Retirement is not a concept in your mind if you must maximize your potential
Mediocrity is when you do not maximize your potential at each point
You must guard and protect your potential
Possessing without releasing destroys potential
Work is the central instrument for releasing your potential
God created every creation for a purpose and empowered each creation with the potential or ability to fulfill that purpose and this includes you. So every ability or potential you possess will assist you in one way or the other to fulfill God’s purpose for your life.
Also, every purpose God reveals for your life means you have the potential to fulfill it. In the same way purpose is not always known, you can possess certain potential and not know.
A lot of people like you have been happily benefitting from the Myles Munroe Way ebook that breaks down ALL of Dr Myles Munroe’s teachings and books so you don’t have to read over 50 books. I am offering you full access here
What is potential by Dr. Myles Munroe?
Potential is simply what you can do that you have not done. It is your unexposed abilities, unused success, dormant gifts, and hidden talents. It is the sum total of who you are that you are yet to reveal. The current state of a person tells nothing of what that person can become so you cannot determine your potential by merely looking at who and where you are right now.
The most graphical representation of what potential means is a seed. As tiny and unseeming as a seed looks, it possesses the ability to be transformed into a tree, two trees, and even a forest. All that power to become is hidden within the seed and that is its potential.
The moment you achieve it, it is no longer a potential. Walking is a potential for a three-month-old baby but it is not a potential for you because you have walked already. Your potential is those things you can do but have not done yet.
Potential Needs Right Environment
Now, in the same way that seed possesses the potential to become a forest but will never become one until it is placed in the right situation and environment that can foster the release of its potential, you will not by default maximize your potential except you are placed in the right situation, and that you must do consciously.
To use your potential is not the same as maximizing your potential. Your smartphone is a clear example of this: if you only use it to make calls, you are utilizing its potential but you are not maximizing it. You maximize your potential when you do everything you can do and when you release every ability within you to its last.
As long as you are alive there will always be something you can do that you have not done. So to maximize your potential you must erase the mindset of retirement. You must continue to do things you can do that you have not done, until you die.
Comparison destroys potential
One of the easiest enemies to come upon when you begin to release your potential is comparison. At every point of your life, no matter how little or great the work you have done is, there will always be someone who has done lesser and someone who has done more.
You are maximizing your potential, not when you are doing better than everybody else but when you are doing all you could do at that point.
A car with a speed limit of 220 mph but is driving at 150 mph might be faster than every other car on the highway but still is not maximizing its potential.
There should be no point in your life where you measure your success by how much you have done compared to others; instead, measure by how much you have done compared to what you can do. If you produce below your potential you are living a mediocre life.
Mediocrity is not living below “the standard” but living below your potential. To maximize your potential in life, therefore, you must continue to release your potential until there’s nothing more to release and practically, that means until you leave the Earth.
How To Release Your Potential by Myles Munroe
1. Know your source
God is your source and the source of all your potential. Since He is your source, He is also your sustainer. You cannot maximize your potential outside God.
This is because God, as your source, determines who you are, what you can do, how you function, why you exist, the resources you need for optimal performance, the conditions you need, and the method(s) by which you fulfill your potential.
Also, because you are created just like God, it is in understanding who God is and what He can do that you understand who you are and what you can do. Separation from God is death because he is the life of your spirit. Your abilities become meaningful with God.
2. Understand your function
When God breathed the breath of life into man at creation, He put His eternal Spirit into man and that spirit was to control the activities of the soul and body of man on Earth.
The Fall of Man brought man down to being controlled by his senses but that did not change God’s design. Man is still designed to be controlled by his spirit connected to the Spirit of God. Remember we talked about separation from God just now.
Unlike your body and your soul, your spirit is limitless. Living from your spirit takes you back to the way God functions and designed you to function. God operates on the basis of potential, He does not focus on what is or the present situation. He focuses on what could be. We call that faith — looking beyond what is and reaching out to what can be.
To maximize your potential you must return to functioning by faith, prioritizing what could be over what is. Faith is a requirement, not an option. While your life currently looks limited and unsatisfying, faith is the bucket that draws from the well of potential within you. It starts first by believing then moving to action based on what you believe.
As explained earlier, the reason for possessing potential is because God has a purpose for your life. If there were no purpose there would be no potential. To die empty and maximize your potential, you must intentionally channel your potential to the fulfillment of God’s purpose for your life.
This makes discovering your purpose of utmost priority in your life. If you keep doing all you can do but do not do it for the reason it was created you are wasting purpose. The steering wheel of your car was created to turn but if it keeps turning without moving the car, it is releasing its potential but not fulfilling its purpose.
Your purpose is to express the image of God, enjoy fellowship with God, dominate the Earth, bear fruits, and reproduce yourself.
You possess five resources that will help you maximize your potential. They are spiritual resources (God’s Spirit and Word), physical resources (your body and the people around you), material resources (money and every other material thing you possess), resources of the soul (your will, mind, and emotions), and the resources of time. These are all you possess for maximizing your potential.
What you have currently is enough resources and what you do not have yet is not needed for moving to the next step in maximizing your potential. Your ability to maximally use these five resources at every stage of your life will determine how effective you will be in maximizing your potential.
5. Maintain the right environment
Your environment has a direct impact on your potential and God understands this that was why He placed Adam in Eden, God’s ideal concept of the environment man should thrive. The perfect environment that will help you thrive must be God’s presence as well as structures that feed, activate, enhance and foster the release of your potential.
It should be characterized by the presence of God, a relationship with Him, fellowship with him, and freedom to obey Him. The structures around you that dictate your environment include your friends, the books you read, the movies you watch, the magazines you read, your hobbies, your musical appetite, your heroes, who feed you spiritually, your home, school, work, and play environments.
All the above should be carefully screened, analyzed, and adjusted to feed, enhance and foster your potential.
Work is at the center of maximizing your potential. In fact, work is simply releasing your potential and since you understand that potential is something you have not done that you can do, work is not so much doing things as it is delivering or releasing hidden stuff: writing a book that has not been written, singing a song, building a house, or tending for a plant that would otherwise be dead.
Work arises out of a desire to contribute to the world’s wealth and well-being by giving of yourself. It is not the same as going to a job. If you are going to a job but are not making any contribution you are not working. Work is the activation of strength and energy.
While potential is the existence of possibilities, work is the activation of possibilities — putting in energy to bring forth something that can be brought forth in a particular place or situation but would not be brought forth without someone’s input. Work is the means to produce a desired result.
Possessing a possibility without releasing it destroys potential. Whatever you do not make use of diminishes. If you continue to hoard or hide your talent and abilities, you will soon no longer possess them.
Because you read this far, I want to give you Lifetime Access to over $1,000 worth of mentorship materials from Dr. Myles Munroe on purpose, leadership, success, wealth and the Kingdom. Get full access to them here.
Olusegun Iyejare is a career coach and certified counselor. He helps individuals discover and maximize their potential to live satisfying lives regardless of obvious limitations holding them back.
