Unlocking Your Potential

In the entire history of the human race there never has been and never will be, anyone just like you. The odds are that another person with your unique combination of characteristics and qualities will ever be born, are more than 50 billion to 1. This means, that you have the potential to do something special, or even extraordinary with your life, something that no one else can do.

The only real question you have to answer is: Are you going to do it?

Although it's true that some people are born with extraordinary gifts, most of us start off with talents and abilities that are, more or less just about average. Most men and women who achieved great success in some field, have done it by developing their natural talents and abilities to a very high degree in some special area of interest. Your individual potential is something that has to be nurtured and developed and worked on, if you will ever reach the point when you get something really great out of yourself.

One definition of individual potential is contained in the equation:

IA + AA x A = IHP

The first two letters - IA stand for – Inborn Attributes.

These are which you are born with: your natural tendencies, your temperament and your general mental ability.

The next two letters - AA stands for – Acquired Attributes.

These are the knowledge, skill, talent, experience and ability that you gained or developed as you grown and matured.

The third letter - A stand for - your Attitude or, the kind of mental energy that you bring to bear on; your combination of Inborn and Acquired attributes.

And finally - IHP stands for - Individual Human Performance.

So the formula is:

Inborn Attributes plus Acquired Attributes, multiplied by your Attitude equals your Individual Human Performance.

Now since the quality and quantity of your attitude can be increased almost without limit, a person with average inborn attributes and average acquired attributes can still perform at a high-level, if he or she has a very positive mental attitude.

It is your attitude as much or more than your aptitude, that determines your performance.

It was for this reason that Earl Nightingale referred to attitude, as the most important word in the language. We know that we should have a positive mental attitude but, what is it exactly?

A positive mental attitude, using the definition that I prefer, is simply a way of responding to adversity and difficulty. The only way that you can tell what kind of an attitude you really have is by observing how you react when things go wrong.

Your attitude in turn, is determined by your expectations.

If you expect things to go well, you will have a generally positive attitude. If you, believe that something wonderful gonna happen to you today, your attitude will be positive and optimistic. You will be enthusiastic and primed for success.

Your expectations are in turn determined by your beliefs about yourself and your world.

If you have a positive world view, if you, believe that the world is a pretty good place and that you are a pretty good person, then you will have a tendency to expect the best from yourself, from others, and from situations you meet. Your positive expectations will be expressed as a, positive mental attitude and people will reflect back to you the attitude that you express toward them.

So your values and beliefs largely determine the quality of your personality.

But where do your beliefs come from?

This brings us to perhaps the greatest breakthrough in psychology in the 20th century - The discovery, of the self-concept.

Your self-concept is your bundle of beliefs about yourself and about every part of your life and your world. It is the, master program of your mental or subconscious computer.

Your beliefs determine your reality because you always see the world through a screen of preconceptions and prejudices formed by your belief structure.

For this reason your self-concept - your belief structure, perceives and predicts your levels of performance and effectiveness in every area of your life. You always act in a manner consistent with your self-concept, consistent with the bundle of beliefs that you have acquired from infancy onward.

There is a direct relationship between your level of effectiveness, and your self-concept. No matter what the area may be, you can never perform at a higher or better level than your concept is, or your ability to perform in any area.

We also know that your self-concept is largely subjective, that it is not based on fact but instead on impressions and information that you've taken in about yourself that except it as true. In most cases where your self-concept in a particular area is low, it's based on erroneous data. It's based on self-limiting beliefs or false information that you have accepted as true, and on which you then, act upon.

Not only that you have an overall self-concept which is a, summary statement of all your beliefs about yourself, but you also have a series of mini self-concepts, which control your performance and behavior in each individual area of your life that you consider important.

For example, you have a self-concept for how much you weigh, for how much you eat, for how much you exercise or how fit you are. You have a self-concept for how you dress and how you appear to other people. You have a self-concept of yourself as a parent, and as a child to your parents. You have a self-concept for how popular you are among your social circle. You have a self-concept of how well you play each sport and even, for how well you play each part of each sport.

For example a golfer may have a self-concept as a great driver, and another self-concept as a poor putter.

If you're in sales you have self-concept for how good you are a sales person overall, but you also have other self-concepts about how good you are at prospecting, how good you are in answering objections, and how good you are in closing.

You have a self-concept for how well you manage your time and for how well organized and efficient you are, in both your personal and work life. And you will always perform in a manner consistent with these self-concepts.

In addition to all of your other self-concepts, you also have a self-concept for how much money you're capable of earning. You can never earn much more or less, than your self-concept level of income.

