Potential
December 17th, 2009 | 
Author: When I was in my 20’s, a long time ago. I lived in a shared flat in Highgate. On my wall, above my bed was a Snoopy poster with Charlie Brown on the pitcher mound saying “There is no heavier burden than an great potential.” After two years, I took the poster down since nothing had changed!
At the recent Passion with Action with Judith Lowe and Judy Delozier at PPD Learning Ltd, I reconnected with notion of Potential. It seems to me that Potential is a future based concept, something that we haven’t fully realised yet, something that is still to come into fruition. I am here and my potential is there. Even if my potential is within me, it is still in the time frame of tomorrow and not today. Which leads to the conclusions that we will never reach our potential because each day it moves that bit further away.
This got me to wondering what it would be like to bring my Potential into my present – instead of waiting for my ship to come, get on board immediately. The word had to change – my Power, my Magnificence, my Purpose. When this happens, hesitation is banished, excuses are irrelevant, accountability and responsibility become immediate. I am what I came here to be.
Which could be a bit too scary. Marianne Williamson knew a thing or two – “Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond all measure.”
So maybe there has been a linguistic conspiracy passed down over the centuries to keep our Potential tantalisingly just out of harm’s way, to allow us to continue with our mediocre worlds untravailed by demands of greatness.
Posted in General thoughts
Hi
Thought provoking
Im reading Dilts on Modeling with NLP at the moment and I have just read that ‘alignment also related to where stability and variation are placed in a systme… Consistency at one level required flxibility at other levels
In terms of everyone focusing on their potential what would be the impact on the ‘whole’ system?
Does this explain who are ‘allowed’ by the system (say a culture) to achieve their potential and how it is to be
The question for me from your comments is where do I want (need?) to fulfil my potential
You raise the question of which aspects of one’s potential ’should’ be focussed upon. I have huge potential for being offensive, violent, possibly murderous. These aspects I have no desire to develop! So it’s our potential for doing good, enhancing the world and our experience in it. When we are young we believe a) we have time and b) we have choice. In m 60’s now, I’m aware that the boundaries between work, play, relationships, home become blurred, as my awareness of fulfilling my purpose whilst still here becomes sharper – wherever it might be manifested. Time is very finite.
Taking Dilt’s observations, I would have thought that the more consistent one is at Identity or Spirituality the greater the flexibility at the lower levels, which would again tie in with focusing our mission led potential in the here and now.
Many thanks for offering this stimulus for thinking.
Interesting topic. My NLP related thoughts have spent a lot of time considering this over the last few months.
Coming back to basics: Potential is the acknowledgement of the resources/s, with the acknowledgement that the form of the resource is not the one we’d like it to have.
This is, if you extend the thought, the predicament of NLP: get control of the skills required to transform the form of resources -which we, as per NLP presuppositions, have anyway- into a form of our liking.
There is a great intention underneath: want to do well, excel, make the world a better place. However, this does not come without a health warning, since, as anyone playing with systems and structure will now, the transient nature of any form, its being mandatorily “stuck in time” at one stage or the other means that, sensory acuity / flexibility aside, any structure will become obsolete and a hindrance towards the outcome.
At this stage, I find myself thinking that the relationship one has with potential matters more than potential or accomplishment. Practically: be Ok with wasting / having wasted several of your many talents / chances life has given you is essential to content living. Besides this making a case for genuine Abundance-based beliefs, the Ego may suffer a bit in the process, but Self will come out quite liberated.
A possible challenge for NLP since models, which aim to code (i.e. to “form”-alise), go. Or an invitation to add a blend of emergence, a touch of personal genius in all processes created.
This isn’t unlike Leonardo having his students do the groundwork of a church’s painting, with him putting the finishing touches. The first chapter of Wilde’s Dorian Gray also describes this pretty exquisitely.
The first thought on Potential took me back to Physics lessons at school and the notion of Potential Energy. We always seemed to work out the total value of this when of course we have the choice to use as much as we like.
Next came a similarity between “being versus doing” and “the here and now versus potential”.
And because we like to do things in threes, I thought about the potential being associated or dissociated. In the form of my potential and a distant reminder of my mother commenting on another mother’s child – “he never reached his full potential did he, shame really?”
And my conclusion would be that as usual in life it’s a matter of choice isn’t it? So I searched for a few wise words on the subject and came up with these:
Annie Dillard
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Will Schultz
Joy comes from using your potential.
Marilyn Ferguson
Your past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future.
And finally if you are sitting comfortably…
A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion… …..this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.
Just a thought.