ROW Episode 39

In this episode we explore some secrets to actualizing our potential, achieving success, and living a fulfilling and happy life.

Transcript

Sovaida: 0:08

Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast dedicated to envisioning a better world and to infusing hope that we can make the principled choices to build that world. In this episode, we explore some secrets to actualizing our potential, achieving success, and living a fulfilling and happy life. I recently attended a conference, a bunch of wonderful folks from around the world who got together to figure out how they could make their work more meaningful in the workplace and how they could basically uplift themselves and make the working place a place more conducive to growth and to happiness. One of the things that struck me was that so many folks have achieved success. They're at the top of their careers, have the lifestyle they've always wanted, the house, the cars, the vacation the clothes, the jewelry, the status, the power, the influence, and yet find themselves surprisingly unfulfilled and unhappy. The question that I got a lot at this conference when I talked one on one with people was,"People view me as a success. Then why do I feel so unhappy and unfulfilled?" I've been pondering this question a lot, reimagining a world in which we actually got some answers to this question and we're able to pull ourselves out of this mire, because it's a very unpleasant way to live life. And here's what I discovered. What often underlies these feelings is actually a set of beliefs that operate in the background of our lives. It's sort of like, the way the operating system of a computer works, driving our choices and behaviors in a way that interferes with the authentic expression of who we are. So today I thought I would propose a couple of shifts in perspective that can free us up to live the lives that not only meet some of the external indicia of success, but also to live lives of meaning in which we're liberated from the scourge of comparing ourselves with others and competing with them. Here's a new perspective. Imagine what would happen and how different our human experience, both individual and societal, would be if we were to believe that we are each born with a pre ordained or factory installed distinctive capacity or potential that is unique to us, and that our job in this life is merely to exercise the gift of free will, that we talk about as volition, to actualize as much of this potential as we can. In other words, here's a formula that I propose that if I take my factory installed unique potential and I add to it my volition to actualize that potential, it will lead to true success, fulfillment, in other words a sense of meaning, and lasting happiness. Wow, that's an amazing package. Let's see if we can convince ourselves that this is actually the path down which we should all go. Let's start by asking ourselves, What do we mean by preordained measure or factory installed distinctive capacity? It is actually a combination of strengths and weaknesses--it's actually pretty simple-- of capacities and limitations that is unique to each of us. Now, you and I know that early on in each of our lives, it quickly becomes clear that each of us has certain strengths and certain weaknesses. When I think back over my own childhood, I knew very early on that I had a gift for language and languages and music, yet I was very poor at sports and I was okay at maths but I wasn't stellar. And then you start to notice that even within one family, different siblings raised by the same parents, in the same climate, eating the same food, subject to basically the same influences, have different distinctive capacities. It becomes apparent very quickly. So we conclude that the measure of our individual capacities varies, it differs. This difference in capacity is, however, neither good nor bad. It just is. We just have to recognize and accept it. And it's reflects a difference in degree. Most importantly, everyone has a set of distinctive capacities. No one is deprived of them. So all of us are born with something special to offer this world. Now let's unpack the idea of our preordained or factory installed distinctive capacities some more and try to understand our responsibility in relation to our capacity. I want to share with you an analogy that I find very helpful in understanding this concept, and that is to think of life as something in which you and I, we are the weavers of a tapestry, which is our life. When we're born, we're given the loom, and we're each provided a set of threads. These are things over which we have no control. This is part of the factory installed, right? We come with these things. They're provided to us. Some of us arrive with silken thread. Some of us are given wool. Some are brightly colored. Some are dull. Textures are different, and so on. In other words, we don't determine the conditions in which we're born: time, place society, parents, wealth, poverty, our skin color, our gender, our religion, right? These are all givens when we come into this world. They're preset. But what we can control, and what we do have responsibility for, is the design that we weave. So this is where we have responsibility. Now what if, in addition, we came to understand that what matters is not the