Scott H Young

What percentage of your resources and effort are you currently operating from? Right now, with only your current knowledge, abilities and beliefs, how close are your actions compared to your absolute best? For most people this percentage would range somewhere between five and thirty-five percent. A few remarkable individuals have periods of up to fifty or sixty percent. I doubt many people here could say they regularly operate at a level of eighty or ninety percent, never mind one hundred percent.

Clearly there is enormous capacity for us even in this moment. Keep in mind I’m not talking about the entire span of human potential. I personally believe that the true expanse of human potential is infinite, so asking what percentage you currently are of that amount is sort of a null question. Instead I focus on the velocity. I’m specifically referring to how much of the resources you currently have available are you using to maximize your own growth and improvement. The sad truth is that most people only move at a tiny fraction of their capacity at any given moment.

This isn’t a new discussion. If you’ve read even a single self-help book, you’ve probably heard this fact blared at you, as if you weren’t painfully aware of this aspect of your own life. I’m not here to repeat a message you’ve had pounded into you from an early age. Instead I’d like to explore exactly why we fail to act in a fraction of our capacity and how we can utilize more of that power. I personally believe that there are three major aspects that we all need to work on in order to unleash more of that dormant force sleeping within us. These three aspects are courage, drive and purpose.

Courage

Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
-Helen Keller

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
- Ambrose Redmoon

Fear debilitates us to using our full potential more than anything else. Malcolm Gladwell, best-selling author of such books as Blink and The Tipping Point, pointed this out so clearly in an interview with a sportswriter. Gladwell stated that many athletes did not give one hundred percent simply because if they failed, they could use their lack of investment as an excuse. When you invest all of yourself in something and it fails, you have nowhere to turn. That feeling that if you put every part of yourself into something and you don’t come through scares the daylights out of most people. Most of us feel far more comfortable living at a much smaller fraction of our abilities so we can still hold onto the daydream that we would have succeeded had we truly invested ourselves in it.

Overcoming this fear of failure so we can unleash the full force of our resources involves abandoning those daydreams of the future and thrusting ourselves into reality. Most of us live halfway in the real world and halfway in their imagination of the world. While the ability to imagine is one of the most powerful gifts of mankind, it can also be a curse. Because we are afraid failure might arise we devote less than our potential so we can preserve our daydream. Unfortunately, the daydream doesn’t exist. Courage is a decision to live in the real world. Courage is a decision not to focus on the could’s or should’s of our daydreams and focus on reality. Courage is recognizing that the only thing that matters is whether or not we do something, not whether we could have.

Of course this is all easier said than done. Fear, our animalistic response to stimulus guides our actions even when we try to consciously oppose it. Many people have such gripping subconscious fears that overriding them takes tremendous effort. If fear is debilitating your capacity, the first step to regaining it is simply to become aware of its cost on your life. Many people try to rationalize their fears. They try to make their fears seem logical so that they can feel like intelligent human beings. The first step to removing your fears is to admit they have no logical basis. If you commit one hundred percent of your resources towards getting in shape and you fail, how is that any worse than doing nothing at all. In any case you will have learned from the experience so the failure has moved you forward. As soon as you understand that your fear has no logical basis you allow yourself to begin to face it.

Once you’ve broken your rationalization of fear, your fear of investing all of yourself in something, you can begin to overcome the emotion itself. This is simply a process of conditioning and steady increments. Gradually breaking down the illusion of pain your fears have created can allow you to move forward. Start using a little more of your capacity in steady increments and the irrational fears will lose their grip.

If this is such a simple process, then why don’t most people face their fears? The reason is rather simple. Admitting that an irrational fear is controlling your life is very difficult to face. It makes you feel weak and helpless. So, instead, most people decide to rationalize their fears and live forever in their shadows. I believe strongly that if you’ve found the path that has brought you to read these words then you have already decided not to be one of these people. You have made the decision to grow and face life even if that means some pain.

