Most people achieve only a fraction of what they are capable of. They settle for less. They get comfortable. They listen to naysayers and believe their limiting assertions about the world and their place within it. They don’t question who they are and what they stand for. They don’t push themselves beyond their comfort zone. They create excuses for why they haven’t achieved more and they start to believe them.
Most people do not realise that they have created the world that they see. Everything is a reflection of your own ability and mindset. Road rage represents your own anger issues, not the careless drivers around you. Complaining is a reflection of failing to demand the best for yourself and blaming others. Seeing doom and gloom comes to those who haven’t trained themselves to see the positive side. No one can ‘make’ you feel anything you haven’t chosen to feel.
What’s your true potential?
My biggest fear is slipping into a way of thinking and living that does not utilise my full potential. Of accepting something just as it is and forgetting how to question the status quo or expect more. Of explaining away what could have been in favour of fitting in and following a safe path. I don’t want safety or comfort or normality. I want adventure and progress and achievement. I want to be remarkable in everything I do. I want to find out just how much I am capable of, not live a life of underwhelm.
I recently read three books along a similar theme: endurance. The three were Ross Edgley’s The Art of Resilience, Ant Middleton’s Zero Negativity, and David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me. Each author told a story of pushing their mind and body to the absolute limit, always thinking they couldn’t possibly do anything more and then being surprised when they could. Goggins, especially, is on a quest to see just what he can achieve. He goes after world records and enters ultra-distance races where 99% of starters don’t finish. He finishes them and he continues to astound himself and those around him. He regularly asks himself, “What am I capable of?”
In weight training, lifters might include an AMRAP set in their session. AMRAP stands for as many reps as possible, and means continuing until you fail a rep or you physically cannot perform another. Often, athletes will find that their AMRAP set contains far more reps than predicted, perhaps 30-100% more. It’s only upon completion of a huge AMRAP set that they realise how far under their maximum training potential they had been operating.
If an athlete smashes fifteen reps in their AMRAP, those previous sets of eight with the same weight can’t have been challenging, although they may have felt like it at the time. If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you. How do you know if you’re training hard without pushing yourself to failure?
How hard do you train?
This ethos can be applied to business. How many entrepreneurs are genuinely pushing their potential and seeing just what they are capable of? Are you? Can you honestly say that your dreams are as big as you can imagine, and you’re doing everything in your power to reach them? Do you try so hard that you fail often? Are you hitting the business equivalent of an AMRAP regularly?
Every day you will meet people who have happily settled for far less than they could achieve if they really put their mind to it. There is something blocking their potential. Perhaps they are scared; of putting their work out there, of what people might think, or of taking a risk. They don’t realise that the biggest risk is regretting those things they didn’t do. Perhaps they are carrying outdated beliefs about how the world works and what people like them should be doing. Maybe they haven’t defined their version of success or maybe they are trying to be who someone else thinks they should be.
Step up
If any part of you suspects that you have an incredible gift inside you, that your story can resonate, motivate and inspire, or that you have ideas and solutions that could change the world, you owe it to yourself to step up and realise your potential. The alternative is that you live a shadow life of unfulfillment and you hear stories of those who did what you couldn’t do because they dared to dream and put in the work to match. Your shadow self might play down who they have become; calling them lucky or obsessed or genetic freaks. But inside you will know that it could have been you.
Train yourself to notice every limiting belief and every unhelpful thought and take them out of your head and vocabulary. Remove anything in your life that doesn’t reflect the best version of you that exists. If you dreamed bigger and pushed harder, what could you be capable of? What could be possible if you intentionally hunted success and did not give up? What if you surrounded yourself with people who believed in you and whose minds held no limits? You might surprise yourself.