Potential

Or NOT!

 I just finished listening to Jon Acuff’s Podcast “All It Takes is a Goal.” He was talking about his new book about living into your potential. Thankfully what I was hearing so far was good and realistic. Nothing about how everything will be perfect and if you’re living into your potential the universe will realign to meet your needs. He never does that kind of cheesy stuff, even if he is a queso guy. Do I agree with everything he’s ever said, no but that’s okay as I find his style motivating for me. Well, enough about Jon, I want to think about potential.

Potential is a confusing thing. For most of us in the West we think living into your potential is running three or four businesses, making money hand over fist, and chasing all of your dreams. The truth is that is a lie for most if not all of us. Potential is not workaholism or even what others think you ought to do. It’s related to what you can really do.

For a mother of three on a limited income, living to your full potential for this week may be keeping the kids fed and cleaned and having the self-control to not buy something just because you have the credit to do so. For an older person with disabilities in the nursing home living into your full potential might be getting up, eating in the dining room, and not yelling at that neighbor who never quits complaining.  

I’m just posting a blog today, but I want us to realize potential is related to what we have, not what we wish we had. For me today writing an okay blog post is part of fulfilling my potential. If I continue to work on my writing it may someday include writing scholarly papers and great world-renowned books, but that is only if I work on what I have today and strengthen it.

There are some things that I have decided are possible for me to do. I have the potential for it, but I’m choosing not to do it. Like I have the potential to be a great, which means terrible, alcoholic. However, I believe that is not a good place for me to go. There are things that people may tell you that you need to invest your potential in but it may be just as bad an idea as me becoming an alcoholic. You have to decide. What are you going to invest in? What you invest in be that reading, writing, drinking, working, etc. is where you put your potential because, at the end of the day, your potential is tied up in one thing. How you spend your time and energy you have.

So are you spending your time and energy on what is important to you, your family, and to God? If you’re not then you are wasting your potential.

Side note: Resting isn’t wasting potential, it’s renewing it, but that is a conversation for another blog.