Courage is the first step to utilizing your full capacity. Start by breaking down the rationalizations you have made for your fears. Remove the legs that support fears that are completely illogical. Next, systematically condition yourself to take on more and more of your fears until you shred the illusion they project. Don’t accept the price fear is charging you for your life.

Drive

Few people I know are regularly doing something that absolutely excites and inspires them. When talking with these people you get the perception that they view life as endless drudgery speckled with brief escapes of joy or entertainment. I hold myself to a much higher standard. I believe every single moment of our lives needs to be moments filled with appreciation, enjoyment and passion. I believe that the fundamental reason for growth and improvement is simply to inject more fulfillment, passion and enthusiasm into those moments. Most people live at such a low percentage of their capacity because most of their time is spent doing things that doesn’t inspire them.

Drive and motivation comes from simply finding something grand enough to inspire you at the highest level of your being. With a strong drive and motivation living at your full capacity is far easier. How can you install more passion and drive into your own life? I believe it must start by raising the standards you find acceptable for your life. Define your standards. Don’t settle for less joy and passion than you could be experiencing.

The next real step to injecting more passion and drive into your life is to recognize that you are ultimately in control of your own life and destiny. Most of us have been raised to perform in a certain way, do certain things and live by certain rules. The only rules you need to follow are your own. Freedom is the secret to your own drive and passion. Don’t live by other peoples rules and expectations for your life. Ultimately you are the only person in control and responsible for your own destiny. Stand up and claim it.

I believe my life began to change the moment I was exposed to the possibilities for my life. I feel horrible for people who believe they are trapped in circumstances beyond their control. Worse I feel horrible for people who have settled for a dull and boring life because they don’t know the possibilities of living a life in full color, a life of passion and drive. You can live a life of far more enjoyment, passion and drive than you realize if you just decide to. I believe in you.

The next step to building your own drive is to start doing and using more of your capacity. Just as using more of your capacity breaks down the illusions of fear, it builds momentum into your future. Motivation builds momentum which creates more motivation. Don’t wait to get started and start today. As Zig Ziglar says, “Motivation follows action, not the other way around.”

Purpose

Let’s play a game. The game has three red pieces and four blue pieces. You can move red pieces backwards and forwards and you can move the blue pieces side to side. They are arranged on a big grid. When you move a blue piece next to a red piece it becomes a red piece. If you move a red piece next to a blue piece it becomes blue. Ready to play? Great.

What? You don’t understand how to play? I don’t understand, I explained all the rules of the game to you. Oh? You want to know how you win the game? Why do you need to know that? You know all the rules, surely you don’t need a purpose for the game?

Of course this example is entirely ridiculous. Nobody would play a game where there wasn’t a clearly defined purpose for the program. You can also intuitively understand why having rules for a game with no objective is pointless. Unfortunately most people live their lives in exactly the way I describe here. They have a whole bunch of rules for how they and everyone else around them must play the game of life and they are completely without purpose or objective. So they wander around without any true aim because they have absolutely no idea why they are doing it.

When you mention purpose to someone without one they instinctively become very uncomfortable. They might start to explain why they believe life has no meaning, that we live and then we die. If they aren’t completely nihilistic these people might say that they don’t know what the purpose of life is. I point this out because I used to be one of these people. I used to live without a purpose in life and I can assure you the difference this decision makes is tremendous.

The truth is you need a purpose for your life regardless of whether you believe in a higher power, or have no idea what the meaning of life is. You can’t ever expect to successfully play a game unless you know what the purpose is. Similarly, you can’t live life effectively unless you have a purpose. Without a purpose you wander around aimlessly in life. You might occasionally dabble in different experiences and pursuits but none of them have any significance or meaning to you. Worse, you have a very hard time standing true to your values and beliefs and other people easily manipulate you into their way of thinking.

I personally don’t believe that purpose is something instilled in us or something that we have to go search for. I believe purpose simply a decision. Purpose is simply deciding what the meaning you are going to assign to how you live your life. Purpose is decision for how you are going to make all decisions in the future. Without purpose you have no context to make any decision in your life at all. How can you possibly life to full capacity without purpose. Without purpose, how can you possibly know what full capacity even is?

