Here’s an interesting quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“There are moments in the lives of all of us when we catch glimpses of a life—our life—that is infinitely beyond the life we are now living. We realise that we are living below our possibilities. We long for the realisation of the life that we feel should be.

Instinctively we perceive that there are within us powers and forces that we are making but inadequate use of, and others that we are scarcely using at all. Practical metaphysics, a more simplified and concrete psychology, well-known laws of mental and spiritual science, confirm us in this conclusion.

Our own William James, he who so splendidly related psychology, philosophy, and even religion, to life in a supreme degree, honoured his calling and did a tremendous service for all mankind, when he so clearly developed the fact that we have within us powers and forces that we are making all too little use of—that we have within us great reservoirs of power that we have as yet scarcely tapped.

The men and the women who are awake to these inner helps—these directing, moulding, and sustaining powers and forces that belong to the realm of mind and spirit—are never to be found among those who ask: Is life worth the living? For them life has been multiplied two, ten, a hundred fold.

It is not ordinarily because we are not interested in these things, for instinctively we feel them of value; and furthermore our observations and experiences confirm us in this thought. The pressing cares of the everyday life—in the great bulk of cases, the bread and butter problem of life, which is after all the problem of ninety-nine out of every hundred—all seem to conspire to keep us from giving the time and attention to them that we feel we should give them. But we lose thereby tremendous helps to the daily living.”