Are you keeping Yourself from your full potential?
Saturday, October 20, 2018
Through-out history humans have struggled every day, every hour, and every minute to Choose The Right, stay on the path, and survive this complicated and busy world. The lucky — being in the right place at the right time and getting ahead without any hard work — have no fear failing as they have already made it, while others cannot get a break no matter what they do — they often feel as though the world, God, or life is against them. The rest of us do enough to maintain a consistent level of survival with some light fluctuations and very few significant gains or losses — we hope the negatives are very few to none, while the benefits we pray will come in droves.
A few of us now and then will step out of our complacent box and take a chance to increase our level of existence: some succeed while others will not. Is it better to try and fail or do nothing and never know your full potential?
Whether a person or a business and in the beginning they are one in the same, creating your legacy, fortunes, or surviving the journey of life is a daunting task. Walmart, Exxon Mobile, Ford, Apple, Amazon, and many many others have succeeded either by real, honest business practices or the opposite. I am old enough to remember some of the current Fortune 500 companies when they started and were on the brink of greatness or extinction — and those before I came into existence were no different from you and your business. Did they take risks? Did they work hard at it? Were they lucky and got the breaks?
It starts by taking a chance starting your own business. You have done that. Your business is running. You work hard to maintain your integrity and level in the jungle of competition. You get up in the morning and do what you do. To become a household name, you also need time — the most significant factor of them all — to show your perseverance and ability to overcome adversities. We hear about overnight successes, but they are false and myths. No one is ever a success overnight, NO ONE! However, failure can happen in a second.
Survival instincts are an excuse for your lack of effort
Are you keeping your business from its full potential? Are you keeping YOURSELF from your full potential?
Humans have a survival instinct: something flies by our head, we duck; someone pretends to punch us, we flinch; and that extends to our ability, or inability, to take risks and chances. Is it dangerous? Will it hurt? What could I lose? These are Fundamental and relevant questions. Are those that do take risks have no feelings or emotions? Alternatively, do they enjoy the feeling that risk-taking gives them? A certain kind of emotional high that nothing else gives them.
These survival instincts extend to your business when you avoid certain risks and try to keep everything status quo. You are afraid that you are not “one of those people” who gets everything they go after, you are unable to be successful, happy, or able fully enjoy your life, or maybe you do not feel you deserve success. There may be many other valid reasons and excuses, but that is what they are, excuses.
It is so easy for people to criticize others who share their life, creations, and emotions with the world. Hiding behind a wall of anonymity of the internet gives people a false sense of self-worth that they become experts in what is good or bad, or they feel that everyone wants to know their opinion. It is not fun reading the nasty comments from trolls who have nothing better to do but infect others with their negative, dead-end, worthless life, because they are afraid to put themselves on the line for fear of being judged as bad as they do others.
The more popular and precise you, or your business, get, the more people will miss your point, try to discredit, start tirades, share useless criticism (even if you would be okay with helpful critique), try to damage, and vandalize your emotional space — remember, they are unhappy with their own lives and find self-gratification in making everyone as miserable as they are.
Are you afraid to be successful for fear of failing?
You are afraid that when the time comes, you will not deliver and fail. For scientists, athletes, and many other activities and subjects, failing is a learning process; and learning is a positive thing we should be doing. However, it can also be hurtful, degrading, and disheartening — only if you let it. Being positive is not an easy thing to be in a world of immense negativity.
I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that will not work. — Thomas A. Edison
Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value. — Albert Einstein
Are you afraid Change?
Are you happy with the status quo of your business? You want to be more successful but are afraid of changes to the comfortable routine you have throughout the week. Operating a more successful business might require you to change that routine. Installing and using new programs, hiring assistants, writing new contracts, meeting new people, mastering new skills, trying new marketing avenues, and generally just doing a bunch of stuff that you are not doing now. Sounds scary and unknown. Your long lunches, quiet time, and free time at home may dwindle or disappear.
Humans are not motivated to do extra work. Even merely changing a routine requires the effort of figuring a new one out not to mention the work the new method entails. It takes a few weeks for us to get used to the time changes in the spring and fall. It is also just hard to get your head around a new set of relationships, roles, and tasks.
Being successful may turn you into a different person. You do not want to be loud, snobby, a jerk, obsessed with money, and an unlikable ogre. Being successful is not the cause of bad characteristics, the person has always been that way, being successful and in everyone's eyes heightens that attribute.
There Are Three Kinds Of People
There are three distinct core groups. Yes, there are three kinds of people in the world. A few blend into other groups at certain points in their life or the day, and some will be a part of two groups.
1) MAKE things happen.
2) WATCH things happen.
3) “What the heck just happened?”
Cannot be any more simpler than that, and cannot be said any other way. It is plain fact.
People that MAKE things happen
Think about the people you know in the world that make things happen. Scientists, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Toyota, NetFlix, and this list can go on. These are people that dictate how we live. We buy their products, their services,; we follow their rules, their ideas, and so forth. Of course this is in the big picture. You may know someone in your life closer to you that makes things happen in your neighborhood, town, community, city, or state.
Opportunities do not happen, you create them. —Chris Grosser
People that WATCH things happen
The people that watch things happen may also be people that make things happen. 40% of the human population watches things happen on TV, the internet, books, magazines, in person, and so forth. They understan what is going on around them for the most part.
People that wonder “What the heck just happened?”
People that are in this group depend on others to help them live their lives. They are afraid to make decisions and do anything on their own. They buy what they are told because they saw it on tv, or the internet. They believe what they are told because they saw on tv, or the internet. They do not make any effort to better themselves or trust themselves. I am not talking about people with disabilities — most of them are smarter than me and I have all my faculties — I am talking about people who follow one form of information without verifying it with other sources.
What kind of person and business owner are you?
I am not asking you to put everything you own and your life on the line, but to trust yourself, believe in yourself & your talents, and stop surviving and start living. Give yourself a chance to succeed and grow. If it takes marketing to get more clients, hiring better help, using a better company to create a better website, or receive training to enhance and advance your talents and skills, so your business and you can excel. Unless you are a self-run business, you have others that are depending on you to choose the right choices for their existence, survival, and livelihood.