If you haven’t made the decision of your purpose then you need to stop whatever you are doing and make that decision immediately. There is nothing more important than the decision of your purpose. Nothing can have any context or meaning without specifically deciding the reason and context for how and why you are going to live your life. Don’t tell me you don’t have time or that you are busy. Unless a speeding train is going to hit you in the next five seconds unless you move, I can’t think of a single excuse for why you should put off finding your purpose.

What is my purpose? My purpose is simple, to grow and help others grow. Nothing special or grandiose about it. You don’t need a ten page document listing your purpose in an elaborate mission statement. You just need a rough idea for how and why you are going to live your life. I personally believe that the simplicity of this message is critical. A really complicated purpose will likely leave out details of how you are going to live your life, whereas a simple one is more likely to be completely inclusive.

Your purpose doesn’t have to be original and unique either. I arrived at that wording for my basic purpose a fair time ago and I was surprised to hear Steve Pavlina echo identically the same words for his basic purpose a few weeks ago. Don’t worry about being unique in your purpose. You will be unique in how you live your life, but being different shouldn’t be a guiding force in your purpose. Just go with what feels right to you. You will know you’ve found your purpose when it the words resonate with you.

How can you start finding your purpose? Just start writing! Write stuff down, cross it out and write some more. Think back to the times when you were filled with the most courage and passion. Think back to times you felt most fulfilled. Utilize your memories of the past and desires of the future to shape your purpose. All I can offer is a few keys for creating your own purpose statement:

1. Happiness is not a purpose. This is a subtle point. Happiness is a part of everyone single persons purpose (whether they realize it or not) but it can’t be the entire thing. As I’ve said before, happiness is a slippery quality that comes only when we don’t directly chase it. Pursuing a higher meaning will likely create far more happiness than pursuing it directly.
2. It must involve other people. You have to include other people in your purpose. We are all connected and true fulfillment only comes when you are connected with others.
3. It must involve yourself. A purpose without you describes someone else’s life. You need other people but that includes yourself!
4. It must be positive. Your purpose should make you feel joyous and inspired not bitter and angry.
5. It must be something you do every day. In other words, your purpose is not a goal. You must be living your purpose every moment your alive. If you can only accomplish it at some later time, or worse, after your death, then go back and re-write it.

I’ve identified what I feel are the three major keys to living at full capacity for your life. For each person their obstacles for full capacity are different. The key to finding this full capacity is simply to identify and break down those obstacles. Don’t settle for anything less than you can be. Live at your fullest capacity.

Related Link: How to get a credit card with no credit Best credit card offers for all aims and purposes.

This is the fourth and final article in my series entitled, “Patterns for Success”. The patterns we use for installing changes in personal development are critical to ensure that we can have continued improvement and growth in our lives. A haphazard method of installing new ideas for our growth only rarely results in permanent change and success. In trying to identify my own pattern for installing personal development ideas into my life I come to the same three fundamental keys: ideas, implementation and review. In “Ideas” I outlined procedures for generating new ideas for your own improvement. In “Implementation” I discussed methods for implementing those ideas more effectively and the potential barriers to that implementation. Now, I will illustrate the third and final key in my pattern for success, review.

Patterns for Success

Introduction
Ideas
Implementation
Review

Most people intuitively understand that you need ideas in order to have improvement. From this spot, most people also easily recognize that you need to apply action and implement these ideas in order for them to come into being. Review, however, is an aspect of personal development that is often neglected and, as a result, many people miss this essential aspect of the pattern for improvement.

Review takes the ideas you have implemented and allows you to really learn from your mistakes and successes. By reviewing your progress you can gain understanding into the details of why something turned out the way it did. Review ensures that you only have to learn a lesson once. If we go back to our tree analogy, ideas are the seeds, implementation grows them strong then review roots those trees firmly in place so they won’t blow down when a storm passes by.