If you earn more than 10% above or below what you feel you are worth, you will immediately begin engaging in compensatory behaviors.

If you earn 10% too much you begin to spend the money, to loan it to, invest it in things that you know nothing about and even, give it away or lose it.

We call these throwaway behaviors, and they occur to anyone who suddenly finds himself or herself, with more money than is consistent with his or her self-concept.

There are countless scores of men and women who have won large sums of money in various lotteries. In most cases, if they were working at laboring jobs when they won the money, in two or three years they are back working at the same jobs, their money is gone and they have no idea where it went.

Now if you earn, 10% or more below your self-concept level of income, you begin to engage in scrambling behaviors. You begin to think more creatively to, work longer and harder you, look at second income opportunities or think about changing jobs in order to get your income back up into your self-concept range.

Your self-concept level of income, which is according to one study about 40% below what the average person really feels what he or she needs and would like to earn is called your - comfort zone.

When money is concerned, people struggle to get in to their comfort zones, and once they get there they do everything possible to resist anything that would move them out, of their comfort zones.

This natural tendency to get stuck in a comfort zone is called homeostasis - a striving for constancy and consistency.

In essence, your comfort zone is the great enemy of your individual potential. Because of it, the natural tendency of all human beings is to resist any change even positive change that would force them to leave. their comfort zones.

Your comfort zone soon becomes a habit, and your habits eventually, become ruts. Then, instead of using your intelligence and creativity to get out of your ruts, you use most of your mental abilities trying to make your rut more comfortable, justifying and, rationalizing your situation all the while.

Fortunately, there's a way that you can increase your income by, systematically raising or jacking up your self-concept level of income. Once you learn how to do this as you will later in this book, you will be able to increase your income 25 - 50% per year, for as long as you want!

Your self-concept is made up of three parts.

The first of this three parts, is your self-ideal.

This is the vision or description of the person that you would most like to be in every respect. This ideal or vision of your possible future, exerts a powerful influence on your behavior and on the way that you think of yourself.

This ideal is made up of a combination of all the qualities and attributes that you admire in yourself and in other people, living and dead.

Now we know that, high-performing men and women have very clear self-ideals toward which they are constantly striving.

The more clear you are about the person you want to become, the more likely it is that day by day, you will evolve into that person. You will rise to the height of what you most admire, to your dominant aspirations for yourself and your life.

We also know that unsuccessful and unhappy men and women have only a very fuzzy ideal, or in most cases no self-ideal at all. They give little or no thought to the person they want to be, and to the qualities they would like to develop in themselves.

Because they give no thought to it, their growth and evolution eventually slows down and stops. They get stuck in a mental rut and they, stay there. They don't change or improve.

The second part of your self-concept is your self-image. Your self-image is the way you see yourself in your minds eye, and the way you think about yourself minute by minute, as you go about your daily activities.

You always perform in the outside consistent with a picture that you hold of yourself on the inside.

We also know that through the remarkable technique of, self-image modification which you'll learn in this book, it is possible for you to dramatically improve your performance by, systematically changing the pictures that you hold about yourself in that area.

Your self-image is often called your, inner mirror into which you, look to see how you supposed to act in a particular situation.

The third part of your self-concept, is your self-esteem.

Your self-esteem is how you, feel about yourself. It Is the emotional component of your personality, and it is the foundation quality of high performance of happiness and personal effectiveness. It is like the reactor core in a nuclear power plant, it is the source of the energy and enthusiasm vitality and optimism that power your personality and make you into a high achieving man or woman.

Your level of self-esteem is determined by how valuable and worthwhile you feel on the one hand, and how competent and capable you feel on the other. Each one reinforces the other. When you feel, good about yourself you perform well. When you perform well, you feel good about yourself.

The very best definition of self-esteem is - how much, you like yourself.

And because you become what you think about, if you repeat: I like myself, I like myself, I like myself; your self-esteem goes up, and your ability to perform and your level of effectiveness in every area of your life goes up simultaneously, with your self-esteem.

The more you like yourself, the better you do at everything you put your mind to. The more you like yourself, the more confidence you have, the more positive is your attitude, the healthier and more energetic you are, and the happier you are overall.

Men and women with high self-esteem tend to be peak performers and high achievers in their work and in their personal relationships; and the wonderful fact is that you could raise your self-esteem with will, by simply repeating with enthusiasm and conviction the words: I like myself, I like myself. I, like myself!

Some people were taught to believe that, liking yourself is the same as being a conceited or arrogant or overbearing or noxious. On the contrary. These negative behaviours are really manifestation of low self-esteem, of not liking oneself very much at all.

