10 Signals You're Not Living to Your Fullest Potential (*)

[Guest guest]

10 Signals You're Not Living to Your Fullest Potential (*)

================================================

We talk a lot about living life to our fullest potential, about being our best

self. For many of us, it's the primary goal and focus of our life, to be the

absolute best we can be, right here, right now. The most intriguing part of the

process to me is that it is a moving target. As good as I am right now, and in

fact, I am the best I've ever been, I know I can continue to evolve and be even

better.

Sometimes in the journey, we get stuck at a particular place. Here are 10

signals you're not living to your fullest potential right now and some ideas for

moving out of these 'stuck' places.

1. You find yourself using phrases such as 'I wish I could', 'If only', 'I

really ought to', 'I should do', 'As soon as (I lose weight, find another job,

find a mate)' If thoughts control who we are, then words are the primary tool we

have to redefine ourselves. The more you repeat the phrases above, the less

energetic and more powerless you feel.

Antidote: Find new, powerful words to replace the ones that are bringing you

down. A very powerful phrase is 'For whatever reason, I am currently choosing to

(or not to) xxx'. No matter what the action you are doing or not doing, the

moment you acknowledge it's a choice, you put yourself in a position of power.

You also put yourself in a position to make a new choice.

2. You feel overwhelmed, overworked, undervalued and under-appreciated. In fact,

you feel like a victim. It seems like things are being done 'to' you (or a group

of people you belong to) and nobody appreciates you.

Antidote: These feelings springs from a sense of scarcity, so the best antidote

is to start feeling grateful. Once you begin to feel truly, sincerely grateful

for all the gifts you do have in your life (and everything in your life is a

gift), your energy levels increase and you start enjoying your life again. Don't

forget to feel grateful for yourself, your strengths and abilities, what makes

you uniquely you.

3. You need to buy a new bookshelf just for your self -help books. I smile as I

write this, since I probably have one of the best collections around. It's not

so much that you have a large library, but that you are constantly seeking for a

magic answer, for the one single piece of information that is going to lift you

up and put you back on the road to being your best self.

Antidote: Go within. Use meditation, journal work and prayer to seek the answers

that are already within you. Use the writings of others as starting points if

you will, but recognize that their writings are the answers they came up with

when they went inside themselves. Start with 5 minutes twice a day if that's all

you have, but the peace you are looking for already exists within you. Become

friends with it once again. The easiest tool I can recommend for this is the

3-Breath Miracle. Engage your mind in following your breath for 3 long, deep,

slow breaths, holding them as long as possible and expelling air when you

exhale. Pay attention to how you feel once you do this completely. This is the

energy you are going for.

4. The only reason you go to work is to keep a roof over your head and food on

the table. This has nothing to do with the nature of the work you do, but with

how you feel about how you are using your gifts and talents, and whether or not

you feel you are doing the best job you possibly can. Do you feel respected at

work? Do you respect the work that others do around you?

Antidote: Remember that people around you primarily serve as mirrors for how you

feel about yourself. When you start giving 100% of yourself at work, when you

strive for excellence in all you do, and when you value your contribution to the

team/effort, others will start reflecting that back. You cannot find work that

you love if you can't find the joy in the work that you currently do. Again, it

starts from within.

5. You don't have a clear sense of who you are or what you stand for. You find

it difficult to make choices and you feel like you are drifting from one life

situation to another. What seems important one day seems inconsequential the

next.

Antidote: Identify your values. When you know what you truly hold important in

this life and allow yourself to make choices in alignment with those values, you

gain tremendous freedom in your life. Being true to what you believe in is very

liberating. A simple way to get some clarity is to ask yourself 'What do I want

to role-model for others?'

If this confuses you because you thought you were clear about your values and

what is important to you, you may be in a transitional mode where the priorities

of your values are shifting. This happens at different times in our lives as we

mature, get older and experience different life events. For example, having

children is a time that many of us experience a shift in our priorities, as is

getting older and experiencing health problems. As a rule, allowing yourself to

be 'in the present' and seeing that you are not giving up on a value, but

reassigning it a number will do much to let go of the confusion.

