Transcript is auto-generated, so there are bound to be mistakes 😉

Fulfilling your greatest potential may be overrated. Ooh, this may be a bit controversial, but I’m gonna say it. I almost can’t say it with a straight face.

I believe it and I don’t. So let’s explore this. We’re digging into reaching your greatest potential, what it means to live up to your greatest potential, and how not to.

In other words, how to fail to reach your potential on this week’s episode. Welcome to the Make Money and Be Happy series where I’m sharing how you can have both a rich and happy life while you make serious money doing work you love without starting over from scratch, giving up on your ambition, or relying on luck to be in the right place at the right time. I hope to make you stop and say, wait a minute.

I don’t have to do life or business this way anymore. I have the power to change, to rethink the next phase, to move around the obstacles and do things my way. This series will challenge your thinking in a good way to get you aligned with the work you can obsess over.

That fits into your picture of happiness and that energizes you too. And dare I say that you’ll love it. Here we go.

I used to hear it in the back of my mind all the time and truthfully, I don’t even know if the thought was originally mine or planted by someone else. Did I ever stop and think I don’t want to let myself down by failing to reach my greatest potential. Or perhaps it was more like, I know I’ve got more potential than this.

Quite honestly, I don’t know. I’ve always been a striver, an achiever, some may say a valedictorian with two master’s degrees and success running an eight figure business plus managing over a billion dollars in new business opportunities that I’m a bit of an overachiever. I don’t feel that way.

I just feel capable of achieving anything I set my mind to and I’m not afraid of challenge. But this whole idea of greatest potential feels like a thought planted in my head by someone else. The sexy lure is there greatest.

The achiever and curious vibe is there potential. But the voice in my head somehow doesn’t feel like mine. Someone else said to me, you want to reach your greatest potential, don’t you? And this may seem on the surface to be a well meaning motivation, but in my experience it wasn’t.

It was meant to be the stick. The stick to whip me into action for someone else’s gain at my expense. So I understand Both sides of the argument.

The stars in your eyes lure of reaching your greatest potential. And that image that comes to mind for me is abundant wealth and lavish lifestyle, both good things. And I really do hold that in my own vision.

And the dark side of manipulation, perfectionism, tirelessly striving for growth for growth sake, which ironically is rather exhausting. This is the scenario that when our gas runs out, when we just can’t continue on, that we fail to reach that potential. And I’m here to tell you that’s okay.

Because if your motivator is to reach your potential for the sake of proving that you can, you’re in a losing battle anyway, my friend, because the goal will always be moving outside your reach. This begs the question, if the reasons are good enough or noble, or we can trace the desire back to our own voice versus someone else’s, should we be trying to reach our greatest potential? Okay, so I have three thoughts to share with you on this. And the first one is the idea of possibility and potential.

If we look at something that we want to do as impossible, what if we were to consider, how can I make this possible instead? The laws of physics. If we take those out, is anything really impossible? Are you willing to consider that this might be a belief holding you back from even trying? So that happened to me quite a bit. I wouldn’t even try something because I was so afraid that I would be disappointed by finding out for sure that it wasn’t possible.

And so to protect myself from I don’t even know what, I guess never being able to have this dream anymore that suddenly I wouldn’t have anything to look forward to. So it’s almost like I got my hopes up for something that I was never actually really willing to pursue, which is kind of effed up if you think about it. So I was thinking about a name for my company.

This was my second company and I really needed a name and it needed to be really cool, I thought. And this was back in the time when all the names were coming out, like Google and other such names that had really weird words and they were almost made up. So one of the.

One of the names for the business was Embergeist. I’m like, ooh, Embergeist. That sounds really cool and sexy.

It’s like on fire. Like a phoenix rising from fire with the embers glowing below and this somehow ghost like fixture, like a geist poltergeist smashed together. I don’t know what I was thinking.

Actually, I do. I was trying so desperately to make A dragon, my icon, because I love dragons. Like, not the Chinese dragons, they’re okay.

