Identify, Utilize and Maximize Your Potential

At a time when the industry is aggressively seeking confident young adults to transform their businesses, we find that thousands of our youth are suffering from an overwhelming dose of apathy and underachievement. This is NOT an exaggeration. Being a Human Resource professional for over to 15 years, this is the miserable truth I have to face time after time when looking to recruit young blood to the organization.

The problem isn’t necessarily an undereducated workforce. It’s that they lack the required amount of ambition to maximize their potential in life to experience success. We undoubtedly produce some of the best graduates in the whole world. However, when we seek individuals who are capable of meeting the high standards of leading organizations, all what we see is a whole generation of youth who have not honed on their potential, because of complacency and laziness.

How many of you love to get this opportunity – to speak in public. Not many. In fact, if you dread it, you are not alone. About 75% of the world population is suffering from glosso-phobia, which simply means fear of public speaking, in varying degrees. Do you think I am an exception? I have seen my father struggle to communicate due to a somewhat severe stammer. Believe me he is my hero, my role model. But this is one quality that I did not want to inherit. But, I did. Being handicapped with this deterrent, I never took up public speaking at school. I used to admire my friends who were in the debate team and announcing at school functions. In fact, I looked up to them as supermen.

During the weekly class meetings we used to have in grade 7, I finally had to face my demons. I don’t remember what I said about Sir Henry Steel Alcott, but I vividly remember how I felt. The dry mouth, trembling hands, shaking knees and the butterflies in the tummy. Without really knowing the potential, I closed that door for me for years until I was required to put myself in public humiliation again, this time at the university. At my second attempt at public speaking, for some unknown reason, I did not feel the discomfort, the pain and the agony. I was at ease and delivered a flawless speech for 15 minutes in front of all the batch mates, lectures and professors. That re-opened that door for me and I have never looked back.

In order to determine how best to utilize your personal dose of potential, you must first recognize that you have it. In order to keep up with the greats, you must first be willing to go along for the ride. It is not just a cliché, you can and will evolve into the person you aspire to become.

Now what is the use of having potential, but not using it fully? Being born with potential can be considered a gift and a curse.

When, once wealthiest man in the world, Warren Buffet was asked about his success by a group of MBA students, he beautifully explained the difference between potential and output. He is someone without much formal education and certainly with a limited potential, but he uses his potential to the maximum effect. Whereas the MBAs, with their superior academic knowledge, have much higher potential, but they only use a fraction of that potential. It is one thing to have potential, but a totally different thing to really utilize that potential.

Like uncle Ben tell Peter Parker, ‘With great power comes great responsibility’. I believe that all of us are given a talent to make our own little contribution to the world. For me, it is the ability to convey a message convincingly to others. It’s high time that you identify what’s yours and more importantly put it into use for a better tomorrow for you, your family, your school, your country and the world. And for those that don’t utilize their potential, unfortunately, they’ve waived their first-class ticket to greatness.

A major factor that inhibits so many people from achieving the success that they desire in life is thinking that there is no room for growth and improvement. Once you have realized that you have potential, you must recognize that maximizing it happens when you take calculated and unpopular risks. The reason the 1% of the world is at the top isn’t because they’re all brilliant. It is because they decided to go against popular opinion and make tough decisions based on their unwavering faith in their own potential.

Maximizing your potential isn’t something that can be taught in a classroom, read out of a book, or even gathered by word of mouth. It comes from the development of resilience in the face of controversy and critique. Life will unapologetically test your resilience and faith to determine if you’re worthy of greatness. If you want to reach greatness, you will have to face all the challenges that are put in front of you, and more importantly, go looking for greater challenges to test yourself.

I was a good athlete at school, winning 100m, 200m and the long jump regularly. I had the speed and the strength to be a sprinter but never the stamina and endurance to be a long-distance runner. When I started jogging to keep myself healthy a few years back, I could not complete the CINEC jogging track. I had to stop a couple of times on the way before completing the 4.6km track. Even though I was in better physical shape than most of my colleagues, I used to take at best 37-38 minutes to cover distance. A few months back I wanted to challenge myself after hearing that one of my friends, who is a national level motor car racer, was doing 5km in 30 minutes.

In July 2018, I broke the 8 kmph barrier. Not willing to hold anything back I was able to break the 9 kmph barrier in August. I know that if I push myself further I can do even better.

When Roger Banister broke the 4 minute barrier in the one mile event in May 1954 and 16 others broke the barrier in the next two-and-a-half years, they proved that there is no barrier for human achievement. When Sergei Bubka bettered his own world record in pole-vaulting 35 times, he proved that there is no barrier for human achievement. When Thilakaratne Dilshan scored 21 centuries at an average of 47 during the second half of his career as opposed to 1 century at an average of 28 during the first half, he proved that there is no barrier for human achievement.

So my dear friend, keep pushing yourself, beyond your comfort zone. That is where you will find the true satisfaction of living up to your potential. Every morning is another opportunity to look at yourself in the mirror and ask the most urgent and pertinent question, ‘How can I improve?’

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