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Potential: Not What You Think
Why vague ambition kills progress, and how to reframe your training like a Stoic athlete.
Paco Raven
September 02, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
TODAY’S FOCUSRethinking PotentialIt will take me 8-11 years from now to reach my body’s natural potential. I am okay with that timeframe. Most men don’t. They want instant results. They chase shortcuts. And when they don’t see instant results, they quit. They miss the only part that matters. Reaching your potential isn’t about the result. It is about the long road to it. A Stoic lesson I’ve just discovered — and it changes everything about the way I measure progress… |  |
Welcome to The Stoiclete — a slow newsletter for ambitious men who want to challenge themselves in races while building a high performing mind. Each edition shares lessons I’m learning firsthand, plus practical frameworks to help you train like an athlete, think like a Stoic, and live a life worth showing up for.
Let’s dive in.
— Paco Raven
REFLECTIONS IN MOTION
Talking potential through the lens of purpose
This week, I came across a trend that hasn’t left my mind: ‘‘more and more young men are hopping on steroids’’
They want to get jacked fast, and steroids are the shortcut.
For them, potential means only one thing: bigger muscles. In today’s world, reaching your potential is framed as a finish line.
A role you want to play. A record you want to beat. A place you want to arrive.
The destination becomes the obsession, and the process gets ignored. This makes it tempting to search for a shortcut.
But what if true potential isn’t found at the finish line at all...
Why should you care about maxing out your potential?
You’ve probably asked yourself this question at least once in your life: Am I living up to my potential?
A natural question if you are ambitious. The Stoics would challenge it. They believed you are already living at your maximum potential.
Every choice you’ve made up to now was based on what you knew at the time.
You’ve done what you could. The real question is: what will you do next to grow?
Reaching your potential isn’t about some point in the future. It’s about exploring the limits of your body and mind in this moment.
That’s the only way you’ll discover your edge.
It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”
Where maxing out your potential often goes wrong
If you are ambitious, you can easily fall into the trap of vague ambition. I want to become the fittest version of myself. I want to become rich. I want to become charismatic. I want to reach my full potential.
These are not goals. They are vague wishes. There’s no way to track if what you’re doing is working. It’s running away from commitment. Because if it doesn’t work, you already have a way out.
Vague goals also invite shortcuts. You don’t see progress, so you start thinking there must be a faster way. Eventually, you quit —when in reality, the result you wanted was just a few workouts away.
THIS WEEK’S STOIC INSIGHT
A moment this week that taught me something
Live from Eindhoven, Netherlands
During a threshold run this week, I hit the edge of quitting — more than once.
I pushed through and used a reframe I learned from Alex Hormozi. I said to myself, ‘‘This is what hard feels like’’
After I said it, I felt relieved. I was able to accept the pain, and that made it lighter. It kept me going to the next rest interval. In the end, this was one of the best interval sessions I had, so I was glad to not have quit.
This reframe is also very Stoic in nature. It teaches us to only focus on what we can control, to accept what is happening to us.
If you accept you can’t do anything about it, it becomes fuel to push harder.
How to max out your potential the right way
The Stoics remind us that we have to focus on what we can control. To focus on improving every day in alignment with where we want to go.
Instead of ‘‘I want to become the fittest version of me’’ define it as:
I want to run a 10km race in 50 minutes by November.
Instead of ‘‘I want to get stronger’’ define it as:
I want to bench 105 kg by September.
Make your goals measurable. It enables you to start planning the exact steps that will get you there.
It makes consistency inevitable. You have a lot of feedback loops, so every time you do a workout, you gain fresh motivation.
It also makes it easier to focus on the process. Focus on improving every training, and when race day comes, you’ll already be ready.
Every rep, every run, every clear step forward is a moment of arete.
Proof that you’re mastering yourself, not just chasing a finish line.
If I could only use one tactic to not drift in vague ambition, it would be this
To keep myself from setting vague, ambitious goals, I use a leveling-up framework. I treat the process like a game.
Every training session is an opportunity to level up, which keeps me consistently motivated.
What’s powerful about this framework is that gratitude is baked in. You see where you are now, and you accept it.
For example, I’ll be running a 10-mile race on September 28th. My goal is to finish in under 80 minutes. That’s a clear, concrete goal.
Right now, I’d say my running is at a level 7 in terms of pace and distance.
My goal is level 10. That means all I need to do is focus on leveling up, one step at a time.
Each week, one level higher. Each workout is a chance to climb closer.
The irony? The clock doesn’t matter. What matters is leveling up.
I’m becoming someone who can run that race. Whether I break my time or not will depend on circumstances outside my control.
What I can control is how I show up daily.
END ON PURPOSE
One question to ask yourself today…
How can I see these difficulties as a lesson and a test?
There will always be things in our lives that don’t go according to plan. Those moments are difficult. But they’re also tests — chances to prove yourself before you level up. Every difficulty hides a test. Every test, a lesson.