Alejandro Acebal K.

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

How much time are you willing to hold other people's idea of you?

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

The only limits I know are the ones I created and the ones I accepted. There are no other limitations that exist. All of them are self-induced and world-induced. Remember you are limitless.

[Luke Belmar 👽 @lukebelmar]

“When you can't be controlled, you will be hated, and that's the power.”

— Nikola Tesla

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

So now every girl is Carolyn Basset in NYC.

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

El que no sabe estar solo comparte por necesidad.

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

What you avoid, hunts you. What you hunt, you avoid.

[Matt Shumer @mattshumer_]

https://t.co/ivXRKXJvQg

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

If you don’t create you slowly disappear.

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

So you follow the people that are already at the top. Who have uploaded a ton of content and have been scrappy for years, but you know see them at their peak. Having learned from all their failures. So you compare to them to that ultimate version of them, when you should be thinking that this person was in your same position but they didn't overthink it.

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

I have a theory if you don't create something and fulfill your potential you are probably insanely anxious.

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

We measure a lot of things in the modern world.

GDP. Productivity. Engagement. Growth.

Every year, as technology advances, our reality becomes more measurable, more optimized, more quantified.

But what if the most important metric of all is the one we never measure?

What if Human Potential Lost Per Year is the invisible number shaping everything, and by not seeing it, we allow it to grow unchecked?

What Is Human Potential Lost Per Year (HPLY)
This idea got inside my head during one of my walks.

Human Potential Lost Per Year refers to all the potential that disappears in a given year because we fail to act on what moves through us:

Ideas not executed. Insights not spoken. Projects not started. Relationships not pursued. Truths not expressed.

It represents everything the world could have had, but didn’t, because creation never crossed from inner potential into external reality.

HPLY is not directly measurable. But it is very real.

Because for every form of potential that exists, there is a consequence when it remains unexpressed.

The Counterpart of Unexpressed Potential
Unexpressed potential does not vanish.

It turns inward.

When we don’t ask someone out, we become trapped in thoughts of what could have been when we later see that person with someone else.

When we don’t start the company, we carry quiet anxiety, not because we failed, but because we never tried.

When we don’t create our art, we begin to envy someone with less talent but more courage.

In each case, the energy of creation doesn’t disappear. It transforms.

The impulse to start that project doesn’t vanish when we ignore it. It becomes anxiety.

The truth we don’t speak becomes resentment.

The relationship we don’t pursue becomes regret.

And almost always, it manifests negatively: anxiety, envy, rage, suppression, low self-esteem.

This isn’t just emotion. It’s a shift in how we operate.

When we live with unexpressed potential, we enter a suppressed state, characterized by anxiety, comparison, and the impulse to discourage others.

When we act on our potential, we operate from an expressive state, characterized by energy in motion, creation, and permission-giving to others.

These aren’t personality types. They’re configurations we can move between.

What follows is even more dangerous.

When we’re in the suppressed state, we can’t tolerate seeing expressed potential in others, not consciously, but defensively.

We minimize. We mock. We warn. We project.

Not because we’re evil, but because other people’s courage exposes our own unfulfilled potential.

This is where the system locks itself.

The Loop
Human suppression doesn’t stop at the individual level. It forms a loop.

The loop looks like this:

We suppress our potential → We discourage others from expressing theirs → Fewer people turn potential into form → The few who do become the “stars” or successes of the generation → The majority either admire them from a distance or criticize them as a projection of our own unfulfilled potential

This loop compounds year after year.

Human Potential Lost Per Year increases not because we lack ability, but because fewer of us feel permitted to act.

Why the Loop Is So Strong
The loop persists because it operates top-down and bottom-up.

It often starts with our parents, who never fulfilled their own potential. Not out of malice, but survival, fear, or conditioning.

That unfulfilled energy gets transmitted subtly through: discouragement, overprotection, “be realistic” narratives, fear-based guidance.

We inherit not only beliefs, but unlived lives.

Another reason the loop is so strong is purely statistical:

There are more people with unexpressed potential than expressed potential.

Which means most of us grow up surrounded by people who didn’t act, and learn early that suppression is normal and expression is risky.

The system reinforces itself.

