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Don’t hold back, achieve your full POTENTIAL
Are you achieving all you’re capable of in life? The truth is, very few of us really make the best of ourselves. So now is the time to start...,
How much can you achieve in life? Most people develop a view of what they can attain based on their own past successes or failures, or the achievements of their friends and colleagues, or the views of authority figures, such as parents or bosses. But do not let any of these considerations hold you back.
Others may not want you to realise your full potential because they would find that threatening. Take responsibility for your own future, otherwise you end up leading the life others want for you, rather than what you really want for yourself.
Sometimes we believe that who we were yesterday is the same person we have to be today. This belief stops us seeing that we have the potential to achieve more than we have so far. So we stay tied to our past restrictions, blunders and tendencies. But letting go of the past frees you to ascend to your highest potential.
STEP 1. WORK OUT WHAT YOU REALLY WANT
The one true thing we can say about the past is that it no longer exists, therefore it has not real power, other than the energy we decide to invest in it. All that you can achieve has absolutely everything to do with what you choose to do with this moment now, and negative references to your past only serve to hold you back.
Remember the catch-phrase ‘if you go on doing what you have always done, you’ll go on getting what you have always got’, and with this powerful idea in hand make a commitment to personal change. But, often, we don’t want to dwell too long on what we really want for ourselves if we were to unfetter our imagination. Perhaps our fantasies about the best kind of people we could be, living the most perfect lives we could envisage, doing what we would find most fulfilling, will make us depressed if we compare that with what we are doing right now.
The way we reconcile ourselves to dramatically curbing our ambitions is to come up with explanations for why we could not achieve extraordinary goals. A better way to look at these explanations is that they are excuses.
Remember this catch-phrase ‘you can make excuses, or you can be the best - you cannot do both’.
STEP 2. EXAMINE YOUR FEARS
Excuses are really the expression of our fears, such as: ‘I’m afraid of what people will think’ or ‘I’m afraid I can’t do it’. Those who realise their full potential, rather than being frozen by fear, conquer their apprehensions. They do this by not allowing their dread and excuses to become defeatist weaponry against fulfilling their dreams and wishes.
Instead of being overwhelmed by negative dialogue they stay focused on what they want to accomplish.
A giant leap forward is to eliminate your most self-defeating belief. It could be that you ‘don’t have enough time’, or that you ‘are not good enough’. Every time you remind yourself of your limiting belief, you add to the barrier between your fullest potential and yourself. Instead of justifying the belief, focus on the damage the belief is doing to your ambitions.
STEP 3. LOOK FOR SOLUTIONS, NOT PROBLEMS
Reserve your valuable drive for positive action that takes you closer to your goals. Remember the catch-phrase: ‘Life is not your enemy, but your thinking might be’.
The highest achievers do this by devoting 90% of their time and energy to solutions and only 10% to dwelling on problems. Meanwhile, the rest of the world does the opposite, spending 90% of its time concentrating on the problem, and only 10% thinking about solutions. Is it any wonder so many of us tend to be overwhelmed by our difficulties?
STEP 4. PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTHS
Achievers are not blind to their own personal weaknesses. Many of us are afraid to admit we lack a vital skill that we need to acquire before we can achieve our potential. To fulfil your possibilities, become aware of what you don’t know and what you are not good at, which might stand in the way of achieving your best, so you can begin to remedy these deficiencies.
The key to maximising potential also lies in devoting your energy to those areas where you have natural strengths, and not getting bogged down doing tasks you are not proficient at and don’t relish.
Yet we often waste time doing things we toil with because we are not following goals which are true to ourselves and reflect our intrinsic talents. This may mean we have to make a conscious effort to sacrifice performance in an area of life that is not likely to take us where we ultimately want to be, so we can focus more on where our genuine abilities lie.
But don’t for one moment believe maximising your potential is easy and effortless. It takes enormous effort. However, the only question you have to ask yourself is: What personal sacrifices are you prepared to make to achieve your full potential?
STEP 5. LEARN FROM YOUR FAILURES
Those who eventually become highly successful have usually experienced a great deal of failure in the past, but what differentiates them from the rest of the population is simply their response to failure. They redouble their efforts following setbacks, and try to learn what their mistakes have to teach them about how to improve for the next time.
For example, Thomas Edison conducted several thousand experiments that failed before he finally created the light bulb. Persistence in the face of discouragement is the final ingredient you need to fulfil your ultimate potential. And if you follow these guidelines, there is not telling where life’s journey will take you.
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