But I like the fat plumpy dragons, like Peach Dragon from Disney. And I’m thinking, if I want this to be my logo, what’s a name that’s really weird sounding and kind of cool that can go with it? Oh, let me tell you, I’m so glad I didn’t go with that because what a disaster. But anyway, I was searching for inspiration for the name of my business and I was also searching for inspiration for myself to feel really motivated to do this business.

I found myself flipping through a passport and this was a diplomatic passport from the US and it has a lot more pages than a normal passport. And on each page was an inspirational photo from America, from the American landscape, and a quote. So I was just flipping through, going, this is really interesting and reading these quotes and just looking everywhere for inspiration.

And I came across this quote that has stuck with me ever since. And it’s actually pivotal to me believing in the possibility of things. So here’s the quote.

There are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people. I mean, think about it. If you think of an extraordinary feat like a scientific marvel that people made, humans made, what comes to mind.

I always think of the space shuttle. The space shuttle is a modern marvel. Like really, whoever thought we could build a vehicle that flies into outer space with humans and comes all the way back safely? What like that in itself is an extraordinary possibility.

And it also reminds you that some changes can take generations and the change can start with you. Now, does that always help you get to your ultimate goal? To think that you may never achieve it in your lifetime? Well, perhaps especially when happiness comes from pursuit. So instead of the pursuit of happiness, which makes it seem like happiness is a goal, and we talked about that in the last episode, how to prioritize your happiness, because it’s not a prize at the bottom of the box.

If we think about the happiness of pursuit and do we have some change that we want to see happen in the world, it won’t really matter that it takes generations because we are making something that seems impossible, possible and that that can be reaching your potential. And this whole idea about where you are in the world and not having the same potential, I don’t know that that’s true. I think we all as humans have the same potential inside of us, but we don’t have the same circumstances.

Meaning that we can all think of something interesting and unique and gosh, life affirming. We all can pursue something that helps us feel alive. And sometimes it’s defying the odds.

Defying the odds of what’s impossible and making it tangible and real in our own life, even if that tangible result is the pursuit of that. So my thought number two is when fulfilling your greatest potential is overrated. So first of all, when you’re so busy striving that you lose sight of everything else, is it worth it? Secondly, if the joy isn’t there.

If the joy isn’t there, why are you doing it? Third, it’s to prove yourself to someone else by living up to your potential. Ah, I really hate that one. I mean, that one really got me.

It got me thinking, wow, maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m not doing enough. Maybe I’m not good enough.

Maybe my goals and dreams are too small. Huh? I must be doing something wrong. I’m not good enough.

Really? Baloney, Baloney. If my dreams and goals feel good to me, even if it’s not to go big or go home, what is it to you? It’s my life. And not only am I not going to prove myself to you or anybody else, I’m busy proving myself to myself.

Like, that’s enough. That is enough of a job in itself. Like, I can beat myself up plenty.

I don’t need other people commenting on how I’m not meeting some magical potential, some expectation that they placed on me. That’s really probably a lack in their own game. And in the person that kept pushing and hammering that into me totally was a lack in their own game.

I was just fine. Perfectly fine, in fact. Okay.

And fourth, under this little filling your greatest potential, being overrated is disappointing yourself for not reaching your potential. Really. I think that’s really about hiding from a goal that you aren’t ready to commit to.

And that’s okay. You may never be ready to commit to a goal that feels so far, so out there, so outrageous, so impossible, that you’re not ready to go for it and you may never get there. And, you know, I think we just have to be okay with that now.

Does that mean we’re going to laze about and do things that make us feel less than because we’re not pursuing those goals? Or are we going to let ourselves off the hook when we’re doing the job that feels good to us, when we’re living the life that feels good to us? So I think the challenge there is really to reflect and ask ourselves, are we happy with where we are, or are we afraid to take that step forward? And I was in that. That place that Teetering on that line for so long. And I used to beat myself up because it took me so long to figure it out.

So long to get my feet under me and to gain traction. This questioning if it was even good enough to be doing what I was doing already, oh, that’s terrible. So sometimes that push to reach your greatest potential, or really it’s that emptiness you feel, that sunken feeling of, oh, I’m not reaching my greatest potential, that’s when you really have to take a hard look at, what are you even doing? What are you doing it for? Okay, so thought number three, this is my favorite.

