What's it Worth to You?

For most of my life I hated the word potential.

The word potential was used in reference to me in a negative way as I saw it.  It was always about how much potential I had and how much I wasn’t living up to it.  That pissed me off.  For more than 30 years of my life not living up to my potential was the feedback I would receive and it bothered me to no end.  Not enough to do anything about it but it bothered me all the same.

Growing up I was one of these people who never had to do much to succeed.  There were two reasons for that.  The first was I had natural ability.  We all know these types of people and they do well at what they do.  The second was in support of the first - if I wasn’t going to do well at it I didn’t do it.  So there I was going through life succeeding at the things I did with little or no effort expelled.  A funny thing began to happen as my career took off.  I was faced with the question, “what’s it worth to you?”  What was it worth to me to finally work my tail off in the pursuit of success, joy, and happiness?  What was it worth to me to finally give it everything I had?  What was it worth to me to stop being upset about how people suggested I didn’t live up to my potential and actually see what happened when I did?  It was the scariest thing I had ever faced for this reason.  For me to truly engage my full potential I had to risk the fact that there wasn’t the potential everyone saw and I didn’t have the reserves of greatness I thought I had.  I had to risk failing.  And I was petrified.

In order to achieve the success and life I wanted I had to engage everything I had.  It wasn’t easy to begin with and it still isn’t now.  When I first began this excellence movement I fell flat on my face.  I learned I must not measure success, or my perceived lack thereof, by the number of failures I experienced but the rather by the number of powerful lessons I learned and applied as a result of those stumbles.  We all have an enormous wealth of potential however how many of us go through life not engaging the full beauty of that potential or worse yet quit when the effort it takes to realize our potential becomes a little overwhelming?  Our ability to live to our fullest potential increases our joy, our happiness, and empowers us to greatness.     

Living up to my potential is my opus.  A body of work which will take a lifetime to write.  It is constantly something I am working to surpass.  To live beyond my potential.  The funny thing I have discovered is the harder I push my potential the larger it gets.  It seems to be like a muscle or grey matter.  Overcoming the fear of engaging my potential and seeing the power which comes as a result has allowed me to see what could be possible and achieve things which were unachievable without effort and commitment.  I now know the answer to the question, “what’s it worth to you?”  Everything.