Whether in life, academics, or business, most of us are interested in “reaching our full potential”, and ensuring that we make the best of our lives. The question any intelligent person would ask next may well be: What should one do, or not do (as the case may be), if one desires to reach his/her full potential in all endeavours of life?
In this article, we shall be considering that which you should not do.
1. Don’t Be Visionless or Have a Limited Vision
One of the painful and really sad truths in life is that most people do not have a vision for their lives, while some others have let failure, setbacks, misfortune, and the negative comments of others determine how far they choose to go in life, and how determined they are in pursuing their dreams.
But if there’s anyone who achieved something great, they saw it first as a dream, a vision in their mind; something that they nurtured, worked on, and expanded upon before it became a reality.
Expanding your vision consists of constantly going to work on your mind, reinforcing great, positive thoughts, and rooting out the negative ones. This you can do by reading about those who have gone on to achieve great things against all odds, how they did it, and what helped them on their way to greatness. Also, you should find ways to equip yourself with the needed skills to excel in your chosen field or fields.
Set big and challenging goals that excite you — and then look at them every single day. Even in the face of failure, be positive and look for some benefit there-in, a lesson that may be learnt. Also, make it a habit of visualising yourself winning and accomplishing whatever major goal or dream that is deep within your heart.
Read More: Why You Need a Personal Vision To Guide You In Life and as an Entrepreneur
2. Don’t Maintain Close Association With the Wrong Set of People
Ever heard the famous saying that: “You are a product of the persons you regularly associate with.” Reason is that bit by bit, we end up becoming who we hang out with the most; adopting their bad habits, their small thinking, and other poor life choices, as the case may be.
There have been scores of successful and famous individuals who for a time had everything going for them, until they began to associate with the wrong set of crowd and everything – literally everything – they had worked hard for came crashing down.
The bottom line hence is that who you choose to have around you absolutely matters, and is a huge determining factor in what you finally become.
3. Lacking the Courage and Perseverance to Overcome Adversity
Make a list of the most successful people you know, learn more about them, and you would realise that none of them – not one! – ever had everything go smoothly and perfectly for them. You only hear about them because they pushed hard against the challenges that threatened to swallow them and emerged battered, but victorious. This made possible because they had made up their minds to be champions and not victims.
Read More: Pay Attention! Tech Entrepreneur, Jack Ma Wants To Tell You How He Overcame Failure
So, keep it in mind that you will have your own fair share of challenges, discouragement, setbacks, loss of confidence, and failure. Yet, these are not what matter the most, the most important determiner of what you become will be how you choose to react to them.
This is non-negotiable. The one thing that no one can take away from you is your ability to choose who you want to be. So, after life must have knocked you down, you alone will have the decision to choose whether to stay on the ground and accept defeat — or get back up and fight every waking moment to get to where you want to go.
Evidently the choice is yours. Which shall it be?
