Who’s Minding Your Potential?

There is no pas­sion to be found play­ing small~
in set­tling for a life that is less
than the one you are capa­ble of liv­ing.
Nel­son Mandela

Fel­low Huff­Post blog­ger, author and life coach, James Lynch, car­ries the title of Chief Poten­tial Offi­cer of his com­pany, Do It Your­self Life Coach­ing. Know­ing James, I feel quite cer­tain his role of CPO car­ries over to his life as well.

What a bril­liant idea! It got me to think­ing, shouldn’t we all be our own CPO? After all, who is in charge of mind­ing and man­ag­ing your poten­tial if not you?

That most humans oper­ate on roughly 10% of their poten­tial is prob­a­bly a bit of a myth. Who knows for sure how much untapped poten­tial any one has? Per­haps we run on even less than the legendary10%! The point is, if you and I were hon­est with our­selves, most of us would acknowl­edge that we’re capa­ble of far more than we’ve set­tled for in the “devel­op­ing our poten­tial” department.

When I lead sem­i­nars, I often ask par­tic­i­pants; “How many of you sense that you’re capa­ble of express­ing far more pas­sion in your life than you cur­rently express?” All hands go up.

“How many sense you’re capa­ble of cre­at­ing far more inti­macy in your rela­tion­ships that you’re cur­rently cre­at­ing?” Again all hands go up.

“How many feel you’re capa­ble of being far more cre­ative than you cur­rently are?” All hands up.

“Mak­ing more money, being more pro­duc­tive at work, being more dis­ci­plined with your diet, tak­ing bet­ter care of your health, etc.?” All hands up.

In the impor­tant areas of life, areas which peo­ple indi­cate have the great­est impact on their qual­ity of life, most would con­fess they cur­rently “set­tle” for far less than they say they want and know they’re capa­ble of cre­at­ing. What is going on? Why do we set­tle for so much less than what’s pos­si­ble? Why do we resign or per­haps never even assume our roles as the CPO of our lives and live in self-imposed scarcity?

Inde­pen­dent of oth­ers and in con­cert with oth­ers,
your main task in life is to do what you can best do
and become what you can poten­tially be.
Eric Fromm

Per­haps the peo­ple of Haiti can offer an object les­son in this regard. We’ve all been stunned by the images and sto­ries com­ing out of Haiti the past two weeks. The one dom­i­nat­ing theme, beyond death and destruc­tion, has been the indomitable spirit and courage of the Hait­ian people.

We see the impos­si­ble hap­pen­ing nearly every day. Peo­ple being pulled from the rub­ble after 8–11 days of being buried alive beneath lay­ers of pul­ver­ized con­crete. Doc­tors and relief work­ers are amazed to find peo­ple still alive after such long peri­ods of no water. Peo­ple aren’t sup­posed to be able to sur­vive under these con­di­tions; yet here they are, with bod­ies bro­ken but spir­its unscathed, emerg­ing in song, their voices lift­ing up praises of thanksgiving.

We see footage of peo­ple stand­ing in long lines, in 90-degree heat, wait­ing patiently for water and other sup­plies. There is no push­ing, no shov­ing, no aggres­sion. And yes, we’ve also seen footage of so called “loot­ing”. But can you really call it “loot­ing” under such dire cir­cum­stances? That there has not been more of this kind of behav­ior is the real mir­a­cle. The Hait­ian peo­ple are, for the most part, demon­strat­ing to the rest of us what true courage and decency looks like.

In a sense, the tragedy in Haiti is offer­ing the rest of the world an oppor­tu­nity to real­ize our own poten­tial for car­ing, com­pas­sion and courage. And we are step­ping up to the plate. To date, dona­tions to relief efforts have topped $1 bil­lion from world gov­ern­ments alone, not count­ing indi­vid­ual dona­tions from peo­ple like Leonard DiCaprio ($1M) and other celebri­ties. The Hope For Haiti tele-thon raised over $57 mil­lion in two hours and the album from this event is cur­rently #1 on iTunes with all monies from sales going to ben­e­fit relief efforts.

No doubt in the days and weeks to come, the Haitians will con­tinue to dig deep and find within their untapped poten­tial for sur­vival and start­ing over. And the rest of the world will get to dis­cover it’s poten­tial for help­ing to rebuild this nation.

What does this have to do with you and me? Aside from the obvi­ous con­nec­tions each of us might feel about our own con­tin­ued sup­port after the rub­ble in Haiti has cleared, what about your own pile of rubble?