What Breaks the Loop
The loop persists because most of us don’t realize we’re in it.

We experience the symptoms of the state: anxiety, envy, restlessness. But not the cause.

We think suppression is our personality, our circumstances, our limits.

But suppression isn’t fixed. It’s a state.

And state operates below conscious awareness.

When we don’t start the project, we’re not making a rational decision. We’re not weighing pros and cons and choosing suppression.

We’re running a pattern.

A pattern learned from parents who warned us to “be realistic.” A pattern reinforced by a world where most people around us also didn’t act. A pattern that feels like truth because it’s been there so long.

But patterns can become conscious.

And once conscious, they can change.

When we realize our suppression isn’t identity, it’s configuration, the shift becomes possible.

We see that the anxiety isn’t a sign something’s wrong with us. It’s compressed energy that was never released.

We see that the impulse to create isn’t naïve or reckless. It’s signal.

We see that expression isn’t reserved for the talented few. It’s the natural state that suppression interrupted.

One person making this shift doesn’t just change their trajectory. They stop reinforcing the loop for others.

Because being around someone operating from expression shows us it’s real. It makes our own suppression visible by contrast.

Human Potential Lost Per Year measures the gap between what we could express and what we actually do. That gap isn’t fixed. It shrinks every time someone moves from unconscious suppression to conscious creation.

The energy is already there.

It just needs to become conscious.

What Happens When The Loop Is Broken Enough Times?
One person shifting from suppressed to expressive doesn’t just change their own life.

It changes the statistical distribution.

Remember: the loop is strong because there are more people with unexpressed potential than expressed potential.

Most of us grow up surrounded by suppression. It becomes the baseline. The norm.

But what happens when that ratio starts to shift?

When a parent moves from the suppressed state to the expressive state, their children inherit permission instead of fear.

The “be realistic” narrative gets replaced with “try and see.”

The child doesn’t learn that expression is risky. They learn that suppression is uncomfortable.

The baseline inverts.

Now scale that.

When enough of us operate from the expressive state, the social incentives flip.

Right now, expressing potential is the exception that gets mocked, minimized, or met with “who do you think you are?”

But in a world where expression is common, suppression becomes the outlier.

The person who doesn’t act starts to feel the friction, not the person who does.

Creation stops being courageous. It becomes default.

And here’s what changes at scale:

Economic output isn’t the same as human potential expressed.

GDP measures transactions. It doesn’t measure the art that was never made, the companies that were never started, the innovations that stayed locked inside someone’s mind.

A world where Human Potential Lost Per Year approaches zero isn’t just “more productive.”

It’s fundamentally different.

We get ideas that were never supposed to exist because the person who had them was “supposed” to stay quiet.

We get solutions from people who were told they weren’t smart enough.

We get art from people who were told to be practical.

The sheer volume of unexpressed potential currently sitting dormant in billions of us is incomprehensible.

Breaking the loop enough times doesn’t just improve the world incrementally.

It unlocks an entirely different order of magnitude.

This isn’t utopian thinking.

It’s just math.

If suppression is configuration, not identity, then the current distribution of suppressed vs expressive states is arbitrary.

It’s the result of loops compounding over generations.

Which means it can compound in the other direction.

Each person who breaks the loop makes it easier for the next person.

Each expressive state creates permission for others.

Each act of creation weakens the statistical dominance of suppression.

The loop that locked the system can become the loop that unlocks it.

Human Potential Lost Per Year starts to shrink.

Not because we suddenly gain new abilities.

But because the energy that was always there finally gets permission to move.

Conclusion
We measure GDP because we decided it mattered.

We track productivity because we built systems around it.

We optimize engagement because we can see it.

But Human Potential Lost Per Year remains invisible, not because it’s unmeasurable, but because we haven’t tried to measure it.

And what we don’t measure, we don’t see.

What we don’t see, we don’t change.

Somewhere right now, there’s a masterpiece that will never be painted.

A company that will never be built.

A discovery that will never be made.

A relationship that will never form.

A family that will never exist.

Not because the person lacked talent, resources, or opportunity.

But because they’re running a pattern they didn’t choose.

The world is missing stars that could be shining.

Ideas that would have changed industries.

