How to Maximise your Potentials (Part 4)

Means of Expressing One’s Potentials

Potentials are expressed through the following:

• Actions
• WorkOutputs
• Interactions
• Service

Avenues for Expressing One’s Potentials

• The family
• The workplace
• The society
• Business ventures
• The church, associations or other voluntary societies

How to Maximise your Potentials (Part 3)

How Can You Maximise Your Potential?

¡By setting life and project goals

¡By drawing up a roadmap to achieve the set goals

¡By always taking actions – instead of idling away or procrastinating

¡By holding yourself accountable for living out your potential

¡By adopting a steward’sattitude toward your potential, knowing that you will have to give account to God on whatever potential has been besotted to you (remember the parable of the talents in the Bible)

¡By making the most of time and opportunities, and wasting none

¡By giving of yourself whenever occasion demands

¡By getting a coach, a mentor or an accountability partner who will guide or hold you accountable to your ideals

How to Maximise your Potentials (Part 2)

How Can You Discover Your Potential?

¡By self-examination and reflection

¡By self-expression or applying yourself in various activities

¡By being adventurous, learning from trials and errors

¡Through informal interactions with families, friends, colleagues etc

¡Through divine revelation

¡By chance and unpremeditated happenings

¡During a coaching or mentoring session

How to Maximise your Potentials (Part 1)

What is Potential?

Dictionary Definitions:

Capacity to develop: the capacity or ability for future development or achievement.– Microsoft® Encarta® Dictionary

Natural abilities or qualities that may possibly develop and make someone or something very successful or useful.– Longman Dictionary

The inherent capacity for coming into being.– WordWeb Dictionary

Personal Thoughts on Potential

Potentials are the gifts, the talents, the endowments, the riches, the resources as well as the blessings inherent in a human that are yet to be expressed in his/her actions, interactions and works. Once these find expression, they cease to be called potential and then become skills and abilities.– Babatunde Oladele

The fear of not 'starting rightly' is what keeps many a great man and woman from fulfilling their potential. It is what also robs us of ideas and solutions that could have made the world a better place for you and me. I will say, start; if you fail, start again and improve yourself (and your process) along the way. The tortoise makes no progress unless it juts out its head. After all, the Bible says, "the end of a thing is better than the beginning thereof." – Babatunde Oladele

Life is a marathon, but some live it as if it's a 100metre dash; that is why you see some people with so much potential in their youth looking so ordinary in midlife. They have burned out. – Babatunde Oladele

A potential is what you can become. – Babatunde Oladele

The Importance of Self Development

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound. - James Allen.

The desire to become great and a celebrity is common to all human right from the time they become conscious of self. Dale Carnegie, in his best-selling classic, describes this as the “deepest urge in human nature.”

While the majority of humankind nurse this, usually unexpressed, craving to become larger than life and be revered by fellow men, only a few individuals really choose to advance beyond desiring to pay the price required to build a great life.

The price for greatness is a disciplined and sustained investment in oneself, otherwise called personal development. Jim Rohn, a renowned business philosopher and self-development guru, once quotes his former employer and mentor to have advised him thus: “if you want to be wealthy and happy... learn to work harder on yourself than on your job.” While this may sound absurd, it is good counsel. The general practice is that most people expend their time and energy the other way round; working more and often on the job - in order to earn so much - while devoting little or no attention to improving themselves.

As normal as this may look, it is a misnomer. While it is important to be dedicated to your work and put in a good shift above the average mark, it is equally essential not to neglect the regular cultivation of your mind. Every individual who has a sense of self should have a self-development programme he or she is observing to unleash his/her potential, sharpen latent skills and bring out the champion within.

Not all of us are destined for the stage. Therefore, drawing out the champion within you does not necessarily mean that you will become a maestro with millions of followers. Your own niche may be to a few dozens of people, it doesn’t make you lesser than someone with a global fan base. The important thing is to develop yourself such that you are both useful and relevant to your world.

A personal development programme is nothing complex or far-fetched. It can be as simple as following a schedule of conscious reading, listening, speaking, and/or writing, as well as putting to practice what you are learning in the process of those exercises. It is important you are aware about your objectives for embarking on these exercises so that you can be able to track the results. You should also have a schedule for what you do, rather than merely follow your whims by doing them when you feel like it.

To Your Success!

MAXIMISING THE MOMENT: Making The Most Of Every Opportunity

What the Bible Says

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might; for there is no work, nor plan, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave where you go.– Ecclesiastes 9:10

See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.– Ephesians 5:15-17

What the Sages Say

Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! Your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life.

It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions… no one can take it from you. It is unstealeable. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. - Jim Rohn

In the realm of time, there is no aristocracy or intellect. Genius is never rewarded by even an hour a day. And there is no punishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will and the supply will never be withheld from you.Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. It is impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you…

You have these twenty-four hours of daily time to live. Out of it you want to spin health, pleasure, money, contentment, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that.

Your happiness – the elusive price that you are all clutching for, my friend – depends on that. If one cannot arrange that an income of twenty-four hours shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one’s whole life indefinitely.

- Jim Rohn

We shall never have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.

- Arnold Bennet

Time is the most precious commodity we have. Therefore, how we manage it has the most profound effect on how our lives turn out.

- Jim Rohn

Painting The Right Picture: The Power of Vision and Focus

What is a Vision?

Vision is the ability to see what is not yet, so you can create what never was.

-Doug Firebaugh

A blind man’s world is bounded by the limits of his touch; an ignorant man’s world by the limits of his knowledge; a great man’s world by the limits of his vision.

- E. Paul Hovey

Visions and dreams are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.

- Napoleon Hill

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but has no vision.

– Helen Keller, 1880-1968, American Blind/Deaf Author and Lecturer

Aligning Goals to Your Personal Vision

do an Inventory of your skills, Abilities, Knowledge, Character Attributes/Weaknesses, and Spiritual Gifts

-      What are your God-given abilities?

-      What skills have you acquired?

-      What education do you have?

-      What are your Character strengths & weaknesses?

-      What is your Spiritual Gifting?

DrawA Life Plan

-      How does your Life Vision Statement translate into practical goals?

-      Do you have a calendar of when you will do what?

-      What tasks do you have to undertake to accomplish these goals?

-      How will you know when you have achieved your goals?

Goals must be SMART: Specific; Measurable; Achievable; Realistic; Time Limited.

A Career Plan:

-      What are your career goals?

-      Do you have a plan to advance in your career?

-      What experience do you need for advancement?

-      What education do you need for advancement?