National Reach Your Potential Month/National Mentoring Month

Going with the theme of many of the January Monthly celebrations, National Reach Your Potential Month and National Mentoring Month are the focus of this post. 

So, how does one reach their potential? What is potential, anyway? Well, I’ll tell you! Potential can mean many things, but for the purposes of this theme, it is the “inherent ability or capacity for growth, development, or coming into being,” or “having possibility, capability, or power.” In other words, potential is the very thing you can be. It is something to strive towards. Perhaps the most challenging part of reaching your potential is realizing what that potential actually is! This is particularly the case, as we don’t often like to think about where we’d like to be in any constructive or realistic way. The key to maximizing on hitting your potential is to thing positively of not only yourself, but also the possibilities for yourself. Once you can identify what you are capable of (and I’m willing to bet, its far greater than you actually realize!), it’s necessary to set goals and shoot for whatever it is you’re setting out to achieve. Interestingly, this falls into the meaning behind each of the themes from this month. 

Now that you’ve identified what your potential is, it’s time to get started, right?! But, maybe you’ve realized you’re not exactly skilled in a particular aspect. Maybe you want to be an architect, but physics isn’t really your thing (see what I did there? Another form of potential is used in physics! Lame, I know…) or, you want to be a writer, but editing isn’t your strong suit, or maybe you’re an excellent cook, but you don’t have the basic business skills you require to start up that café you’ve always wanted. Well, there are ways to get around that. One of them is to hire or find someone else to handle those aspects for you. But, a better, more potential seeking way is to gain the knowledge from someone else. Enter the Mentor. A mentor, or mentorship is “a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person.” Mentors are great actors for reaching potential. Having an individual you can trust and learn from strengthens not only your skillset, but also your character as a person. The best mentorships involve environments where the mentor and protégé/apprentice/mentee are learning from each other. Life long learning is a key to reaching potential, and building lasting relationships.

(Image found at: http://smartfulcoaching.com/inspiration/your-best-self/attachment/reaching-full-potential-speedometer-tracking-goal/)