By Jernavis Draughn
What is our personal potential? Do you believe you’re reaching it on a weekly or daily basis? I think we underestimate what we can truly achieve mentally, physically and financially. Innately we are programed mentally to desire daily growth. Human beings are created to grow in all aspects of our lives. Imagine if God created us and we weren’t able to grow in relationships, learn more, and push the culture forward. Imagine if Thomas Edison never believed in his potential to create the incandescent light bulb? Imagine if Martin Luther King never believed he could lead the civil rights movement, help end racial discrimination and segregation in the United States. Lastly, imagine if Alexzander Graham Bell, never created the first telephone? Where would humanity be if we weren’t able to communicate with people at any time all over the world?
Most people are doing well as they want to do. In phycology, the Pygmalion effect, reveals that higher expectations lead to better performance. Les Brown says, “Life has no limitations, except the ones you make.” We must raise our personal standards. Define what we want our life story to tell. The goal is to make your best better. In the book, “The Potential Principle, by Mark Sanborn, he explains there two paths to improvement:
Matrix Improvement– Means understanding and practicing these four areas: thinking, performing, learning and reflecting. It’s about increasing your focus, while increasing your skills.
Breakthrough Improvement– Means consistently using a small set of tools, steps that will prevent complacency, create improvement and bust through barriers.
Here’s 4 key steps to help you improve daily:
- Disrupt yourself (Before someone else does). Make the decision to intentionally improve in some facet of your life daily.
- Re Focus. Create a focus hack that will help you regain focus on what’s most important in your life. That can be leaving your cell phone in another room while you’re working, creating an accountability chart or waking up earlier to get a head start on your day.
- Engage others. Find and hangout with people that are committed to improving like yourself. You become who you hang out with!
- Expand your capacity. Read more, attend personal development workshops or seminars, practice and prepare more on the areas you want to improve in.
We must focus on combating comfort to overcome complacency. Leaving our comfort zone of pursuing balance and becoming committed to getting better daily. Track your progress to ensure your moving the needle forward. Not all change is growth, but all growth is change. As Dr. Ben Herbster once quoted, “the greatest waste in the world is the difference between what we are and what we could become.” Remember in life, we don’t get what we want, but what we DESERVE!