Awaken Your Potential Today: 20 Powerful Ways to Make Life Bigger

Potential is an unexplored ocean. But the shore offers many delights.

20 powerful ways to awaken your potential today:

1. Try new things.
2. Learn new things.
3. Connect with a new person.
4. Stop doing things that have lost meaning or relevance.
5. Write a description of your best future self (not your best life). Adapt it every day for a week. What sticks with you?
6. Express gratitude for two things every time you notice yourself complaining. Power move: Express gratitude the same way you complain. When you complain with your voice, give voice to gratitude.
7. Set an achievable short-term goal.
8. Adopt an opportunity-perspective when facing obstacles, problems, or challenges. What opportunities do you have today?
9. Think about things you can do. Don’t fret over things you can’t change.
10. Visit a foreign country. (OK. It’s likely you can’t do this one today.)
11. Connect with a mentor or coach.
12. Visualize how you will achieve a big goal. It’s better to visualize the process than to dream about the win.
13. Change jobs. (See note on #10)
14. Make a meaningful commitment that requires energy and resources.
15. Decide to serve your future self today.
16. Volunteer at the Red Cross, a food kitchen, the SPCA, church, synagogue, mosque, or….
17. Intervene when you notice recurring patterns of negative energy.
18. Build relationships with people who live bigger than you live.
19. Complete this sentence, “If I could wave a magic wand ________.” Determine what you will do today to move in that direction. (Thanks for this suggestion, Paul.)
20. Focus on things you do to others rather than things others do to you.

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” William James

Which of the above suggestions could you use to awaken your potential today?

What might you add to this “awaken your potential” list?

Previously Published on leadershipfreak.blog with Creative Commons License

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UNRAVELING RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

Leadership isn’t difficult. It’s dangerous. Resistance wears many masks. It could smile, nod, and stab you in the back. Resistance could show up with lead boots on. Sometimes resistance shows up like an angry mob.

“… about 70% of all change initiatives fail.” HBR*

Unraveling resistance to change:

#1. Complacency.

Change is hard because complacency is a warm fuzzy blanket. Disruption makes us cling to our blanket. Panic intensifies in proportion to perceived disruption. Big disruption – big panic.

Struggling to preserve the status quo is panic in disguise.

Tip: Integrate ‘change’ language into daily conversations. Ask questions like, “How could we make this a little better?”

#2. Focus.

Change is difficult when leaders polish the wrong diamond. Polish yourself before selling the shiny change you dream of making.

“I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.” Aldous Huxley.

Tip: Begin with yourself. What needs to be true of you for people to charge into hell at your side?

Change is stubborn because the challenge is people, not systems or structures. Don’t show up like a magician. “Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat.” No one cares about your damn rabbit.

The trouble is within not without. You are doomed until you focus on people.

Tips:  Spend as much time dealing directly with people as you spend planning execution. Get unofficial leaders on board. Be humble, curious, and open.

#3. Winning.

Change efforts are difficult when viewed as events instead of a continual process. Many small wins over time come easier than one giant win on July 31.

Tip: Cut the elephant into small pieces.

What types of resistance do leaders face when leading change?

What have you learned about successfully leading change?

Still curious:

Leading Change: Why Things Get Worse Before they Get Better (90 second read)

*Cracking the Code of Change (hbr.org)

Previously Published on leadershipfreak.blog with Creative Commons License

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