size, or the capacity that we have, the size of our receptacle, so to speak, but how much of it we fill. In other words, how much effort we put in, in relation to the capacity we have. Here's a way to think about this. I may arrive in this world with the capacity in a certain sphere of a teaspoonful. You on the other hand may have the capacity of a bucket, or a bathtub, or a river. Let's go with the bathtub for the purposes of this example. Now, what matters is not the size of my receptical as compared with the size of your recepticle. What matters is how much of what I've got I actually fill up. If I, with the capacity of a teaspoon full, am able to fill it, and you with the capacity of the bathtub can only fill half of it, the question is which one of us has done better? Now you could argue that your half a bathtub contains thousands of teaspoons and therefore you in comparison to me in terms of our achievement have achieved a lot more and yet you've only filled half of your potential, half of your receptacle, whereas I have filled a hundred percent. What does this lead us to understand? It leads us to understand how nonsensical it is to engage in this whole business of comparing ourselves with each other. All we should be trying to be focused on in life is doing our very best to fulfill as much of our preordained potential as possible, without regard to what anyone around us is doing. So we measure ourselves, not against each other, but against our own individual potential. Now, when we come to this perspective, we suddenly feel extremely liberated and light. I know when I work with my coaching clients, when we get to this point, there's such a sense of palpable relief because this pressure that's been building inside us like a pressure cooker that is imposed on us by the expectations of our family and our friends and society, whether those expectations are real or whether they're in our heads, they really squelches our ability to be ourself, our authentic and highest self. And now we're liberated from these scourges of comparison and competition. These two, comparison and competition, are destructive not only to our spirit, but to our characters. Because, think about it, when you engage in comparison with another human being, no matter what you conclude, it's not good for you. Let's say you compare yourself with X and you decide,"You know what? I'm doing pretty well compared with X." Now you're feeling a little superior and it encourages a sense of hubris and arrogance in you, which is definitely not good. On the other hand, if you compare yourself with X and you think,"Actually, you know what? They're so much better than I am. I'm not doing so well." Then you start to feel inferior and that has its own problems because it de energizes you. Right when you need to strive, to up your game and better yourself, you find yourself paralyzed and feeling sorry for yourself and feeling lethargic and apathetic. It interferes with your life's work, which is fulfilling the preordained measure of your potential. Now, one of the great benefits of adopting this perspective of having a factory installed set of distinctive capacities is that it liberates us also to redefine the idea of success. I see a lot of people talking about, What is success and how should we define success? One of the things that occurs to me is that rather than defining success in absolute terms, which is what we do in this world, against absolute standards, we start to understand that success can best be defined in relative terms. In other words, relative to the capacities that we have, which we already concluded are different. Let's look at a real life example to illustrate this and bring this idea to life. Let's say there are two students of the same age going to high school. They're in the same class. Let's say for purposes of this example, Maria is one. She comes from a poor family. She lives in a small abode where she and her seven siblings are crowded into a single bedroom at night. They don't have much food to eat. She often has to content herself with a piece of bread and yogurt before bed. I'm painting a picture here. And because let's say she's the eldest of seven siblings, she has to help her mother raise her siblings and contribute to the chores and household work. So she has to get up at the crack of dawn to help with a lot of things. And because she's sharing a room with all these siblings and they can't afford electricity, she can't stay up into all hours of the night studying. Now let's compare her to Abe, who is the same age but is an only child from a wealthy household. You see where I'm going with this. He gets plenty of good food, lots of snacks. He enjoys his own room. He can come and go as he pleases. He can stay up late to study. It's quiet. He's not distracted by all these siblings running around. He doesn't have to get up to help with the chores. There's a maid who helps him at home, and now we get to exam time. Maria and Abe are in the same class, and while Maria gets a B, Abe gets an A, and everyone thinks, Gosh, Abe is such a stellar, bright student," and we should therefore give Abe the award. But wait a minute. If we pause to think, the question that comes to my mind is, Isn't the fact that Maria was able to get a B in the face of all the odds stacked against her, isn't that act