How To Reach Your Full Potential
Do you know what it takes to reach your full potential?
Finding your potential involves a unique set of steps which require you to take action.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What is your underlying desire in life?
- Do you yearn for self-fulfillment? Or is self-development more important to you?
- Are your efforts designed to make you feel good? Or are they designed to help you become the best you can be?
- Is your goal to be successful? Or is it to achieve significance?
The answers to these questions circle around personal growth. If you want to reach your full potential as a leader and help people grow, you must first take care of your own personal growth.
Personal growth.
John Maxwell talks about the Law of Contribution in The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. This law states that:
"Growing yourself enables you to grow others."
You may be asking why you need a personal growth plan, or how growth helps make a great leader.
Leadership is built on growth.
A growth plan has purpose; a fundamental purpose that will help you reach your full potential.
Growth does not happen by accident. Without a plan set in place, you might grow a little, but you're unlikely to reach your true, full potential.
Your growth will stall. You will stay in the same place.
You will see your potential in the distance, almost within reach—but without a plan, you won’t be able to grasp it.
Don’t think of yourself as selfish if you create your own personal growth plan. Remember: you’re doing it for yourself and for others.
You’re doing it for your own benefit and the benefit of the people in your life.
Making a personal growth plan involves intense self-evaluation, but it is by no means selfish. You must pursue the greatness within to achieve personal growth.
If we don’t become good at what we do, the people around us can't become good at what they do. If we don’t reach our full potential, the people around us can't reach theirs.
In order to be a great leader and influencer, you have to show people that you can be one. If you show others what a great leader is, they will reflect it in their own lives and personal growth. They will grow from you.
The main reason for pursuing self-growth is to help others.
You can't give what you don't have. Every day ask yourself: what do I have to give? No matter how much you give today, if you keep growing, tomorrow you will have more.
The more you learn and develop yourself as a leader, the more you will grow and achieve fulfillment.
Be like a river.
In John Maxwell’s book, he tells us to be like a river, not a reservoir. In other words, we need to let our gifts flow out of us. We all have people in our lives who have given their gifts to support our growth.
Stop for a moment and think about those people.
Just as others have encouraged you and helped you grow, you should do the same for them.
Who has encouraged you to be your best?
These questions will help you identify the people who are like a river in your life:
- Who offers you mentoring and a baseline of wisdom when you need it most?
- Who challenges you to think more deeply?
- Who helps you aspire to be a better person?
- Who cheers you on in the pursuit of your dreams when you doubt yourself?
- Who shares your load when you are experiencing high-pressure moments and stressful situations?
- Who gives you perspective when you've become dispirited?
We all have the potential to grow.
And we all have the potential to develop as leaders—to learn how to best lead others.
The Up Close Team believes that we have no greater purpose than to take what we've learned and pass it on to you. To pass on our knowledge and experiences...so that we can be a river to you and help you grow to achieve your full potential.
We believe you have potential and we're excited about the prospects for your future. But you won't get there until you step on the path and start the growth journey.
You may not be ready to receive all you could be receiving today. You may have to grow before you are able to do that.
Keep stretching. Keep growing. One day, what seemed so hard will become simple.
That's the magic of self-growth.
I would like to leave you with two thoughts from John C. Maxwell that have inspired our growth:
- Don’t let life come to you; you go to life.
- Don’t expect things to happen to you; go make them happen.
Start your personal plan for growth and see how your personal and professional life begins to change. Realize your true leadership potential.
And if you want some helpful tips on how to discover and grow your full leadership potential, sign up for our weekly blog
The best is yet to come. It starts with you.
Your friends,
UpCloseTeam
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