Unleash Your Potential

Unleash Your Potential

Life is a gift to cherish. You are put on this earth to fulfill one major purpose, a mission, if you like. If you do hundreds of things but fail to do the one thing you were sent to do, you will not fulfill your purpose in life. You are unique and blessed with a great gift with which you can accomplish your mission in life. If you fail to find your mission and your gift, you will not succeed in unleashing your full potential.

One way to discover your mission is to imagine that you have won a 20-million-dollar lottery. Ask yourself where you would spend your time or what kind of work you would do.

Another way is to imagine being on your deathbed. Ask yourself what regrets you would have. This type of thinking can tell you where you need to spend your time and what kind of work you need to do to unleash your potential.

When you live in the present, you are able to capitalize on the opportunities of the moment. If you carry with you the baggage of the past or the burden of the future, you let a lot of your energies go to waste. Remember, your past baggage–the past hurts and losses–is gone forever. Your future is unfolding with each moment. To unleash your potential you have to focus on each moment before you; you must live every day as if it were your last day. In this way your life expands and flourishes. Every day becomes an eternity, every minute precious and energizing.

Begin each day by counting your blessings. When you focus on what you already have, you expand your gifts and cease to find yourself lacking in any way. Jalaludin Rumi, the great Sufi mystic, once asked, "When you see a big white cloth with a black dot, what do you see?" If you focus on the black dot–that is, the things you lack–it begins to look much bigger than it really is. When we count our blessings, we feel good about ourselves. Thus, life-affirming, positive energy permeates our very beings, and we transform our lives by unleashing our potential.

The more freely you give, the more you unleash yourself. If you have clenched fists, you cannot receive. The moment you open your fists and give, you are also able to receive. This is how the universe and nature work. The beautiful prayer of St. Francis supports the power of giving: …O Divine Master, grant I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying to self that we are born. The more of yourself you share, the more of yourself you find. Many people die without using more than ten percent of their innate abilities. The main reason for this is because either they never found what they were passionate about or they did not find a cause to give to. So, to unleash our potential, we need to find a cause where we can make a difference.

Each of us has an enormous capacity to accomplish his or her aspirations. But if we do not believe in ourselves, we cannot unleash our potential. Ask yourself: If I do not believe in myself, who will? If you think small, you remain small. If you go to the ocean with one bucket, the ocean will give you one bucket of water. If you go to the ocean with a thousand buckets, the ocean will give you a thousand buckets of water. Thinking big is about recognizing our innate beauty and power. It is about coming to know our divine greatness. This knowing nurtures and supports our belief in ourselves.

In 1994, at his inauguration as president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela said, "Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us…" In other words, we fear our success more than our failure. To unleash ourselves we need not be fearful of our success and power.

We need to maintain a good attitude in our successes and in our struggles. Both are important for our growth and for fully unleashing our potential. Struggles and challenges are stepping stones to success.

Egoism, or negative pride, is a setback to unleashing your potential. Egoism is the habit of showing off and acting superior to others. This is shallow and temporary, and it stems from insecurity. This attitude would have you rely on your worldly possessions to give you power, as opposed to getting power from within yourself. Shedding the negative pride leads to awakening your inner life, which begins the process of unleashing yourself. Rumi says, "Give up your drop and become part of the ocean." We find it hard to drop the drop, and, thus, we fail to develop fully and to feel the power of Oneness and true freedom.

One way to overcome egoism is to imagine that you have lost everything you have–wealth, family, worldly power. What happens to your superiority at that point? This kind of reflection makes us realize that real power is within; it is also in the humility that we show in our success. Remember, you can have positive pride, which is belief in one’s God-given gifts to be used for the betterment of society, as opposed to egoism, which is self-centered. Positive pride is instrumental in unleashing yourself, whereas negative pride is detrimental.

Finally, you unleash your potential when you live a balanced life–the harmony of body, mind, and soul. Strive for a synergy of body, mind, and soul, each helping the other. You can nourish the soul through prayer, meditation, and good deeds. You can keep your mind positive and active by reading good literature and feeding your mind with positive and uplifting messages. You can keep your body healthy and active by getting regular exercise, having good eating habits, drinking lots of water, and breathing fresh air. A car, as with a holistic life, needs all four wheels to be well aligned and each with sufficient air to operate well. Similarly, for a person to function optimally, the spirit, physical fitness, mental aptitude, and social and economic well being all have to be well aligned. A holistic life leads to unleashing one’s potential and reaping the synergy of body, mind, and soul.