Really being able to learn from your past growth allows you to replicate it again more easily. If you have to restart back at square one every time you want to set a goal or reach an objective you will spend your whole life running in circles. Taking time to review the things you have already learned and solidify those details in your mind ensures you only make steps forward in your own growth.

If I were to answer the question as to what single factor has really propelled my own personal growth it would have to be starting this blog. Although I have pursued personal development for awhile now, starting this blog has been like throwing gasoline on a fire as my own personal growth has risen at an explosive rate. The major reason I feel that this has occurred is because blogging is a form of review. By writing down the lessons I have learned I really start to define those lessons inside my head and they become solid. Writing my ideas and experiences has allowed me to fully understand ideas that were once vague and sketchy.

The reason review needs to be a separate step from implementation is pretty clear. While myself and many other have pointed out that you learn by doing and through your own experiences, this isn’t technically true. You don’t learn from experiences, you learn from your evaluation of those experiences. Because most of us do this process at a subconscious level for all of our significant experiences, we don’t usually need to make this point distinct. Let’s say that an infant touches a hot cooking element, the child will immediately recoil from the intense heat. Afterwards the child will evaluate that touching hot burners means pain and will avoid it in the future. In this case the learning came from the evaluation period after an action, not the action itself.

Although we will invariably learn from our experiences at a subconscious level, the learning produced by these quick and simple evaluations is generally very fuzzy and vague. If you are unable to articulate the lessons you have learned, it will be very difficult to utilize them. You probably have noticed this phenomena just from reading my blog. There are likely many entries you have read where you felt a certain familiarity with an idea I presented. I think this is because your experiences had already taught you that lesson beforehand, but you never moved from that vague familiarity into the ability to articulate your thoughts on the issue.

As anyone who actively sets written goals will certainly understand, there is a marked difference between having a desire or impulse for a certain objective and actually having a written down goal staring back at you. The difference in clarity is very noticeable. By being able to articulate your desires and phrase them in terms of goals you gain enormous clarity and insight. This is the exact same reason review is such a crucial step. Gaining precise clarity about the lessons life has taught you ensures that you never have to learn a lesson more than once.

In a past article on dealing with frustrations I mentioned a minor, yet frustrating, computer incident I had over the past few weeks. Recognizing my own frustration, I realized this would be a perfect time to really lock in my process for handling frustrations in life. Writing that article helped me clarify and specify the steps I use for handling frustrations. Now when I face another frustrating situation I know I will be far better equipped to handle that situation.

Now I want to ask you a question. How many times in your life have you become really agitated, stressed or frustrated? Chances are you have experienced this emotion more times than you can count. Now let me ask you another question. Do you believe it is possible to effectively manage frustration so that you don’t get into a negative state when you encounter a problem? Now I think if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you would have to answer yes to that question as well. So here is my final question. If you have experienced frustration more than once (considerably more) and you understand there is a method for handling it, why do you still get really frustrated when you handle problems?

Most of us incorrectly assume that we learn lessons after our first experiences, and in my experience this is rarely true. For most of us it takes a very special event to really take those lessons in. Most people encounter the same problems over and over again and never really internalize a method of solving them. Review processes allow you to internalize those lessons. Now I’m not going to say that it is possible to master frustration after only experiencing it once, but each time you do a review process you should be able to learn from those mistakes and gain better control over your improvement.

Do review processes just apply to emotional problems like frustration? Of course not. By writing about goal-setting, habit changing or organization I really gain a lot more insights and clarity into my own behaviors so that I can utilize them more effectively in the future. Although writing and blogging are just two ways to do review, any method of review you use can give you a greater level of clarity.

Zig Ziglar, famous author and speaker frequently points out his belief that, “everyone should write a book, and the title of that books should be ‘What I Think You Ought To Do To Get the Most Out of Your Life’.” Because by writing the book you would be able to really understand and articulate your own thoughts on life. Later Zig points out how writing his best-selling book, “See You at the Top” really allowed him to fully understand the ideas that he believed but was never able to articulate.

