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How to Unlock Your Potential (in 10 Steps)
Human potential can be hidden yet achievable, which requires a careful examination of the self. Here are 10 steps for unlocking your hidden potential.
Human potential, or human thriving, belongs to the realm of positive psychology. Popularised by Martin Seligman, this branch of psychology focuses on all that a person can be, their positive attributes, and their capacity to fulfill their own potential.
The first word in 'unlocking' your potential is intentional, as it alludes to both the possibility that we can do this for ourselves, and the prospect that there is more to us than is visible in the conscious realm. This second type is the potential that lies below the surface, outside reach, which can be harnessed and achieved.
We go to therapy and counselling for all kinds of reasons and motivations. More recently, clients have been seeking support to simply know more about themselves in a safe, supported, therapeutic environment and to use that self-knowledge to develop both self-care and better self-exploration of their dreams and desires akin to 'unlocking potential'.
Unlocking Your Potential in 10 Steps
1. Connect with the Inner Child
We each have a template in our minds of how we see ourselves and the world around us. If we are able to see ourselves as agents of efficacy and positivity, and the world as a place where targets are achievable and help is possible, then we have a worldview where agency is possible and our actions can influence our outcomes.
Alfred Adler defined 'self-concept' as a personal estimate of oneself as worthwhile and valuable. Beliefs that are either self-defeating or self-enhancing stem from this self concept, and go on to influence our experience of the world and the successes we may envisage and indeed actually experience.
2. Identify Your Resources
We all have resources, both internal and external; some exist in the form of the intellectual and psychological which reside within us, while others are human capital and social support based. A realistic interpretation of whom and what we can count on as our resource base goes a long way to how we identify ourselves.
Using these resources, we may be able to move from states like 'hypervigilance' — constantly sensing dangers and being on high alert — or 'adrenal fatigue' — the exhaustive breakdown due to continuous pump and flow of the body's stress response — to one of calm focus and practical wisdom. This is where that hidden potential begins to unlock.
3. Explore the Topdog-Underdog Dynamic
The phrase 'topdog/underdog' was coined by Fritz Perls, and is a good exercise for sessions where clients seem to suffer with this 'game' played between the two aspects. The topdog is the part of us that contains the individual's 'should's' and need to adhere to certain societal norms and standards, hence asking for perfectionism and creating guilt mechanisms, whereas the underdog is the part that manifests the resistance to these external demands.
Exploring this dynamic in therapy does not mean that either is going to win, but what it does bring is enhanced awareness of this unconscious game, which is actually self-sabotaging and does not allow for the creative growth that dynamic human potential seeking needs.
4. Locate Your Triggers
A trigger is a like the loose thread in a jumper; if we can cut it off or stitch it up, it doesn't unravel the garment, but one pull leads to another, and soon we have undone the entire fabric. Triggers work on the bodily level, and they can also be located so that we can learn to stay away or recover from them.
We may not be able to remove our triggers, but being aware and almost comfortable with them means they will slowly and steadily lose their hold over us. To quote Dan Siegel: 'you must name it, to tame it.'
5. Rewire Your Connections
The brain has the capacity to make quick synaptic connections for events that cause extreme emotions, and the emotional memory centre — or Amygdala — has a way of never letting us forget it. Once we are able to locate the neural connections our brain has made between events, people, and experiences that cause us to be optimistic versus those that cause fear, depression, and anxiety, we are then in a position to start choosing.
Gestalt Therapy uses the body as a natural guide and map for feelings and emotions, especially for 'stuckness'. We want to begin to train ourselves to start using the canvas that is our body as a marker for where we have been and for where we want to go.
6. Work with the Body
Oneness of the body and mind, exploring the traumas held in the body which can elaborate setbacks and fears, and releasing this through experimentation and body work in therapy can go a long way in accelerating and supporting the process of unlocking potential.
7. Practice Discipline
If we are to embark on the journey of self-discovery, we are to be willing to be disciplined. It sounds like a simple enough idea to follow, but it takes perseverance, patience, and most of all, processing. Frequent practice, as opposed to broken, sporadic, and spread out practice, starts making discipline second nature to us.
Journaling, meditative practice, and physical exercise — all these should be necessary practice and prescribed homework for clients, and having a robust combination of faith and self-belief will create an environment where doing them frequently and fervently may be possible.
8. Cultivate Psychological Qualities
There are some attributes that add immensely to the capacity for human thriving. The psychological attributes that contribute to a healthy orientation and that play a part in potential development include:
- Delayed gratification
- Working with imperfections
- Being in the 'here and now' of the moment (Fritz Perls)
- Sharing the authentic self as opposed to the 'shadow' (Carl Jung)
9. Chart Your Beliefs
We each have a template in our minds of how we see ourselves and the world around us. Beliefs that are either self-defeating or self-enhancing stem from self-concept, and go on to influence our experience of the world. Research suggests that there is hope, because beliefs can be worked upon and provide scope for processing a positive thinking mindset where there is possibility for growth, autonomy, and influencing one's environment through action.
10. Practice Self-Care
Self-care is talked about extensively as a concept that is not always intensively understood. Psychologically, it is not about pampering oneself or taking a break, but rather the ability to say 'no' when you find yourself saying 'yes' and listening to your inner needs.
When the outer and inner world are better aligned, you are in a position to put your needs across to the external world without guilt, shame, resentment and other crippling emotions, hence creating a more sustainable equilibrium for the 'self' to unlock its potential. Self-care begins at home and often does with voicing one's real needs rather than trying to be in sync with those around us.
Summary: Unlocking Your Potential Is Achievable
The therapeutic environment can provide the appropriate tools to safely conduct the process of self-discovery. It allows us to come face-to-face with difficulties including feelings of shame, guilt, resentment and other obstacles in our path, which help us to better attune ourselves and achieve our goals.
Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs remains a simple but outstanding tool to understand human striving and our desire for self-actualisation through the fulfillment of our goals and potential. We begin with fulfilling the most basic needs of physiological survival and sustenance, and move on to bigger needs like safety and security, then to higher order needs like love and belonging, to esteem, and finally to self actualisation.
To quote Perls: 'Having a mind means living a life bound by doing and achieving; so, lose your mind and come to your senses.' Understanding ourselves better through an enhanced and sophisticated sense of awareness is the first step towards fulfillment of the unlimited potential that lies within us.