A
t this very moment, you are the full-unrealized potential of what you will ever be, however, you don't know at this moment the breath of your full potential. How do I know that? That's easy! No one knows and no one can calculate his or her own full potential. Quit being so hard on yourself! Quit Googling the answers to your life; they are not floating around out there in Google land. Discovering your full potential is a life long journey.
There are many false beliefs that build the foundation of false discovery, miss direction, and mistaken choices. These beliefs can build lives of financial success, but still build lives without meaning, fulfillment and joy. It is compared to organizations that decide what they want to produce without researching what their consumers really want. Most people are conditioned to set goals and objectives unrelated to the real potential of their gift and supporting talents. Your full potential is not about what you are capable of doing, but rather fulfilling the highest purpose for what you are capable of doing. If you teach, are you teaching or preparing others for life with what you are teaching? If you manage, are you managing or helping those you manage to grow to their own full potential? Are you an artist just painting pictures or are you painting images that help others see the beauty in the world?
Discovering your full potential is a lifetime journey. The joy in the journey is not an arrival in truth; there is no ultimate arrival. It is finding a point of demarcation from which you have another vantage point in the view to ever-deepen the allocation of your gifts. I am always concerned about the person who shares with me that they have arrived only to share within a short period of time that they have not arrived!
You ask me, "What is the formula for realizing one's full potential?" I call it, "Fullness and Fit!" Where is the fullness in applying your gift and talents? Where do you find the purest fit that brings that fullness? Are your talents and your gift supported by the unique gifts and talents of those around you? I have discovered in my work that to understand one's full potential is not simply identifying one's unique gift but rather how that gift is united with complimentary not competitive gifts of others. It becomes like music that is produced by uniquely different instruments that through the tension of their differences create a sound that moves the listener. When one identifies their gift, applies that gift freely with opportunities that come their way, the application brings an understanding of purpose. It is at this time they begin to understand their call. When one discovers their call, they find meaning, fulfillment, and joy. It all begins with your gift; not your goal.
