Potential

Again I start this with quotes from a guy called James Clear.  I get a weekly email from him.  He is a bestselling author and I really like a lot of his thoughts.
"Research widely, select carefully.  Broad funnel, tight filter."
"Odds are, the latest office debate or family squabble isn't worth winning. Most arguments are only tangentially [only slightly related; a side issue - PK] related to your end goal.
What outcomes are you actually trying to create? What type of life are you actually trying to cultivate? Stay focused."
"The first step—perhaps the most enormous step—is to find what you are genuinely interested in.
If you are genuinely interested, you will discover endless opportunities for improvement. But if you are disinterested, even obvious improvements will feel like a chore.
And, if you can maintain your genuine interest and curiosity as the years accumulate, you will become hard to compete with because you will have skill to go with your passion. If you're interested, you're dangerous."
I like all of what is said, but particularly the last five words. “if you’re interested, you’re dangerous.”
I had never thought of it like that, but it seems true to me.  Little compares with someone who is all over something.  They have a grip of a particular subject matter and are ready for what may be thrown at them.
Something I hold to is a saying I heard long ago.  “Interest governs memory.”  To me it is amazing how interest in a subject tends to lead to hearing and processing everything about it.
I was talking to someone yesterday who was particularly proud of his son.  His son was at university doing some mathematical problems in his subject.  He was getting 100% all the time.  He saw his professor about giving him something harder.  What was supposed to take at least a week to solve took a few hours.  This happened twice.  He is now employed by the university and is one of three in the world who set problems for PHD students in that field.
I must admit it is the sort of thing I look for.  People do not need to be brilliant, but I am big on seeing the possibilities rather than the shortcomings.  To me shortcomings can be dealt with and must be to enable possibilities to be achieved.  I have often said, and heard it a number of times recently, mistakes do not define me.  Even the very definition of the word mistake carries with it the thought it was a misstep, an error.
When it comes to people making mistakes I say “welcome to the human race.”  To me it is the goal that matters, and as long as that remains the goal, I am all for helping achieve it.
In some roles mistakes cannot be afforded (I would not put someone in charge of a nuclear reactor if they were prone to mistakes – I would leave the running of the plant to someone who had already done the learning and proved themselves)
But to me mistakes need not be seen as terminal.  If a learner is anything like me with a passion, then mistakes are at best embarrassing.  I know I feel terrible when they are made and am way more likely to ensure it does not happen again.
So I admit I am into what this guy says. Everyone has stuff they are good at and passionate about.  In the ground a diamond may not be a thing of beauty, but potentially it is.