Fulfilling potential

It's often said that we should all seek to fulfil our potential.  And this is, indeed, a very good thing to do.  Each of us are merely stewards of the time and energy and resources that are in our hands today, which we will one day relinquish.  The million dollar question is, fulfil our potential to do what?

At the end of my recent sojourn in the US, I was sitting with my coursemates in a reflective mood.  A number of us offered this thought - that they would redouble their efforts to fulfil their full potential in the workplace.  So, say yes to the stretch assignment, go all out for the big promotion.  Don't settle.  No one wants to look back on their career and regretfully say, I wish I had tried that.

Others offered a different spin - that they too would redouble their efforts, but to redeem unfulfilled potential in their home lives.  Successful career people who had spent years overseas away from their families, or had simply been too busy to watch their children grow.  They now wanted to ensure that in the Second Half, they would fulfil their potential as spouses and parents (or grandparents).

Neither of these goals are necessarily mutually exclusive, although clearly, it is not a simple thing to balance family and workplace commitments.  And both goals are laudable - because we do want to fulfil our potential in all the places we are put.  It goes without saying that family is important.  But we probably spend more than half our waking hours in the workplace.  So it would be a waste of our lives if we did not seek to excel in the workplace as much as we seek to excel in our family lives.

But is there yet another angle to fulfilling potential?  I've been thinking that maybe there is - and it is to seek to fulfil the potential of others.  It's great if we can fulfil our own personal potential.  But what if our potential... is to fulfil the potential of those around us... ?

At home, instead of thinking "I'll be the best Dad I can be"; think "how can I help my wife be the best Mom she can be" and "how can I coach my kids to be the best young men and women they can be"?

At work, instead of thinking "I'll be the best worker/boss I can be"; think "how can I help my boss be the best he can be" and "how can I help my colleagues, especially my younger colleagues, be the best they can be".

And to be the best they can be, not only in the workplace, but even at home and in their communities.  Encourage our friends and colleagues to excel in their work, excel as spouses and parents, and excel in giving back to our communities.

In other words, turn from seeking to maximise our own potential, to seeking to maximise the potential of others.  Turn from seeking our personal success to seeking the success of others.  Turn from me, me, me to you, you and you.

The interesting thing is, if we do that, our personal success takes care of itself.  Think about it.  If my focus is to help my kids be the best they can be, am I not maximising my potential as a Dad?  If my focus is to help my boss and colleagues succeed, am I not being the best worker I can be?  If my focus is to help my younger colleagues succeed, am I not being the best boss I can be?

I can tell you this - I can see when my team leaders are doing things for the good of their people, and when they are trying to advance their personal interest.  Which team leader do you think I am more likely to promote?  I'm sure my own boss can see when I am doing something out of self-interest, and when I am proposing something to make him or my colleagues succeed.  Which behaviour do you think he will reward?

And finally, I'm sure the staff can see which bosses are seeking their own interest, and which are advancing the staff's interest.  For example, does the boss only promote those who don't threaten him?  Or is he self-confident enough to promote those who are good enough to one day take his job?  For which boss do you think the staff will work hardest and smartest for?  And which boss will succeed - the one with clever, motivated deputies, or the one with sycophantic yes-men (who are probably plotting to bring him down, because they jolly well know he'll never promote them above himself)?

Instead of neurotically obsessing over our own potential, we should be looking to maximise the potential of others.  If nothing else, because there are so many more opportunities to succeed, than with just the solitary "me"!

I believe that this is the outworking of what the Apostle Paul said in Philippians 2:3-4 "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.  Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others."

All this is easy enough to say, but perhaps a bit harder to do!  Am I a selfish husband?  Am I an insecure leader?  Am I a self-seeking employee?  Yes, yes, yes :P  But, by God's grace, self-awareness is the first step to redemption!  As the Apostle Paul said of himself in 1 Corinthians 15:9-10 "For I am the least of all the apostles, and do not even deserve to be called an apostle... But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect... [and so] I worked harder than all of them - yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me".

So if I accept that looking outward is what needs to be done to truly fulfil my potential, then the next question is, will I work to change my outlook, and when?

In another end-of-course conversation, one of my wise coursemates pointed out that some of our coursemates were in their fifties, while we were relatively younger, in our early to mid-forties.  They had more experience, and had achieved much more in their careers.  But we had something they didn't.  More time.  More time to effect whatever change or transformation that the course was supposed to elicit.  The question was, he said, when we looked back in 5-10 years, how would we have spent that currency?  Because like it or not, time is dripping away as we speak.

So - will I choose to realise my potential by looking outward, not inward?  Having read this piece, will you consider walking with me to change as well?  When?

"God again set a certain day, calling it "Today"... 'Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.'"  Hebrews 4:7

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