Here are two rules with regard to self-esteem and self-liking:

Number one, you can never like or love anyone else more, than you like or love yourself. You can't give away, what you don't have.

Rule number two, is that you can never expect anyone else to like and love you more, than you like, love or respect yourself!

Your own level of self-liking and self-esteem is the control valve, on the quality of the human relationships. It is the problem or the solution, to every situation.

Everything you do to build and reinforce your level of self-esteem will improve and increase your level of satisfaction, your effectiveness and your happiness in everything else you do.

The logical question to ask at this point is: Where do your self-concept come from? We know that we all have one but, where is it originate?

The fact is that, no one is born with the self-concept.

Everything that you know and believe about yourself today, you have learned as a result of what has happened to you since you were an infant. Each child comes into the world as pure potential, with a particular temperament and certain inborn attributes but with, no self-concept at all.

Every: attitude, behavior, value, opinion, belief, and fear has been learned, therefore, if there are elements of your self-concept that don't serve your purposes, they can be unlearned, as I'll explain later.

An example of this ability to unlearn an old self-concept and relearn a new one, is contained in a story that appeared not so long time ago about 32 year old woman who has involved in an automobile accident.

As a result of hitting her head, she experienced total amnesia. At the time of the accident she was married, with two children 8 and 10 years old. She was extremely shy, she had a stutter, and she was very nervous around other people. She had a very poor self-concept, and a very low level of self-esteem.

To compound this problem she didn't work, and she had a very limited social circle.

Because she had total amnesia, when this woman woke up in the hospital she didn't remember a single thing about her past life. She didn't remember her parents, she didn't remember her husband or her children. Her mind was complete blank!

This was so unusual that several specialists, neurosurgeons and psychologist were called in to talk to her and to examine her. It was such an extraordinary case that she became very well known.

When she recovered her physical health, she was interviewed on radio and television. She started studying her condition and eventually she wrote articles and a book describing her experience. Then she began traveling and giving lectures to medical and professional groups. Ultimately, she became a recognized authority on amnesia.

The amazing thing was that with no memory of the previous reinforcement history of childhood and her upbringing and as a result of being the center of attention and been treated as though she was really important person, she developed a totally new personality. She became positive, self-confident, and outgoing. She became gregarious, extremely friendly, and she developed a tremendous sense of humor. She became popular and met in move an entirely new social circle. In effect, she developed a brand new self-koncept that was completely consistent with high performance, happiness and life satisfaction.

And you, can do the same.

Once you understand how your self-concept was formed, it will be possible for you to bring about changes that make you into the kind of person that you admire and want to be liked; the kind of person who got to accomplish the goals and dreams that are important to you.

As I said before, a child is born with no self-concept. A child learns who he or she is and, how important and valuable by the way he or she is treated from infancy onward.

The infant, has a tremendous need for love and touching. In fact, you can't give a child too much love and affection during the formative years. Children need love like roses need rain, almost as much as they need food and drink and shelter.

The foundation of adult personality was laid out in the first 3 to 5 years. The health of the developing child's personality will be largely determined

by the quality and quantity of unbroken love and affection that the child receives from his or her parents during this time period.

A child who is raised with a lot of love and warmth, a lot of affection and encouragement, will tend to develop a positive and stable personality early in life.

A child who was raised with criticism and punishment, will tend to grow up fearful, suspicious and distrustful with, the potential for all kinds of personality problems that may manifest themselves later in life like low self-esteem or a negative mental attitude.

Children are born with two remarkable qualities.

The first, is that they are born largely unafraid.

Children are born with only two physical fears - the fear of loud noises, and the fear of falling. All other fears have to be taught to the child through, repetition and reinforcement when the child is growing up.

Anyone who's ever tried to raise a small child to the age of five or six, knows that they are not afraid of anything. They would climb up on ladders, run into traffic, grabs sharp instruments, and generally do things that appear suicidal to the adult. This is because they have no fears at all, until those fears are instilled in them by their parents and others.

The second remarkable quality of children, is that they are completely uninhibited.

They laugh, they cry, they wet themselves, they say and do exactly what they feel like, with no concern whatsoever for the opinion of others. They’re completely spontaneous and express themselves easily and naturally, with no inhibitions at all.

Have you ever seen the self-conscious baby?

This is everyone's, natural state. It is the way we are comming to the world – unafraid, and uninhibited. Completely, fearless and able to express ourselves easily in all situations.

