How To Bring Your Potential Into Reality

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Living a Balanced Life

There will be times in your life when you may focus more on one area, than in others. For example, when you are young focusing on fun, more so than career, is likely to be appropriate.

That is okay, for a short time. But for you to feel fulfilled maintain balance throughout the entire tapestry of your life.

For example, in examining your Top 5, you may find that they all come under one or two banners – e.g. career or family, or finances.

When I first did the exercise, I was single, traveling 4-5 days each week. Lucky I did this exercise. Because I realized I was losing touch with family and friends. This was back pre-internet (yes, that does show my age, somewhat!). In addition, phone calls were heckishly expensive. So we didn't tend to call people much.

Yet, I decided that I needed to call someone each and every day and 'catch-up.' If I hadn't made that choice, I suspect, I would have lost the relationships that were important to me, for the sake of my career.

The rocking chair test is always a good one. At the end of your life, as you sit in a rocking chair, will you be content with where you spent the majority of your time and life focus?

For example, if your prime focus is on Financial Freedom, you may end up with loads of money. But no family, close friends and none the wiser about how you came to feel so alone.

Each year when you review your life - who you are and where you want to be - ensure that your life has some balance in it.

Your Reticular Activating System is Your Search Magnet

Because you might be feeling a bit of tension following your potentialities visualization session, I thought it appropriate to share with you the power of your Reticular Activating System (RAS) in the goal-setting/vision making process.

If you are already familiar with the role of the RAS in your brain, I hope you enjoy this timely reminder. Otherwise, get set to discover a piece of your brain that opens you up to getting what you want.

How many times have you sat around with your peers or by yourself setting goals, and you get all excited about where you are heading until, someone (yourself or someone in your team) puts the brakes on the excitement, by saying something like, "Yeah, sounds, good but how are we going to do it?". 

Immediately you shift from being entrepreneurs, high-flying out-there adventurers/visionaries who are going to change the world, to down-to-earth pragmatists. "Hmm, your right, we have got a bit carried away, where are we going to find ..., we've never been able to ...."  All of a sudden all the big goals you were setting, get backed up. Get brought much closer to your current reality ... to what you are currently doing.

I was lucky enough to learn many years ago, (from the Thought Patterns For High Performance), the power the RAS has when we are setting goals and developing our visions for the future. 

Simply put, the RAS is the part of the brain that acts as the filter. It filters out all the information that you don’t currently need.

If you didn't have your RAS you would go mad. You would be overloaded by too much information. The feel of clothing on your body. The small humm of your computer. The feel of the air-conditioning on your skin. The sight of every single item in your work space colored red (if you look now around right now, you will notice red things that you hadn't noticed a few seconds ago).

As soon as you declare something to be of importance (or a threat to you), the RAS goes to work and lets the information in, or finds it for you.

This is why a Mother can be in bed. Jets roaring overhead. Trains and trucks rumbling past the house. Yet she sleeps soundly. But her tiny baby need only whimper slightly, and she is wide awake.

I can remember in the early 80's I bought a 1960's Renault 10 car. I had never heard of a Renault before buying this car. However, even living in a small country town (population less than 18,000), suddenly Renaults were everywhere.

Why?

My RAS had opened up to them.

So, let's relate this back to your team and individual vision-setting.

When you are sitting around, vision/goal-setting and somebody says, "Yeah, but we don't know how ...." your immediate response will be, "Great, lets get our RAS to work so we find the way ...". 

Once you understand how the RAS works, you can set even bigger goals for yourself and your team. As an aside, your team might mean your family.

You can with confidence now say, "You're correct, right now we don’t know how to ... but, by all of us being on the hunt for ways to ... the answer will come". 

You will be amazed how, (once you have declared the finding of something to be of importance), that the information will come screaming through to you. 

You become a much bigger goal-setter and vision-maker when you understand the power of the RAS.

By now you should have a nice list of potentialities. Maybe your Reticular Activating System has helped you to get some momentum happening.

And, this is where many people might run into trouble! Often, when goal setting, people miss a vital mindset step. Miss this step and it can put the brakes on achieving all you desire. To give yourself your best chance at achieving your potentialities you need to Know Why You Want It. Which is where we turn our focus in the next unit.

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Living a Balanced Life

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