a better north star than “fulfilling my potential”

I stumbled on this quote and it hit something I’d been circling around for a long time.

The best language I had before was some version of “use my full potential” or “reach my highest potential” — a kind of deep knowing that I don’t want to waste my capabilities and gifts. I want to actually use what I’ve been given.

But that framing misses a critical piece: contribution.

If we stop at “fulfilling my potential,” it can quietly slide into something pretty self-centered. It can become about consumption, ego, or a need to be seen and approved of because of old wounds.

Look at me. Look at what I can do. Look at how fully I’ve realized myself.

The Irish author George Bernard Shaw shares the part that’s usually missing: it’s not just about fulfilling yourself, it’s about being used. To be fully used. To be used up. To have your life leveraged for something beyond you — and to see that as a privilege, not a loss.

The point isn’t just “I got to my maximum settings.” It’s more like:

Fulfill your potential so that it can be put to work for something larger — a community, a cause, a set of people you care about.

That gives a different north star. Not just “become everything you can be,” but “become everything you can be so it can actually matter to someone besides you.” So you can be part of, and pass on, a legacy.

Not a life that’s just lived and then thrown away, but one that is preciously regarded and generously gifted.

And Shaw’s quote captures it beautifully:

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one;
the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap;
the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances
complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community,
and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die,
for the harder I work the more I live.
I rejoice in life for its own sake.
Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me.
It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment,
and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

— George Bernard Shaw