You probably would have noticed that as an adult when ever you are in safe situation with people that you trust, you often revert to this, natural state of fearlessness and spontaneity. You feel loose and at ease, you feel free just to be yourself.

You also recognize that these are some of the best moments of your life! These, are your peak experiences.

Children are learning in two ways during their formative years:

First, they learn by imitation of one or both parents.

Many of adult habit patterns including our values, our attitudes, our beliefs and our behaviors were formed by watching and by listening to our parents when we are growing up. The saints: „Like father like son” or, „Like mother like daughter“ are certainly true. Often the child will identify strongly with one parent and, will be more influenced by that parent then by the other.

The second way children learn is by moving away from discomfort toward comfort or, away from pain toward pleasure.

Sigmund Freud called this "the pleasure principle," and he said it was the basic motivation for all human behavior. And childrens behavior from toilet

training to eating habits, is shaped by this continual movement toward comfort or personal pleasure, and away from pain or discomfort.

Now of all this discomforts that a child can suffer which affect his or her behavior, the withdrawal of the love and approval of the parent is the most traumatic and scary.

Children have an intense ongoing need for their parents love support and encouragement. When the parent withdraws his or her love in an attempt to discipline, control or punish the child, the child becomes extremely uncomfortable, and even frightened.

The perception of the child is everything. When the child perceives that love has been withdrawn, the child immediately begins to change his or her behavior, in order to win back the parents love and approval.

Without a continuous and unbroken flow of unconditional love, the child's need for security is frustrated and his or her fearlessness and spontaneity become lost.

One psychologist said that all personality problems in life are the results of love withheld.

Probably everything that we do in life from childhood onward is either to get love, or to compensate for the lack of love. Most of our unhappy memories of childhood are associated with the perceived lack of love that we received or didn't received from our parents.

At the early age, as a result of mistakes parents make when raising their children, especially the use of destructive criticism and physical punishment, the child begins to lose his natural fearlessness and spontaneity, and begins to develop negative habit patterns.

A habit, positive or negative, is a conditioned response to stimuli. It is learned as a result of repetition over and over, until it's firmly ingrained in the subconscious mind where it takes power of its own.

The two main negative habit patterns that we all learn in childhood are called – the inhibitive, and the compulsive.

The inhibitive negative habit pattern is learned when the child is told, over and over again: Don’t! Get away from that! Spot that! Don't touch! Watch out!

The child's natural impulse is to touch, and taste, and smell and feel and explore, every part of his or her world. But when the parents react to the child's actions by shouting or, becoming upset and spanking the child or some other form of negative reinforcement that child doesn't understand. Instead the child internalizes the message that “Every time I try something new or different, mommy and daddy gets mad at me and stop loving me. It must be because I'm: too small, I'm incompetent, I'm incapable, I'm stupid! I can't. I can't. I can't…”

This feeling that: “I can't,” very soon crystallizes into the fear of failure.

… and the fear of failure is the greatest single obstacle to success in adult life. The fear of failure rises up inside of us and paralyzes us whatever we think of taking any kind of a risk or, doing anything new or different that might involve the loss of time or, money or, emotion.

All negative habit patterns are manifested in the physical body. When you're in the grip of a negative habit pattern, you feel and react exactly as though you're in danger, of physical harm.

The inhibited negative habit pattern is experienced down the front of the body, starting in the solar plexus.

So for example, if you're afraid of public speaking, and you were told that you will be called up in front of a large audience, your first reaction would be a feeling of fright, a tightening in your solar plexus - the emotional center of your body. And the more you thought about the upcoming event, the more the fear would spread, your heart would start beating faster, and you will begin breeding more rapidly and with shallower breaths. Your throat might go dry, and you might begin to get a pounding in front of your head similar to a migraine headache. Your bladder might also fill up and you would have an irresistible urge to run into the bathroom.

All these physical manifestations of the negative habit pattern are usually, programmed into your subconscious mind before you reach the age of six.

All negative habit patterns are manifested in a state of anxiety and nervousness accompanied by: perspiration, heart palpitations and, emotional responses such as irritation, impatience and even angry outbursts.

The second negative habit pattern that children learn is the compulsive.

The compulsive negative habit pattern is learned by the child when he or she is told, over and over again: “You better, or else…” Parents say: “If you don't do or stop doing something rather you're in big trouble!”

To the child, trouble with their parents always means the withdrawal of love and approval.

When parents make their love conditional upon the child's performance or behavior, the child soon internalizes the message that: “I am not loved and therefore I am not safe, until and unless I do, what pleases my mommy and my daddy. Therefore, I have to do, what pleases them. I have to do, what makes them happy. I have to do, what they want. I have to, I have to, I have to…”

This compulsive negative habit pattern, which develops from being a victim of conditional love, soon manifest itself in the fear, of rejection.

