I often feel I haven’t lived up to my potential. Maybe I’m a product of too many articles on making the most of life, but maybe there’s some truth to it.
What really matters is what my wife and kids think, and what God thinks of how I’ve done with the gifts he entrusted to me.
One point to drive home is that “potential” isn’t just about worldly success, although that can be part of it. When I think about potential, I’m thinking about all the things that go into making me feel proud of myself.
How I feel about my health. My contribution at work. How I’m doing as a parent and father. Whether I’m funny or interesting or enjoyable to be around—and my character.
Not living up to my potential in these areas is a real sadness. I’m sure others are OK with just enjoying life and may think I’m being too legalistic or something.
I don’t see it that way. I think life is a gift full of potential for greatness, even glory, and I want to wring as much out of it as I can.
When I look back on my life so far, I can see common patterns that have led me to miss out on some of what I could have been. At 36 years old, I know there’s still time to redeem much of it, but I’m a little sad for what I’ve wasted.
The best I can do is harness that emotional energy in the second half of my life and try to capture some of my failings for others, to help them chart a steadier path.
5 Daily Habits to Increase Your Potential
Here are five daily habits that, in my estimation, could reverse the vast majority of wasted potential I see.
1. Take Action Now
Being “ready” is an elusive feeling. There’s always something else you could do if your goal is to remove all the doubt and uncertainty before taking action.
The more I research, the more questions bubble up in my mind. Taking action is the only way to quell them. It’s the only way to feel ready.
2. Enter Creation Mode
One of the reasons I find reading blogs and watching videos so pleasurable is that they give me the illusion of progress toward my goals. I’m not actually making progress, of course, but my brain is easily fooled.
Consuming content is effortless and makes everything feel neat and clean. Action in the real world is messy. If you want to reach your potential, there’s no way around the fact that you’ll need to build your tolerance for that uncertainty—one imperfect act at a time.
3. Let Yourself Fall, Then Pick Yourself Up
Don’t let perfectionism keep you from trying. When we imagine our own success, we often fail to picture the clumsy initial steps we take as we learn and grow. The problem is that we are embarrassed by these experiences. We naively assume that we’d be good from the very start at anything we set our minds to.
There’s a hidden belief in that embarrassment—that as adults, we shouldn’t be wasting our time doing things we’re not good at. We tell ourselves that the time for experimenting was when we were younger, and so we don’t pursue the idea any further.
4. Develop Your Intuition
I used to think the problem with overthinking was simply that it wasted time. I’ve spent countless hours wrestling with decisions such as how to invest our family’s money that I can’t ever get back.
Getting around the thinking mind and listening to the inner voice within has some merit. Listening to our intuition builds confidence and helps us trust our gut.
5. Embrace Your Ideas With Confidence
One of my biggest regrets is how many times I’ve shot down my own ideas. It’s one thing to kill one idea because you have a better one—but I talked myself out of ideas just because the odds were low.
Embracing our new ideas is the seed of success. We can always modify as we go along, but if we don’t give our ideas a chance, we’ll never know what we could have done.
Establishing these habits may lead to greater personal fulfillment and making the most out of your life.