Expanding Your Potential
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How Do You Reach Your Full Potential?
The truth is you don’t . None of us knows what our full or true potential is. Because as we move towards fulfilling our potential, our potential expands - just as we do.
Imagine that for a moment. You are limitless.
Wait Right There!
Don’t read any further for a minute or two. Just say to yourself, and really feel it sinking in, ‘I am limitless. The potential of who I am, and what I can do, is constantly expanding beyond my current imagination.’
And you need to start thinking and speaking about yourself like this a lot. Because you want those words and thoughts wiring into your mind. Firing you up. This isn’t a concept that is only available to the wealthy or beautiful or crazy talented. It’s available to everybody.
Even as you are rising up and moving towards achieving your goals, your potential sees that happening, sees you taking those steps to achieving what you want out of life, and that potential expands, knowing that your goals can be even bigger.
Because you are taking action towards your goals.
What is holding you back?
When you are stuck in depression, or anxiety, or have a phobia that limits your day-to-day experience of life, it can be really hard to think about progress or goals. Just getting out of bed is hard. Or washing your face, or even grunting out a simple ‘hello’. But even on those days, where you feel that way and still get up, and wash your face, and say good morning to someone, you have moved in the direction of your goals. You have taken action.
Some days, just one of those tiny achievements will be enough. But the next day, a little bit more gets done, just another tiny something that you didn’t expect to be able to do. Because even the tiny wins are wins. In the tiny wins, we still expand.
An example of expanding potential
I recently worked with someone who needed to pass her driver’s test. She was approaching the process of learning to drive late in life and didn’t have any level of confidence in achieving a passing score. It was a bit of a last-minute thing, a quick recording I made as she had about 6 days to get it into her sub-conscious programming. We had only just met at the time.
I don’t think my new friend had faith in herself at all that she would pass. She had one goal. To be able to pass so that she could go to the supermarket and to the beach 6 miles away, with her dog. That was it, nowhere else. That was the goal.
I couldn’t be any more happy for her when she showed up on my doorstep with a bunch of flowers for me, all smiles, having successfully passed; the main notation being that she was a bit too careful, which she knew for herself and had expected to fail on.
I was concerned that any delay in getting a car would set her back, so helped her as best as I could, but she found the perfect car herself in the end. That in itself was another milestone, believing she deserved to spend that kind of money on a car for herself. We had a trip together to Inverness to collect it, and I drove it home, as she didn’t want to tackle the daunting A9 as a first outing. But I did stop about a mile from her house and encourage her to drive it on the last stretch home herself.
And she did. Though when we had set out, she had remained really avoidant to this suggestion.
How that expansion of potential soon grows even further.
And over the next few months, we drove to Wick together, and Reiss, and Keiss, and Castletown and other places. Very, very carefully, but she did it. She ended up driving me through snow, and heavy rain, at night and high winds. All the things that are difficult to avoid in a Caithness winter.
And then she started following me on her own for a few journeys, until one day, after a fraught evening drive the night before, which seemed to shake apart all her hard-won forward motion, she went to the beach all by herself.
She woke up, got up, and she thought, this is it, make or break. I choose to do this or I don’t. I sell my car, or I keep it and drive it. And she did – keep it – and drive it.
Which, if you knew her journey and where she is coming from, you would have as much admiration for her as I do. And given the amount of serious potholes in Caithness right now, you really have to be brave to be a driver. You drive in the middle and you play chicken with both the oncoming traffic and the reckless who want to overtake you! Never has mirror, signal, manoeuvre been more applicable!
Driving has been a decades-long dream for my friend. And now she has made it to the beach, and Tesco, she is not going to stop there. Because her potential has expanded. Her dreams have gotten bigger.
When she first passed, there was still something there stopping her from thinking like a driver. Initially, that goal of the supermarket and the beach, even though she had passed, and she had that acknowledgement of her abilities, seemed impossible. But she moved towards it anyway. It was scary, and it seemed undoable, but she took the help that was offered and she ran with it. She could have said no, but she tried. And the trying felt really hard. Her youthful little face was beetroot red with the stress of the effort.
Lean into the hard stuff
But even when the trying feels excruciating, that’s where lies within the good stuff, because that’s the growing, the expanding. And one day that stops hurting.
One day, it is more than just what you do. You get up and try. You do even the teeny, tiny, try. It becomes who you are. A potential-fulfilling, expanding human being.
It’s like how you might put off the cleaning for ages. But when you clean one thing, you want to clean another, and another. Within a few minutes, it’s become satisfying and not soul-destroying. And soon you are really proud of yourself and the effort you have put in.
And it’s not even about cleaning the house. It’s about loving and respecting yourself enough to do it. Enjoying the calm, clean and clutter-free fruits of your labours. And your mind loves that stuff. Your mind loves it when you love yourself.
You truly are limitless!
Today and every day you are limitless. By the end of the day, you have no clue just how far you might have come. Anything can and does happen within the course of 1 day. Knowing you are limitless, without boundaries, empowers you when you let that thought in. It doesn’t matter what your current living situation is; it does not change the reality of your limitless capability for expansion.
Are you stuck in a council house on a rough estate? Feeling like this is all that’s meant for you? Feeling like you can’t have dreams and a safe place to live for you and your children? Well, you can just as well have a council house in a beautiful part of the UK. Get on a list. Take a step towards your goals. It might take a while, but that goal smiles back at you when you move towards it.
Look for the little off-grid places where demand is low and quality of life, if you like peace and quiet, is high. I met someone from England who ended up in a little council place in Keiss after applying and getting help because he was homeless. And Keiss is stunning, with the most wild and gorgeous beach. I can’t pretend to know all the ins and outs of it. My point is, don’t let circumstances define you. I know there are ways and means if you are patient and determined to change your life and your prospects. Never give up on yourself. Because often the best things come out of near disaster.
So today, if you’re struggling, and you haven’t washed your face yet, just go do it. Right now. Don’t think about it. And when you come back, you will have tried. You will have practiced some self-care. You will have respected yourself. And your mind will recognise that fact and grow from it.
Even if your potential for the week is just to get fully dressed and ready on one day, you moved towards that potential by washing your face on Monday. And on that day you get dressed and look at yourself in the mirror, your potential will expand. I promise you.
About Me
Hello, I’m Anne-Marie. I am a RTT Practitioner, Romance Author, Championship Dog Show Judge.
I have a lot going on! But my primary focus is helping people achieve their personal and professional goals, whatever they may be. If you’re struggling, I am the kind of person you want in your corner.
Click here to book your free discovery call now
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