more meritorious than Abe's achievement of an A? So much of our modern day life is driven by us gauging ourselves against these random absolute standards that we set. We judge each other and worse of all, we judge ourselves by standards like, How much money is he or she making? Oh, she's making a hundred and fifty thousand dollars or pounds or euros a year and I'm only earning 50,000, so now I get to feel badly about myself. Or they live in a very swanky neighborhood and I live in a less swanky one. And on and on. All these absolute standards against which we gauge ourselves and then use them as bludgeons to whip ourselves. Adopting this new perspective that the conditions we are born into or certain conditions are really irrelevant; it's what we do with them that counts. That just liberates us completely to re conceptualize and reframe and redefine our ideas of success. If we were to operationalize this idea of let's take our factory installed distinctive capacities and potential, where do we need to begin? Obviously the first step is to figure out what those distinctive capacities are and our limitations. We have to know what are my strengths? What are my limitations? There's a wonderful methodology that has been proposed by a wonderful gentleman by the name of Dan Sullivan. He's an amazing guy in the field of ideas and a strategic coach. He has concluded that there're essentially four criteria for assessing our distinctive capabilities. The first is that this ability that you have or capability is a superior one. It's one that people around you spot immediately and they value it. It also comes so naturally to you that you miss seeing it in yourself. And it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking"Gosh. This comes so naturally to me. It's so easy. Anyone can do it. This isn't special." The second criterion is that you're really passionate about engaging this capacity of yours. You want to spend as much of your time as you can in it. In fact, you never get tired of it. You are truly passionate. I repeat this because you're not just really good at something. You're not just even excellent at it, but you're passionate about doing things. There are certain things that we're all really good at, we're even excellent at, and I think a lot of you will be able to relate to this in the sphere of your work or your. Probably spending most of your days doing things you're very good at doing, but are really not passionate about. So that second criterion is really important. The third is that as you engage in this distinctive capacity, it fills you with positive energy, and you also energize those around you. And the fourth criterion is that as you continuously and steadily engage and hone this capacity, you keep improving on it. There's an endless amount of possibilities for growth. So you don't get to the end of the road and think,"Okay. I've done this for 20 years. I'm really done with this capability. Time to move on." It always conduces to your growth and you can always improve it. Now, key point is that all four of these criteria must be present for this to count as a distinctive capacity. The beauty of identifying each of us for ourselves, what these factory installed distinctive capacities are, is that the more of our life we spend engaged doing these activities and engaging these set of gifts and talents and strengths and capacities, the more our lives take shape. And as we chisel away the parts that we're weak at in life, where our limitations are, where weaknesses are, we see the shape of our lives emerge, the shape of our authentic selves, the people we were really meant to be. It brings to mind a quote from the famous Michelangelo in which he says"As the marble wastes, the statue grows." So right, you're chiseling away at this block, which is yourself. And as you chisel away, your true self starts to take shape. So we've now identified what our distinctive capacities are using these four criteria. Once we've identified them, we've also been given the gift of free will, which we can then utilize and harness to operationalize these distinctive capabilities and use them in order to uplift and better the condition of the world around us. The thing that is always going to get in our way, it's a trap that we all have to be wary of, is the trap of fear. Fear is merely, as we all know, a mental construct that can paralyze us by imposing false limitations. It takes courage and willpower to act despite the fear. We all know that famous saying,"Feel the fear and do it anyway. This is what we need to do. The next thing, and really the last thought I wanted to offer, is that one of the concrete methods of bringing free will to bear and applying it to our distinctive capacities in order to apply them in this world is to set goals. So the method is activating our will and volition by setting goals. I want to share with you some of the benefits of goal setting. There are really many. There's a plethora of them. Goals are tools that help us actualize our potential. They keep us focused. They help us to maintain our excitement and enthusiasm about fulfilling our potential in life. So they help to motivate us. They help to keep us fulfilled and happy, because we can mark each milestone along the way on this path of success, this never ending success and improvement. They help