The set of options and the cost and benefit of each are not fixed. They differ according to circumstance—circumstances that vary across people, but also for the same person depending on the choices they have made up to and in the present. The options available to you, their cost and benefit to you, and the accuracy of your perception of that cost and benefit all depend on who you are and who you will become.
Accurately understanding the cost and benefit of available options requires you to know who you presently are and who you could be. What you can do right now is a function of who you have been until now. If you do not know who you are, you cannot know what your present options are. Those with particular capacity or resources can do what those without them cannot. What you can do in the future will be determined by who you are until then. If you do not know who you could be, you cannot know what your future options are.
A sizable driver for who you are and who you will be comes from what you desire, and by how much you desire it, as these will strongly influence your decisions over time. What you want and how much you want it will actually change quite a bit as you become a better person. Your character determines what you are willing to do and why. The better you are, the more accurately you will appraise value, the more valuable the valuable things will seem, and therefore, the more you will be willing to do to obtain them. If you don’t know what you desire, and by how much, you can’t know what would give you the greatest long-term joy, and even if you were to choose that path, you would likely quit when obstacles arise.
Many outcomes in life—particularly those most valuable—tend to require long, dedicated paths. One can only follow so many of these in life, both because doing so expends limited time and resources, and because choices in life often limit the subsequent choices available in life. Desires change over time. If you are not aware of your potential and are not in the course that yields the kind of person you want to be, shifts in your desires will occur at unpredictable times and unpredictable intensities, making any long-term initiatives unlikely to succeed, and leaving less time remaining to try anything else.
To the extent you do not know both who you are and who you could be, you are less likely to undertake and endure the narrow path required to obtain your present and future potential.