Exactly what is my potential?

Today, I was sitting in a meeting to plan for recruitment. We were trying to come up with slogans to go with our next round of recruitment, and my god it was much harder than I thought. And of course one person suggested the phrase that we are almost tired of seeing or heairng, "what is your potential?"

What is my potential? When I first started running cross country in high school, I was 14, and I also was one of the slowest runners on the team, amongst boys and girls combined. My dad, when he was picking me up from practice one day, asked my coach how I was doing in the sport. My coach replied, "He's got a lot of potential." Well, easy for him to say, I guess. Very nice way to describe the guy who just had to walk after jogging two miles that day. But later, I realized that he was not completely wrong about what he said about me.

The point I'm trying to make here, is that things like potential, talent, intelligence, etc., comes AFTER something more important in order to succeed: hard work. No matter how much potential you may have, no matter how talented or intelligent you may be, they don't lead you to success unless they are preceded by hard work. Though it is sad to admit, not all hard workers are guaranteed to be successful. But I think it is safe to state that everyone who succeed is a hard worker. So it is always safe to say, so and so has a lot of potential. Everyone does because after he/she goes works hard to excell, potential will just come to you.

So going back to the slogans. The "what is your potential?" line was not favored by the majority so it was eliminated off of the list. I'm glad we didn't decide to use it, because if someone were to approach and ask me the same question, I would not have a great insightful answer, even though I've in this organiztion for almost two years now. My answer to the question would be, "I don't know, because it isn't something I already have."