Blog

Three Ways to Maximize Your Potential

Posted On: May 24, 2011

I believe we all have untapped potential within us. Though we try everyday to be the best we can be, the habits of daily life get in the way of realizing our true potential. You may be wondering in what ways can you maximize your potential and clear the distractions from your life. 

How Can I Maximize My Potential: 

1. Try to look beyond what you can see. 

Ask yourself, “What am I not seeing in what I see?” 


That’s a profound question. To use your gift the most wisely, one needs to see beyond what is in front of them. What does this really mean? We are presented with problems everyday. Why is that situation a problem? Because it challenges what we see. Because we can’t see the answer, it’s a problem. How can we find the answer? Only if we look beyond what we see. 


Let’s hear a story from a hotelier. As many hotelier’s, Dina sells hotel rooms. One day she was looking at her inventory. She was selling them on three pricing tiers. That was a no-fail strategy for years. However, it stopped working. She stared at her computer asking, “What am I not seeing in what I am looking at?” It dawned on her that she could actually rearrange her pricing tiers by adjusting her inventory. She bought or invested nothing new, but re-organized what she had and made six pricing tiers. The next day and for the next months, her hotel was booked solid. 

 

2. To Present Your Gift- You Have to Make Hard Decisions 
Making our dreams come true is not easy. Many obstacles come in the way and hard decisions have to be made. While it was the recession, Dina’s hotel staff did not seem to be working up to their potential. She knew she’d have to find a solution to this to make her business run more efficiently. She re-evaluated her goals and vision and realized the problem was some of the workers just were not ‘good enough’ as evidenced by their lackluster performance. She wanted the best team- a team that could manage the hotel AS SHE WOULD IF SHE WEREN’T THERE. Based on this, she decided to actually FIRE some people and re-hire newbies who lived up to the standards she desired. Because of that re-org, she can now travel the world helping others realize their gifts and potential! 


Though she told this story in about two minutes, can you imagine what it would be like to actually go through this process? It would not be easy. Facing employees and telling them they’re ‘fired’ is not easy. How she went through this process from analyzing each worker’s performance to deciding who to let go and then letting them go would be an interesting talk all in itself. These are the processes we have to go through sometimes in making our dreams and gifts become reality- that simply are not easy.


3. Give Away Free To Get Back More Later
Often in business, entrepreneurs want to immediately make money. Maybe it’s insecurity, maybe it’s practicality. Maybe it’s a bunch of other factors. But, generally people are looking for money from the get –go. However, what do the best businesses do- especially in the beginning of starting up or starting a new product or service line? They give away something either for free or deep discount- to get you hooked. It’s not easy to give away for free- it’s a risk. We want to get returns on our investment, that’s why we want money. Why do students give free internships to companies? Some say it’s ‘indentured labor’. Maybe. But, it’s giving away something (skill, gift, talents) for free to get back bigger returns later. If we truly believe this, the law of attraction dictates we will get our returns when it’s our due time — and they will exceed our wildest expectations. People are impatient, they don’t want to wait, and practically speaking people need money to live. However, the irony is that whether we give it away for free at first or ‘demand money’ at first, the result in most cases is the same- we have to wait for returns anyhow! That’s also the painful reality. My personal experience has always shown me if I am patient when I really want to be impatient, the end result is much better. Is it easy to be patient when I feel impatient? No way!! It’s extremely difficult and I feel a bit nervous or uneasy inside at that moment, but later I realize the benefit is much greater than being impatient. This happens in almost every case I can remember.

 

Learn more about how you can maximize your potential through challenging your thoughts and freeing your mind and time for more productive endeavors.

 

Thanks for reading.




Photo credit: Hana Hamidi Jumps for Joy while making her dreams come true in the USA. Hana you’re awesome. Thanks for letting me use this photo!