Are you reaching your full potential?
Hi guys! Welcome to episode 139 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! If you’re loving this new format and would love for it to continue, let me know by leaving a review! I love reading what you have to say.
Ok, so when you hear that term “Reaching your full potential”. What does that mean to you? Think about it right now and imagine how reaching your full potential would look. Does it mean a certain level in your career? Does it mean a certain number in the bank account? Maybe a certain number of children? There’s infinite ways to define “reaching your full potential”.
So many of us look around at what others are doing when we think about our life. you might think well Jane has this degree and has accomplished this and I would like to do that too. Or maybe Joe has this body fat, drives this car and has this much money in the bank, that is what I would want. What I would challenge you to do today is forget about comparison. Think about what it is that YOU truly want. What is it that feels truly right for you? Other people may have similar passions but you will always have your unique journey towards it.
There’s a story my husband tells about a gym owner and trainer he knew. He had a client that He was training and this client was working very hard, but he was not a big guy. He was maybe 5’ 8” and a very lean build. He was wanting to build muscle, to bulk up. The trainer asked him what he ultimately wanted for his physique and the guy said well, I would really like to have the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger, how long do you think that would take? The trainer sized him up for a minute, thought about it and said “Generations, it would take generations for you to have the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger, It’s so funny because it’s true. We are all unique and special in our own way and we each have a potential that is unique to us as well. When we consider our potential based on the career or success of someone else it can be dis-heartening because they have unique gifts that are different from yours. Not better, just different.
Now using someone as inspiration is a whole other thing. Let’s say you don’t tie your end result to exactly the physique as Arnold but you follow the process that Arnold used, then you are going to get a result that is perfect and unique to you. I love knowing this. I was listening to “The school of greatness” podcast last week and Sad-guru said that we have to be happy in our own way. Someone’s happiness may be someone else’s misery. Same thing for potential. Your potential may be very different from someone else but that doesn’t make it worse or better, it’s just different! A blade of grass doesn’t wish to become a tree. But that doesn’t make it any less fabulous. You see a blade of grass has the potential to be a grade of grass. If it is nurtured and watered and has an ideal environment, it’s going to be the healthiest blade of grass it can be, but it will never be able to be a tree, nor does it desire to be.
So think about your life, What are your thoughts about where you are right now? Do those thoughts include comparing yourself to where you think you should be because you are looking at where others are? Comparing yourself to anyone or anything other than yourself to define true potential is a recipe for disaster. It will cause you to needlessly feel bad. And we all do it!!! But sometimes we don’t notice that we are doing it and so we wonder why we feel so bad. Our thoughts are like “they get so many likes and I get almost none”, “they have this fabulous life, and mine is so boring”, “look at her outfit, why don’t I have clothes like that” and this list could go on and on forever. That’s why I think social media is so hard on everyone because 24/7 we are looking at the highlight reel of what other people want us to see about their life. We all do that too. Think about your own life, if you get on Instagram, you aren’t posting the pictures where you think you look bad or where your car broke down or of your messy kitchen, most of us aren’t anyway. I have done videos and it will sometimes take 10 times just to get the lighting the way I think I look the best. Trust me, filters are a real thing and most of the time the people that you think look perfect are using them. So don’t judge your full potential based on a filtered, non reachable, non real version of someone on the internet, and remember if you aren’t built like Arnold, you aren’t going to be able to get the same exact results.
I used to bring pictures of girls with super thick hair to my hairdresser and tell her I want this cut. She would say Heidi, you don’t have that much hair. That cut on you would look very different because of the thickness of her hair. It doesn’t make my hair bad, it just makes it different from the girl in the picture.
So you know your full potential is uniquely yours. You’re listening to podcasts which tells me you are into making yourself the best version of you possible. If I could give you a standing ovation right now I would. It doesn’t take looking very far to see someone or a lot of someones that have opted for a life of comfort, but not you and me and we don’t want to fall prey to it either. I say fall prey because marketers have studied and know exactly how your brain works. They know how to get you to eat their product, buy their car, keep you glued to the tv. That’s why in order to reach your full potential, it is so important to protect your mind. Comfort is a trap. We are designed to want more, but when we are comfortable, it almost paralyzes us right where we are in our comfort zone, which is comfortable for a while but if you stay there too long it becomes stagnant. If you aren’t growing, you’re declining.
I’m convinced that because it’s our human nature to always desire more, the key to living a long happy fulfilling life is to continue to grow. To continue to learn new things and have new experiences, and of course that includes spending quality time with the people we love. Creating a life where we feel love, feel worthy and alive all without External validation. External validation is also a trap
Martha Beck told a story of a client she was coaching that called her in the middle of the night after having sold his company for over $400 million, he called her and yelled into the phone “it’s never enough! When will it be enough?” So in the quest for reaching your full potential make sure it includes mindset work first because you can chase the feelings externally but until you have those feelings internally, the chasing of them becomes tiresome. And I think money is a good thing, it makes life more fun and easier but it doesn’t make you happy. You make you happy.
What happened yesterday you can’t change
What is happening now you can only experience
What happens in the future, you can create.
My challenge to you this week is to identify one area where maybe you’ve gotten a little too comfortable and you feel stagnant. Maybe it’s your weight or your work or your relationship but shake things up a bit. Ask for the promotion, join a new gym, maybe that one you’ve been wanting to try, For no reason at all decide to make your partner feel the way they felt when you first started dating. Momentum in one area will spread to all other areas of your life, you’ll soon see that reaching your full potential by focusing on becoming the best version of you will open up doors and opportunities you never even knew existed. I love you guys and I’ll talk to you in a few days.