Another example of the importance of review processes is to look at Steve Pavlina. After starting his own personal development writings, Steve noted that he has experienced tremendous personal growth. Why? The answer is simple. By articulating your thoughts and reviewing the lessons he has already learned, Steve is solidifying the foundation he has already laid.

Forms of Review Processes

Do you have to blog, speak or write about your experiences in order to do a review process? No, there are many methods for conducting reviews of what you have learned in your own life. Just remember to do some form of review. Don’t spend your time spinning in circles, ensure that you carefully review anything that your experiences teach you so that you don’t have costly setbacks. Here are a few methods of review I find helpful.

Journaling

Writing down your thoughts in a journal is an excellent form of review. By going over your thoughts on paper you can externalize any problems and gain incredible clarity. Unlike many of the other approaches I will recommend, this approach doesn’t require any other people to be effective, so it is probably a great place to start with your own review.

Blogging/Writing

As I’ve previously mentioned, blogging my own thoughts has been immensely helpful in my own personal development. Writing to an audience really takes the process of journaling to another level. Although writing to a journal can give insights into your own processes and allow you to learn lessons, by being accountable to an audience, the standards are much higher. Instead of just randomly writing about various musings you are now required to have even greater clarity about your thoughts.

Teaching/Mentoring

The best way to learn something is to teach others. I can understand that experience both from this blog and when I have taught first-aid and lifesaving courses. The amount of knowledge you gain from helping others is almost an order of magnitude greater than you receive through doing the processes yourself. Finding a method of imparting the experiences you have had onto other people is one of the best methods of review that I know of.

Meditating

Meditation can be an excellent method to think and learn from your experiences. By sitting with quiet and reflecting on the ideas you have implemented in the past. Meditation can be a peaceful and relaxing way to review and improve. There are many different types of meditation and I am not an expert. If you are interested in this form of review I would suggest picking up a book on the subject.

Weekly Reviews

I’m sure if you’ve spent any length of time on this blog you will know that I am just a little fanatical about doing weekly reviews. A weekly review basically takes the process of reviewing all of your implementations for the past week and dissects your progress. Far more thorough than daily journals and off-hand review processes a weekly review can be an excellent method for locking in all of the lessons the past week has taught you.

Instantaneous Reviews

An instantaneous review is a review you do mentally immediately after experiencing something. This review requires the most discipline and can often be an inconvenience if you are in the middle of something, but it is probably the most efficient. Whenever you learn anything from your experiences, finding a method of remembering and locking that lesson into place immediately after the experience can ensure no ideas fall through the cracks.

Review allows you to utilize the experiences you have had and use them to your fullest capacity. Without review you are likely to have to repeat an experience dozens of times before a concept really sinks in. While review can often seem time consuming, carving out even a small slice of time for it can have tremendous benefits.

It is the pattern we use for any improvement that determines the effectiveness and efficiency of that improvement. A strong and constructive pattern will allow us to experience growth rapidly, while a vague pattern without a clear aim will only show repeated failures and obstacles. Generate ideas, implement those ideas and review that implementation. A simple but essential pattern for success.

What can you do with this information? From the all the information I have given you on my own pattern for personal development, I think there are really three major things you can do to improve your own pattern for personal development:

1. Become more curious, enthusiastic and stubborn in finding ideas. Ideas hold the seeds for future growth and development. They have the potential to rapidly improve our lives if we can implement them. The quality of your action will be based on the quality of your ideas, so gather and select carefully.
2. Start being more systematic, thorough and focused in your implementation. Use goals, trials and conscious practice to ensure that you can successfully implement the ideas you have collected. Don’t try to implement everything at once, but take an ordered and careful progression.
3. Introduce more methods for accountability and review into your pattern for personal development. Whether this means journaling, mentoring or mediating, adding more review ensures that you don’t have costly setbacks and that every part of you is directed forwards.

Start looking at your own patterns, does it show similarities to the one I have used? How might you be able to improve your processes to ensure faster and greater results. Take a look at your pattern of success and get the most out of life!

Patterns for Success

Introduction
Ideas
Implementation
Review