It has taken me until my forties to get here, but I finally feel that my own potential is coming to fruition,  that I’m playing to my strengths, making an impact, that I’m doing what I was born to do. So what does it take to see your potential come to fruition?

Potential

My mission statement is ‘Help people, teams, and organisations to realise their potential’. I chose the word ‘realise’ very carefully for its dual meaning:

realise /ˈriːəlʌɪz/ verb

1 become fully aware of as a fact; understand clearly.

2 cause to happen.

I’ve met plenty of people who aren’t seeing their potential come to fruition; sometimes because they aren’t aware of what they’re really capable of. And sometimes because, despite having a dream of how things could be, they’re not working on the right things to move towards making it a reality.

I don’t believe in the idea of ‘cosmic ordering’ where you make your intention clear and the universe delivers. Nor do I believe that success comes from just being busy. What I do believe in is becoming fully aware of what your potential is and then doing what you need to do to ‘cause it to happen’.

My own journey down this road started with understanding my strengths, making a conscious decision to play to my strengths, and then taking a load of actions and decisions to ’cause it to happen’. Some of the decisions were difficult: changing career direction, deliberately taking on a very risky and challenging job, choosing to leave the world of paid employment to set up my own business, deciding what not to do so I could focus. But slowly, and surely, things have come together which brings me on to:

Fruition

 So, how long does it take to see your potential come to fruition?

I don’t want to torture the fruit metaphor, but as fruit grows:

– It grows slowly so that you wouldn’t notice it growing if you sat staring at it.

– It has seasons and there are some great periods of growth and some that aren’t so good.

– Even though it grows slowly and at differing speeds, it does grow and there is something great at the end of it.

It is the same with seeing your potential come to fruition; it may not happen overnight, it may not be a straight road, but you do need to be moving steadily in the right direction and if you’re not seeing any growth, it is time for some serious thinking.

So, if you want to realise your potential and see it come to fruition:

1. Become fully aware of your potential

2. Cause your potential to happen. Do what it takes.

3. When appropriate, be patient

4. If you’re not growing and moving towards realising your potential, be impatient and do something about it!

This blog post is part of the UK HR Blog Carnival, where a number of bloggers are writing about ‘When potential comes to fruition’. Here is the curated list of posts.

Image credit: Levisz