Searching for some practical avenues for achieving your Full Potential? Excellent!
How about…
Identifying your Blind Spots. Recognizing opportunities. Seeing possibilities. Reaching so far beyond your hurdles with such positive force of will that all your obstacles are overcome as a matter of course, and the entire exercise of doing so is a pleasure!
“Life on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.” – K. Wallenda
The Scenario: You know you’re going to make a critical decision, but you want to know: Is my key driver here emotion or conviction? What’s the difference?
EMOTION and its outputs are ephemeral.
Insight: A decision made in or based on EMOTION has built-in escape hatches. Which means ultimately that decision has no stamina, no power, and it’s tough to ever have any real confidence in it.
CONVICTION is a potent & limitless fuel supply.
Insight: A decision based on CONVICTION is a decision based on a Principle; it may have to be “qualified” with a proviso at times to be functional, but this never operates as an escape hatch.
The Takeaway: Doesn’t every conviction originate with an emotion in the first place? Yep. The key is that as you mature, you must identify & select certain emotions, then try, test, and transform them into conviction.
How? You can start with an emotional thought, but then strip away everything unreasonable or irrelevant. Then, whatever becomes visible as an underlying Principle is the reason you feel the way you do, regardless of circumstance; it is upon this Principle that your conviction is based.
Remember: Conviction is not, and should never feel like, a ‘dead weight’; instead, it should feel like and function as fuel for excelling yourself!
A belief is simply an assumption that you once made, that you come back to over & over again, and have come to rely on as true. The more you repeat this pattern, the stronger the belief.
And when you repeatedly act on a belief, it becomes a habit.
What is the most effective path to accessing your potential? Self-discipline.
Why? Because it is incremental. The elegance of Self-discipline is that it automatically carves out a manageable, bite-sized portion of your potential – and helps you digest it – every single time you engage it. So not only does Self-discipline give you traction on something as nebulous as your own potential, but it scales with you as you continue to grow, develop & improve yourself. How great is that!
Self-discipline is the most powerful tool that you have to speed you on your way to becoming your best. You don’t even need to guide it – it’s virtually fire-and-forget! So keep the better part of your attentions focused on Self-discipline, and I promise it will keep you growing into your ever-increasing potential.
The Scenario: You are in a situation where people’s emotions are running high, but it falls on your shoulders to make the right decision. So which do you rely on to guide your critical decision: LOGIC or STRATEGY?
LOGIC is based on the truth of things.
Insight: Choosing to rely on LOGIC is to follow the reasonable path of what should be, which may not in fact accurately represent the reality of your present circumstances.
STRATEGY is based on using what you have.
Insight: Choosing to rely on STRATEGY means doing your best with what actually is, regardless of any value-judgment you may feel inclined to make.
The Takeaway: If you try to apply & execute plans based on logic in an environment where no logic is present – where logic is not perceived by all concerned as relevant – your plans will fail. And don’t even bother trying to “dial back” on or “soften” your logic inputs, as doing so will only magnify the vulnerability of your position.
Remember this truth: Whereas true “reasoning” is based on rational evaluation & judgment, the fact remains that what most people commonly refer to as “reasoning” is based on emotional evaluation & judgment. Therefore, to deal with people successfully, I recommend you abandon LOGIC and rely instead on STRATEGY. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.
Principles and Courage are two sides of the same coin.
Principles are guidelines for living, chosen by you for you. To be worthwhile they must be forged in reason – through deliberate thinking, not just emotion.
Courage is deliberately choosing at any moment to adhere to & be guided by your Principles rather than the dominant emotion of the moment.
Courage is not absence of emotion; it is mastery of it. It is choosing to follow the path proscribed by your Principles rather than the path proscribed by Fear; reason overcoming the impulse to react to your fears. So the best way to develop courage is to research & cultivate a clear understanding of your Principles.
Remember: Courage is ultimately a deliberate choice – guided by our Principles – that we are all capable of making .
When everything is certain, it means that your conditions are more or less fixed. And fixed conditions mean that you have little chance of exerting any control over them.
When everything is uncertain, it means that your conditions are far more fluid and changeable. And this means that you have a much better chance of influencing conditions in your favour – if you’ve a mind to.
So here’s the bonus: When nothing is certain, anything is possible!