist and shape us.

We all live within each other, but we can’t choose if we refuse to see it. 

Ending Note

There are cases where connection is painful and choice isn’t so straightforward. These situations are complicated, nuanced, and deserve their own exploration. A specific area of that will be focused on in the next part of this framework: 

Abusive relationships and trauma through the lens of interpersonal potentiality.