Con­sider that in your life, there is a pile of undif­fer­en­ti­ated poten­tial. It can be shaped and formed any way you choose or it can be left unex­am­ined. You can allow it to remain undis­cov­ered, and buried beneath it, your cre­ative poten­tial to dis­cover the roads not yet taken. Or you can strike out from the beaten path and stretch your­self beyond what you cur­rently think is pos­si­ble and dis­cover poten­tial within your­self you never could have known was there, buried beneath the rub­ble of self-doubt and fear.

How many peo­ple are trapped in their every­day habits:
part numb, part fright­ened, part indif­fer­ent?
To have a bet­ter life, we must keep choos­ing how we’re liv­ing.
Einstein

Would you hire or fire your­self as a CPO? Here are some thoughts about how you might go about pol­ish­ing your cre­den­tials in this area, taken from Robert K. Cooper’s book: The Other 90%: How to Unlock Your Vast Untapped Poten­tial for Lead­er­ship and Life.

1) Dare to be an orig­i­nal — Cooper advises “If every­one else is doing it, don’t”. Rosa Parks dared to stay seated on the bus when the cus­tom was for blacks to give up their seats to whites and thus began the mod­ern civil rights move­ment. Thomas Edi­son was pegged “unteach­able” on his first day of kinder­garten. By the time he died, he had over 6000 patents to his credit, includ­ing the elec­tric light bulb. Do you fol­low the pack or do you dare to be your own leader?

2) Who are you when nobody else is look­ing? - What 5 words would you want oth­ers to come up when they think of you? These are your 5 core val­ues. Write them down on a card and carry it with you. Every so often ask your­self, how well are you liv­ing your val­ues? Are your choices and actions aligned with them? If not, time to reassess and make adjustments.

3) Honor the great­ness in oth­ers- In the movie, Avatar, the Na’vi peo­ple greet one another with the phrase; “I see you”. How great is it to feel seen by another! Isn’t this what we really want after all? This is true inti­macy. Inti­macy = “into me see”, hence “I see you” acknowl­edges the spirit behind being. The Hindu greet­ing is “Namaste” mean­ing: “The sacred in me hon­ors the sacred in you”. Some­how, “hello” doesn’t con­vey this kind of deeper acknowl­edg­ment. How can you gen­uinely “see” and acknowl­edge the great­ness of those around you?

4) Be quick with­out rush­ing –Some­times less is more. Learn to keep your energy high, yet stream­line your efforts. Instead of using ten­sion and pres­sure to fuel your energy, cul­ti­vate calm energy, in which mus­cle ten­sion is low accom­pa­nied by a deep state of phys­i­cal sta­mina known as “flow”. Spend time in the “flow” or “zone” states and you pro­mote clear mind­ed­ness and phys­i­cal vitality.

5) Align your life with your biggest dreams- Con­sider, which of your dreams are so big only your heart can hold them? How can you align your actions around your dreams? Keep ask­ing your­self “why not?”

6) Develop the skin of a rhino and the soul of an angel - Cooper advises,

“Don’t take things per­son­ally; someone’s always going to be mad at you and that’s okay. Cut the cord and stand a bit apart and on your own two feet. Don’t gos­sip about oth­ers or waste time try­ing to please them. Let your life speak.” “Angels don’t worry about you,” he says. “They believe in you. Angels don’t try to fix every­thing or take away life’s lessons. Angels take the high road.”

7) Care as if every­thing depends on your car­ing - Live so that when chil­dren think of car­ing and com­pas­sion, they think of you.

The job of Chief Poten­tial Offi­cer of your life is one that only you can fill. Will you leave the posi­tion vacant or out­source it to some­one you think is more capa­ble? You might choose to work with a coach or a men­tor to help get you started on the right foot and stay on track ini­tially, but ulti­mately, the train­ing wheels come off and it’s up to you to live out to the edges of your life and tap into the unde­vel­oped poten­tial within.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this topic so please leave your com­ments below. For per­sonal con­tact, I can be reached at judith[at]judithrichdotcom. Want to share this arti­cle with oth­ers? Con­sider post­ing it on your FB page, Buzzing or Dig­ging it. And you can sub­scribe to the blog to receive auto­matic updates when a new post is published.

Enjoy the jour­ney and bless­ings on the path.
Judith

Fol­low Dr. Judith Rich on Twit­ter: www.twitter.com/dr_judithrich