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Unleash Your Potential
Life is a gift to cherish. You are put on this earth to fulfill one major purpose. 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. Similarly, imagine
being on your deathbed. Ask yourself what regrets you would have. These exercises 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 baggage from the past or worry excessively about the future, a lot of energy is wasted.
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, life expands and flourishes.
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 allow life-affirming energy to permeate our beings.
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 speaks 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 give. To truly unleash our gifts, we must give.
Each of us has an enormous capacity to accomplish our aspirations. 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, which nurtures and supports us.
In her book A return to love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles, Ms Marianne
Williamson writes “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are
powerful beyond measure.” 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 egoism leads to awakening your inner life, which begins the process of
unleashing yourself.
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? Upon reflection, we realize that real
power is within; it is also in humility that we shine. Remember, you can have positive pride, which
is belief in one's God-given gifts to be used for the betterment of society. Positive pride is
instrumental in unleashing potential.
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. 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. Similarly, to function optimally, the spirit, physical fitness, mental
aptitude, and social and economic wellbeing all have to be well aligned. A holistic life leads to
unleashing one's potential and tapping into the synergy of body, mind, and soul.
© Copyright 2010. Azim Jamal Inc. All rights reserved.
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