To Maximize Your Potential, You Must Understand This Mindset Formula
Potential has nothing to do with your past. While it may seem that your past can limit or increase your future, that is only perception. For example, if person 1 has a degree from an Ivy League school and person 2 has a degree from a community college would you say person 1 has more potential than person 2?
Maybe or maybe not. It really depends. Person 1’s biggest goal in life may have been to get that Ivy League degree and now they just want to chill in a 9 to 5 job counting widgets. On the other hand, person 2 may go on in the future to change the world with a startup.
Achieving a goal like graduating from an Ivy League school is the realization of past potential, but the realization of potential is no longer potential. It’s an achievement. Moreover, while achievements may increase expectations, they don’t increase your potential to meet those expectations.
Potential is a gift from the future, one that you will only receive if you understand the mindset of purpose and perseverance.
The Formula for the Mindset of Maximizing Potential
Potential is showing the capacity to develop into something more in the future. Everybody has potential, but not everybody puts themselves in the position to maximize that potential. Most people know in their gut if they are or are not maximizing potential.
However, outside of this gut feeling there is also a simple formula you can use to calculate your chance to maximize potential using your mindset on purpose and perseverance as the inputs.
Your Passion for a Purpose * Your Perseverance in Sticking with the Purpose = Chance to Maximize Potential
To explain, both your passion and your perseverance are percentages from 0% to 100%. This percentage is relative and subjective.
Relative in the sense that your environment, means, and resources may require you to have more or less passion / perseverance to get things done. Subjective in the sense that how much passion / perseverance you have is a gut feeling. If you eat, sleep, and drink thinking about and working on your purpose you may be at a 100%. On the other hand, if it’s just a 9 to 5 mindset then maybe it’s 50%. Only you know the answer.
In addition, purpose in this context is the one thing that motivates you to get up every morning and bring your best self to the world. Consequently, this means if you don’t have purpose or spend no time working on it, then your chance to maximize your potential is 0%.
For example, if the passion you have for a purpose is 75% and the perseverance you have shown in sticking with this purpose is 25%, then your chance to maximize your potential is .75 * .25= .18 or 18%.
Obviously, these percentages are based on your best guess and are extremely subjective. Therefore, you must be honest with yourself to get a meaningful number. Nevertheless, this is a number that should matter to you.
Furthermore, if your chance to maximize your potential is less than 50%, then I would say it’s time for you to double down on changing your mindset. You must invest time in finding a purpose that motivates you to wake up each morning energized to persevere through whatever the day may hold.