You were born with potential. You can’t help but reach it. What is all this striving for? Living your life is up to you.

Of course you’re going to do what you feel like doing in the moment. And sometimes it’s pushing yourself and driving hard for that goal. Sometimes it’s recognizing that you’re stuck in fear.

And you take that away and say, if I weren’t believing that I would fail, if I weren’t afraid to disappoint myself, if I weren’t afraid that I was really right, that that thing is impossible, that I’m right, that that’s impossible. And all of a sudden I have no hope left. If you were to take all that off like I did, can you imagine what’s possible? So my first thought around this is, your dream is possible.

And how can I be so sure? Because I truly believe that you wouldn’t have the dream if you didn’t have what it takes to make it happen. And remember back earlier when I said that you may not reach the ultimate outcome in your generation, but you, you can be the one to take that first step. No matter how impossible that dream is, if you never take a step, you’re not going to make it happen.

Will you feel wasted? Will you regret not taking a chance? Will you regret not taking that step? That really is what you have to come to grips with. My second thought on this is, when you create it, it won’t look like anybody else’s path. It won’t look like anybody else’s outcome, because you’re going to take a different way to get there.

And why should it look like somebody else’s? We are all creative beings. We all have ideas. We all have ways that we interpret different experiences in different situations.

We all have a different perspective and a uniqueness and our qualities and the things that interest us and our energy and motivation. Then why shouldn’t our path look completely different than someone Else’s. Now, before you say, yeah, but the path someone else reached is a lesson learned and a best practice.

And it saves us steps, it gives us a shortcut. Yes, absolutely, yes. And, and we don’t have to be so prescriptive that we’re just following along for the sake of following along, because we’re supposed to.

Maybe deviating from what’s normal can help you reach that exponential potential. My third thought on this is to be positive and get your subconscious mind in alignment. So what the heck does that mean? If you go back to the idea that extraordinary things are possible from ordinary people.

Oh, I totally butchered that quote. It’s my favorite quote. I should know it by the top of my head.

There are extraordinary possibilities and ordinary people. So if you go back to that and let that be the core of your belief, really let it soak in. What actions would you take as a result of thinking that way? And then if you go one step further, further and say, let me find the evidence that this is possible, let me find the evidence that other impossible things are true can become a possibility in a lifetime.

And you look at the space shuttle, there’s evidence. You may not have worked on it, but it shows you that people really are capable. Isn’t it about capability? And the funny thing about capability is when you’re born, you’re not born with any capability.

Okay, I guess you are born with some innate things. But hey, we learn just about everything that you do. So isn’t the thing you don’t know how to do learnable? And before you say, but I don’t know who to learn from, get resourceful.

What if you were to get resourceful? What if you were just to wonder about it so much that it’s everything you looked for, everything you searched for, everything you thought about was, how can I make this true? How can I make this happen? How resourceful can you become? And my fourth thought about this one is crank out positive steps. In episode six we talked about, you were made to create your own path. And the whole idea of creating your own path is simply, what tiny action? What baby step can you take today to take you in the direction that you want to be going? And isn’t that what potential is all about? Seeing what’s out there, experimenting, trying new things.

So here’s a pro tip for you is the whole idea of taking the word possible and moving it into the idea of probable. I have a whole speech I’ve done on this whole two sides of the same coin. Where possible, impossible, those two things are really the same side of a coin.

If you flip it over, you have probable. And I think that’s really the idea of this potential. Because when you’re having trouble believing that what you want to create is possible, try turning the possible into probable.

And before you go all mathematician on me and say, well, the probability of that is 1.25. No, no, this isn’t about the science of it. This is about belief and feeling and using your life to go after something that’s meaningful to you, that’s energizing to you.

No matter what other people tell you is possible or not. What are you telling yourself? What is your intuition telling you? We all have this deep wisdom deep within. Everybody has it.

It’s now up to you to cultivate the ability to hear it, to tune in, to listen to it, to shut out those negative voices that say you can’t, whether it’s your voice or someone else’s. And remember, the probability of taking zero action is zero.