The fear of rejection is the second major reason for failure and underachievement in adult life.

A person who's been raised with conditional love, tends to be overly concerned if not obsessed with the opinions of others, especially with the opinions of his or her parents, or spouse, or boss.

This compulsive negative habit pattern is manifested physically down the back, especially in the form of tension in the neck and shoulders and stabbing pains in the back muscles.

Women, tend to manifest the fear of rejection in: depression, withdrawal, physical symptoms and psychosomatic disorders.

Men tend to manifest this compulsive negative habit pattern in what is called, Type A behavior. This behavior usually stems from the relationship between the father and the son or, the father and the daughter.

It is caused by the feeling of the child that he or she never got the quality and quantity of love needed from the parent. For men, this

unconscious striving for love from the father is transferred in adult life to the boss and the workplace.

Type A behavior is manifested as an obsessive over-concerned about getting the approval of the boss. In extreme cases, this can cause a person to become obsessive about his work, even to the point of ruining his health and his family.

I remember when my best friends father died and he took it very badly because, he felt that he have never been able to get it right, that he have never done the things necessary to get his love and acceptance. For two years afterwards, he felt a great sense of loss and sadness.

Then one evening, he took his mother out to dinner and, shared his feelings with her. She told him that he had no reason to be sad or upset. She explained that his father had not withheld his love. He’d have never had the love to give in the first place.

Because of his background and upbringing, he had very little love for himself and, therefore very little love for his children including him. She told him that there was nothing that he could have done to get more love, than he got. It just, wasn't there, to give.

Over time, I found that most men who suffer from Type A behavior, are still trying to earn the love and respect of their fathers.

But what I learned after my best friends father died was that, whatever love you get or got from your father, that was all there was. There is nothing that you could have done, and nothing that you can do now to change it.

Once you understand and accept that, you can relax a little and then, get on with the rest of your life.

The greatest problem of human life, is fear. It is fear that robs us from happiness. It’s fear that causes us to settle for far less than we are capable of. It’s fear that is the root cause of negative emotions, unhappiness and problems in human relationships.

The only good thing about fear is that it is learned, and because of this it can be, unlearned.

The fear of failure and the fear of rejection are, learned responses, programmed into us prior to the age of six. These fears set the upper and lower limits of your comfort zone. Because of them, you do enough not to be criticized or rejected on the low side, and you avoid risk or failure, on the high side. And when you establish your comfort zone you stay there to avoid any feeling of fear or anxiety.

The wonderful thing is as i said, that you can unlearn these fears. You can consistently and persistently eradicate them from your nature, and from your personality. And once you do that, everything you want becomes possible for you.

The opposite of fear is love, starting with self-love.

There is an inverse of opposite relationship between self-esteem and fears of all kinds. The more you like yourself, the less you fear failure and rejection. The more you like yourself, the more willing you are to reach out and take the risks that will lead you onto success and happiness, that will propel you, out of your comfort zone.

And you can raise your self-esteem, overriding and weakening your fears by repeating, with emotion and conviction, the powerful words –I like myself, I, like myself, I like myself, over and over. Start off by repeating “I like myself” 50 or 100 times per day, until it locks, into your subconscious.

You'll soon be able to see and feel the difference in your self-confidence, your competence, and your relationships with other people.

Here's a powerful action exercise that can really open your eyes. Finish the following sentence with as many answers as you can think of. Here it is:

If I would be totally unafraid of anything or anyone, what I would do differently in my life, is….

Once again, this is important. Ask yourself: If I were totally unafraid of anything or anyone, what I would do differently in my life, is… and finish that sentence with as many answers as possible.

When you sit down and write the answers that complete that sentence, you will learn two things:

First, you will learn what the big role fear plays in your life.

Second, you will catch a glimpse of all the wonderful things you'll be able to do, once you have unlearned your fears, and develop the qualities of unshakable courage and self-confidence, as you will, in the articles that come.

In the entire history of the human race, there never has been anyone just like you. You have the potential to do something special, even extraordinary.

1) If you had no fear of failure, what would you do?

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2) If the opinions or approval of others didn’t concern you, what would you do?

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3) What positive qualities do you possess that you like?

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4) What negative qualities do you wish you didn’t have?

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5) If you eavesdropped on people talking about you, what do you hope you’d hear?

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6) Action Commitment: What will you do differently because of what you have learned?

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