6.You are more worried about being right than about being happy. This is an easy

game to get caught up in. We often look for life experiences that vindicate our

opinions, and not the other way around. The lure of being 'right' is very

seductive and it is very easy to sabotage yourself with this game.

Antidote: Ask yourself 'Where in my life am I letting my need to be right to

take over? Am I willing to let go of being right? Am I willing to be happy? What

would it look like to be happy instead of being right?' The key point here is

being willing to choose being happy over being right. Once you make that choice,

you will start to notice where your need to be right is getting in the way.

7. Before you go to sleep at night, you find yourself wishing you had spent your

day doing something other than what you did. If you find yourself doing this on

a consistent basis, it's time to look at the choices you are making. Also, this

is different from not getting to something you meant to do because something

else required your attention. This is about doing non-productive things on a

regular basis, then wishing we'd done something else.

Antidote: There are two suggestions for this item. The first is to not wait

until you go to bed to review how you spent your time. Look at what you are

doing on an hourly basis. The other suggestion is, once you are looking at this

hour, make a conscious choice about what you want to be doing. You can choose to

watch TV or play on the computer, but at the end of the day you will be able to

honestly say you did what you wanted to do. You can also try to spend 5 or 10

minutes of each hour doing something that will make you feel good to get done.

Allow yourself to build on small successes.

8. You spend a lot of time doing things that keep your mind occupied (so you

don't have to think about you). While related to number 7, this is the actual

activity that keeps you from producing your best effort. When we are really

determined to sit on our greatness, we usually don't get to the point of wishing

we'd done something different. The primary focus of this activity is to not

think about you or your life. Therefore, it must engage our mind and keep it

occupied. It might be TV, the computer, the news, what the neighbor's are doing,

anything that can grab us and keep us.

Antidote: Many of these activities are designed to deaden the thoughts that make

you uncomfortable (see number 1). Often, when we get tired of the negative

messages, our first response is to try to stop thinking. The more we don't

think, the more energy we need to spend on not thinking. Some down-time is good,

even essential. The key here is when big chunks of time are lost to these

activities. The first thing to do is to give yourself permission to do the

activity you are doing. Again, it's bringing it into the realm of choice. Then,

let yourself make different choices from time to time.

9. You feel an underlying sense of sadness (when you let yourself feel). Part of

the reason we don't want to let ourselves think or feel is that we are afraid we

will be overwhelmed by the sadness. We are petrified to go down that road.

Antidote: If you feel sadness, something is going on and it is critical to

release the tears. Give yourself an opportunity to cry in a safe environment.

For example, although we may not be able to give ourselves permission to cry

about what we need to cry about, we can cry while watching a sad movie. One of

my favorite movies to use for this purpose is 'Pay it Forward', but you probably

have your own favorite. It's really important to free yourself from this

emotion, and allowing it out is actually the way to not being overwhelmed by it.

Once you allow the tears, don't be surprised if you have a real burst of energy.

10. You keep all conversations at a superficial level. Safe topics are the

weather, the news, TV and movies. If you find yourself steering all

conversations away from you, you may be in emotional hiding.

Antidote: Find an outlet so that you can allow yourself to go inwards safely.

Try journal writing, writing a letter to God, or some other format for getting

in touch with what's going on.

Author Unknown

==================================================

(*) Related Quotes (*)

==================================================

" This represents one of the great tragedies and wastes in life, because so much

potential remains untapped -- completely undeveloped and unused. Ineffective

people live day after day with unused potential. " -- R. Covey

" It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do

extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most

people don't. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on

forever. " --

Philip

" It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on

earth -- and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up -- that we will

begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had. " --

beth Kubler-Ross

" The secret of all power is - save your force. If you want high pressure you

must choke off waste. " -- ph Farrell

" 'Know thyself,' said the old philosopher, 'improve thyself,' saith the new. Our

great object in time is not to waste our passions and gifts on the things

external that we must leave behind, but that we cultivate within us all that we

can carry into the eternal progress beyond. " -- Bulwer-Lytton

--

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

" Breathe deep, walk slow, hold tight to those you love, for the sun is

setting and it will be over so fast. "

-- Ken Pierpont

Be blessed my friend,

http://myspace.com/rarebreeze

http://myspace.com/asundayinjune

http://livingonlove.ning.com