I wonder how many of us feel that we haven’t yet reached our full potential. I have no real idea if everyone thinks this or whether it’s just me? I guess some people don’t care, others may feel that they’ve not reached their peak yet live happily with that thought. If you are like me, it’s been a constant driver over many years. Of course the potential of reward is motivating, but for me it’s something deeper, I love the challenge of doing better, achieving more, attaining, maximising my potential.
I’m like it in business, but in other walks of life too. I love the challenge of motorsport sprinting. Sprinting is you a car and the track, and you are trying to find the perfect lap (a bit like qualifying). I study the previous attempt, I try and work out where there’s more speed to be extracted and I strive to reach my true potential. In business, I’m always tinkering away, at ways to improve the offering, bring innovative solutions, push ahead and achieve.
Yet even with this inbuilt drive, I have a real tendency to plateau! I’ve frequently found myself getting onto a rut and finding periods where I do not seem to progress. Sometimes hose periods have been prolonged. I remember a period when our business hit a turnover ceiling which lasted several years. I was working hard, still wanting to grow the business, but for some reason we could not push past a certain threshold.
It’s that brick wall thing I’ve recently been trying to break though again, and I think I have some insight! It’s not ground breaking insight, it’s not even something that I’ve not been aware of in the past! It’s that I’ve come to realise that in the past I have often failed to walk the talk! And the talk is this…
If you do the same thing, you get the same thing!
So if you want something different, you have to do something different!
This is much easier said than done. I find that there can be many barriers in the way of doing something different. Sometimes those barriers come in the form of other people, who are comfeartable! That’s too comfortable to bother, too fearful to try.
With all that said, maybe now is a really good time to break out and do something different. I have certainly found the current remote working climate useful in making a move on my next achievement frontier. So much has changed around about us; some things may never be the same again, but that’s OK, because it forces us to do something different. If we do something different, it stands to reason we will get a different result. The post covid world may create a momentum that forces people out of being so comfeartable.
What change could you force right now that might lead to a greater realisation of your potential? Get action orientated, work out what you need to try, and push through the barriers to open up an exciting new opportunity.
Bob Bannister
Ships Captain.
