“Believe in your infinite potential. Your only limitations are those you set upon yourself.” — Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
po.ten.tial (noun)
latent qualities or abilities that may be developed and lead to future success or usefulness.
I am on my journey to understand what “potential” is and what is “my potential” as an individual. I have a decent understanding of what this means in my career. Though I have not fully uncovered my potential in my career and it is still a work in progress, my goal is to have a focus other than my career. This journey is trying to figure that out. This requires active exploration to identify what clicks. But where should I start? What steps should one take to figure out their potential?
Books are a great way to start somewhere. Where the internet is noisy when trying to understand a topic, books deep dive into different aspects of a topic and provide richer information to interpret. Books provide a door to enter a world without feeling overwhelmed by means of condensing information while providing space for exploration.
Armed with books and the internet I begin my exploration. Without starting somewhere, I will reach nowhere. The first step, I believe, is creating the awareness that one might have some innate talent(s) that is latent which if unleashed, could prove to be their greatest asset. I have that awareness. Then the second step could be to identify the approaches to exploring the talent space and find what works for me. I do not think I completely know how to do this as I am still learning and experimenting different approaches to identify my potential. But writing, as a communication tool, is a skill that I have to use as part of my job and it could be a great place to start exploring. I am starting with that and taking the following steps to expand my writing skills. As I go through this experiment, I am hoping to learn and update my beliefs and eventually figure out which skills to pursue to their fullest potential.
Find your values
From reading books like “The 7 habits of highly effective individuals” I understand that a key step in realizing one’s potential is to understand what one’s values are. Your values tell you what is important to you and if you can align your exploration of “potential” closely with those values, you will find motivation. Self-improvement is a core value at this point in my life. I want to grow to understand myself better, create a life where I am not consumed by my career. The more I read the more I want to express my thoughts and writing my thoughts provides a clarity in my approach to separating my identity from my career.
Learn one new topic every quarter
We are inundated with information — quantity over quality — and it keeps growing at a pace that is hard for anyone to keep up. Though there is a lot of noise, if we can focus on learning about specific topics, we can tune out the noise and identify quality content pretty quickly. But filtering to identify the best content takes time which is why giving at least a couple of months to understand it is realistic. And as I read the topics I also want to write about it to solidify my understanding. This way I can both reinforce my understanding by writing things down and capture my current understanding to see its evolution, thus freeing my memory.
Focus with intent
There is so much happening around us and most of us are busy multi-tasking that we miss having an undivided focus on one thing. Being able to focus with intent can improve our productivity to get more things done in the same amount of time. And “focus” as a tool can carry over to other tasks too. Writing requires my complete attention to produce something of quality. When I research about a topic to write my focus helps identify key learnings quickly and when I need to edit my article I need to be distraction free to understand the flow and identify improvements. This is a key skill in working successfully towards your true potential.
Create something consistently
Most of the work in the current era is creative work demanding more time and energy from us. Creators are celebrated around the world today — designers in tech industries, video creators in Youtube/TikTok, writers of blogs and more. Creating content is hard but harder is creating content that inspires others. And writing in public brings up the question of “what do I have to say that others have not said?” But does that matter? I think how I say what I say matters too. As the author Stephen Covey said, “we see the world as we are and not as is.” Then two people can read the same book and can leave with different takeaways. And that is why I think I have a place to create something consistently.
Start small
It’s overwhelming to get into something new and see all the other successful people in the space. But I realize that I am not competing with anyone as I try to express myself. First step is to write for me. Rather than think about how this will pan out in the future, I am focusing on one article at a time about what I want to share. “Fail quick” is my mantra. This helps keep unnecessary fear at bay and go at it.
These are the small ways I am trying to unlock what my potential can be outside of my career. I am not sure if writing is for me but it does not have to be. I like exploring this now and without exploration I will not be able to identify where my potential lies. Making progress is important in reaching our potential. Thanks for your time!