Art that would have moved millions.

Connections that would have created entire lineages.

All of it sitting dormant, not because it doesn’t exist, but because it never got permission to become visible.

The gap between what we could create and what we actually do isn’t fixed by nature.

It’s fixed by pattern.

Patterns we inherited from parents who never acted.

Patterns reinforced by a world where most of us stay suppressed.

Patterns that feel like truth because they’ve been there so long.

But the moment a pattern becomes conscious, it stops being inevitable.

The moment suppression is recognized as state, not identity, the shift becomes possible.

And every shift changes the distribution.

Every person who moves from suppressed to expressive makes it easier for the next.

The loop that locked the system can become the loop that unlocks it.

Human Potential Lost Per Year doesn’t have to grow.

It can shrink.

Not because we gain new abilities, but because the energy that was always there finally gets permission to move.

The question isn’t whether you have potential.

The question is: what state are you operating from

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

I get it your 4 year degree for which you sacrificed going into debt is now taken by AI. Now you can see that you were just meant to fill in a role with that education not create the great things you are meant to create. It’s time to wake up to your potential and create the value you weren’t taught to create in your useless degree.

But it’s fine you can listen to your parents and people at your hometown that were raised in a whole different world. Maybe you’ll find a job in 2045.

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

I don't want or hope, I intend.

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

Your life doesn't need to make sense. You are not living in a movie, you are the director of it.

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

The most impactful businesses and creations come from the people that felt the pain and turned giving others the solution they figured out for that pain.

[rachel @rachcorrine]

GET INVOLVED IN YOUR LIFE. FIND A JOB YOU ACTUALLY LOVE. I PROMISE IT IS POSSIBLE. EVEN FOR YOU. HAVE A HOBBY. TAKE A CLASS. GO TO THE GYM. TALK TO SOMEONE!! GIVE A COMPLIMENT. MAKE A PLAN. LEARN SOMETHING. SIGN UP TO VOLUNTEER. BE SO CONSUMED WITH LIVING THAT YOU REMEMBER YOU ARE ALIVE.

You are alive. You are alive.
Now go build a life.

[scott 🌞 @scottdomes]

"A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty" - Nassim Taleb

my personal experience of this (in myself & clients) is that 30ish is when you discover the limits of your personality

you become acutely aware of what is possible for you, as you are now, and what is out of reach

from there, you have two possibilities:
1) fight to transcend those limits
2) submit to them

the "heroic" path is obviously the first path. the person who chooses the second path choose to remain small, and settles into a life that is not quite "theirs" but is safe & sufficient

but there's more nuance here. the heroic path has its own trap: heroism without wisdom is glorious but doomed

if the would-be hero seeks to break past his owns limitations *without being willing to transform* then he becomes stuck

he becomes the perpetual-almost. "I just need to figure out my routine", "I just need to figure out my diet", "I just need to lock in"

he tries to IGNORE his limitations, and believes that doubling down on his current strategies is the path forward

as I said, it's still heroic, it's still admirable, in a way. but it's the tragic hero. in any story, if the hero refuses to change, he gets squashed

to ACTUALLY transcend his limits, the hero must transform. and that usually involves a regression, a descent to the underworld, a period of disorientation

it actually requires a form of submission, but it is a different sort of submission than that of the "settling" personality type mentioned earlier

the person who settles refuses to change, because it doesn't feel safe. they submit to the false life, the not-life

the heroic submission is to submit to the transformation, and in doing so, to the gain the true life. ("The true Grail will give you life, while the false Grail will take it from you")

the wise hero says, "I wish to become all that I am", and in doing so, he is open to transformation from within. he is open to the unconscious working upon him

he is willing to descend to the underworld. he is willing to endure the dark night of the soul. he is willing to die, as he is, in order to become who he will be (the ego death + rebirth)

it's really the third path. the first two paths are both stagnation: the stagnation of settling, and the stagnation of stubbornness

only the path of humility + courage offers a way out of the false life. would you have it be any other way?

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

Las estrellas me enseñaron que todo no tiene sentido desde uno.

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

Freedom without constraint becomes psychological entropy.

[Alejandro Acebal K. @aleacebalk]

To know is to know what you must not know.