to give meaning to our life. We wake up each morning knowing exactly what we're going to do and why we're doing what we're doing to actualize our potential in service to this world. They help us to be in control of our mind and our life. It's our mind that causes most of the difficulty with the negative programming and thoughts we have, with all the negative narratives that we tell ourselves. Now here's one of the fascinating things about goals. Goals require commitment. You can't have a goal and then not commit to achieving it, because then why bother with the goal? This commitment has power in it. It has magic in it. It serves as a magnet that draws the people, the opportunities, the ideas, and the things you need to actualize the goal. It's actually quite amazing. I'm moved to share a short anecdote with you here. Years ago, I was unemployed as a lawyer for a period of time and I got down to almost my last penny and needed to be able to pay rent the following month and was wondering where the money was going to come from. I went to bed on a Friday night and I made a commitment to myself. I didn't tell anyone about it. I lived alone. I said, Okay, I'm going to open my law practice. And I've got to do this immediately. And I set that intention out into the world. I wasn't thinking about it as I'm putting this intention out into the world. I just did. I made a commitment and it was a firm one. Next morning, Saturday, the phone rings, early, and I used to like to sleep in on Saturday mornings, so I was a little annoyed. And this gentleman's on the phone, and he says,"I'm sorry, are you Sovaida Maani? We met a few years ago at a party. You gave me your card. If I recall correctly, you're a lawyer. Do you still do law?" I said,"Yes." He said,"Can you draft a contract for me? I'm desperate. I need someone to draft a contract in a particular field. And can you do it for me?" And I said,"Absolutely." And he said,"But there's a problem here. I need it today." So that afternoon, there he was sat on my living room sofa and handed me a check that covered my next month's rent. So there you have the power of commitment. The magic and power of drawing as a magnet the people, ideas, opportunities you need to actualize your goals. I really wanted to hammer this point home. Goals help us move forward in life. They make life more enjoyable. They keep us balanced. It's sort of like riding a bike. As long as you keep setting goals and keep achieving them, no matter how small, as long as you keep up the momentum, you're upright on your bike. As soon as you stop, you fall off and then it's very hard to start again. Now, the final cherry on the cake when it comes to goals is that as we work towards fulfilling our goals, we discover that we have to either hone certain qualities of character that we already have or develop new ones that we've never had a chance to develop but desperately need. What am I talking about? Things like perseverance and patience and confidence and resourcefulness and intelligence and creativity and organization etc. If you believe, as I do, that one of the key purposes of our life is to become a better person and to do this by developing your qualities of character, then applying our distinctive capacities through goal setting, leads us to not only success, but fulfillment and meaning because we're achieving our life's purpose and freedom from comparison and competition. Wow, we have quite a bang for our buck. As Jim Rohn the famous American author, motivational speaker, and businessman, entrepreneur said, Really, life is about what you become, not what you do. It's not what you do, but who you become." So as we go about our daily work, if we were constantly to keep this in the forefront of our minds, Is it really about whether I got this promotion or not? Is it about whether I got to work on the juiciest project or not? Is it that I'm getting paid 10,000 less than somebody else? Is it worth me getting so miserable about these things?" Is perhaps a bigger question to ask myself, who am I becoming as I do this job? As opposed to what is my new label and status and all the perks that come with it. To recap, the formula for attaining a fulfilling, successful, and joyous life is to identify our distinctive factory installed potential, with which we're all born, add to it a good dose of volition, in other words, operationalizing our distinctive potential and trying to actualize it in service of bettering the world. And then we will reap all the rewards we want, true success, lasting happiness, joy as we go on our journey, and a deep sense of fulfillment. All right, I hope that you have found this useful. I certainly enjoyed preparing the materials to share with you. And I look forward to seeing you next month. Please share in the comments. Let's have a conversation. There might be things that have stirred some ideas in you, or you have reactions or comments. Please feel free. All right. I look forward to seeing you next month. Bye bye. That's all for this episode of Reimagining Our World. I'll see you back here next month. If you liked this episode, please help us to get the word out by rating us and subscribing to the program on your favorite podcast platform. This series is also available in video on the YouTube channel of the Center for Peace and Global Governance, CPGG.