On this episode of Investing for Freedom, Mike discusses how to reach your full potential. Mike explains how easy it is to think about negative outcomes, and gives us the tools to switch our mindsets and focus on positive outcomes. This method will lead you to success.
“One of the number one differentiators in people who succeed and find what they want in life, and achieve their goals and their dreams, is they spend more time thinking about positive potential outcomes.”
HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 – Intro
0:11 – Mike gives the definition of potential
1:05 – Mike points out that we as humans generally think of potential in terms of negative outcomes.
1:58 – Successful people who achieve their goals spend time thinking about positive outcomes
4:00 – Mike explains how to work through mind blocks
6:45 – It’s easier to think of the negative potential outcomes than it is to think about positive potential outcomes and that’s something we need to work on
7:15 – When someone says to you “you could lose everything here” it feels more possible than when someone says “you could become a millionaire”
9:07 – We have the capability to bring everything we want into existence but it takes a lot of hard work
9:41 – Mike encourages us to start thinking about what-ifs in a positive manner
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Thank you for joining me on The Investing for Freedom Podcast. Today, I’m going to spend a few minutes talking to you about the word potential. And I just have really been thinking about this a lot the last few days. And the definition of potential is existing in possibility, capable of development into actuality. In other words, something that can develop or become actual. When I think of the word potential, I usually think of potential in a sense of unrealized possibility, right? So like Jimmy had so much potential. He could have gone so much further, and that is a reality. But also when I think of potential, I think of this in the state of future growth, future opportunity, being able to achieve something that I currently maybe see in my mind that I can think of, that I am creating in my mind and have the potential to build out, but this could go either way.
And the thing that I really want to point out that I’ve been considering lately is the fact that we spend so much time thinking about potential in terms of negative outcomes. This could potentially happen. If I do X, then Y could happen. We spend so much time in our mind, and I really want you to just, as you’re listening to this, just spend a minute thinking about how much time you spend attracting negative thoughts in your mind, negative potential outcomes. Just really thinking through negative possibilities. And I think we all go through this in our lives and sometimes more than others, depending on what’s going on. But the reality is we need to start identifying it and taking inventory. And we need to shift our thought process from negative potential outcomes to positive potential outcomes.
I think that one of the number one differentiators in people who succeed and find what they want in life and achieve their goals and their dreams is they spend more time thinking about positive potential outcomes, their own positive potential abilities, the potential to achieve greatness, the potential to take their business from five figures to six figures, the potential to take their business from six figures to seven figures, the potential to take their business from seven figures to eight figures. I often find myself thinking, you know what, if this person can do it, I have the potential to do it.
My dad used to actually say he’s a very mechanical person, but he used to say that if man built it, he can fix it. Meaning that like basically if a man engineered it, designed it, built it from scratch. Like he could repair it. He could take it apart and put it back together and figure out what’s going on. Something in there is broken. And so my dad like looked at you know, potential from that positive outcome that if a man could build something, then I have the potential to tear it down, put it back together and make it run again. I think the number one differentiator in people who are successful and those that aren’t is that we spend more time thinking about positive potential outcomes, us reaching our full potential.
And even when it comes to terms of comparison, which I don’t want to get too distracted by comparison. But the reality is we compare ourselves a lot of times in negative ways, just like we look at the negative potential outcomes, but if we would just shift that and we would start using comparison, even as a positive way, if John can do this, I can do it. If Jim can do it, I can do it. If somebody else was able to accomplish this, why can’t I? And when we start thinking of our abilities in terms of positive potential, like I have the potential to be successful. I have a potential to be a millionaire. I have a potential to be worth a hundred million. I have a potential to be a billionaire. We have these mind blocks that, and you can literally work through this. So if you tell yourself, if you stopped right now and you said, I have the potential to be worth a million dollars, you can probably absorb that. You can probably fill that potential. Now, if you tell yourself, I have the ability to be worth $10 million, and this is going to be different for everyone, but you can expand your potential. You can expand the room that you’re able to move into. You can expand the way that you think about yourself.
And so back to the lesson or the exercise, if I said, you have the potential to be worth a million dollars, and you can feel that, then you’ve grown into that potential. Like you understand it. You believe that you have the potential to do that. Now, when we say I have the potential to be worth $10 million, maybe you can feel that, or maybe that’s too big for you. Maybe your mind, hasn’t expanded to the point where you can see yourself being that being worth $10 million. Maybe you’ve seen it. So let’s move on to the next one.
Have the potential to be worth $25 million. Can you feel that do you have the potential to move into that room? That space? It doesn’t really matter if you know how you’re going to get there or not. Can you see yourself being able to achieve it.
Now let’s try a hundred million dollars. Do you feel that you have the potential to be worth a hundred million dollars? Let’s try a billion. Do you feel that you have the potential to be worth a billion dollars? Now I’ll tell you being honest, like I can feel, I can move into the room of $10 million and $25 million and $100 million. When I get to a billion dollars, I have to lean back a little bit. I have to spend some time around that because while I know conceptually that I have the potential to be a billionaire, like I haven’t moved into that room yet. And so I’m just being completely transparent. I want you to feel this because potential again is existing in possibility, it’s capable, it’s being capable of development into actuality.
And so I think we all know conceptually that, you know what, we could be worth a billion dollars, but the noun version of this is something that can develop or become actual. Like, do you actually believe that you can be worth a billion dollars? And so I wanted to just point this out. We spend so much time thinking around negative potential. Like I have the potential to lose all my money. Almost every single one of us can feel that, like I have the potential to go broke. I have the potential to get sued and lose everything. I have the potential to lose my job. I have a potential to lose my relationships. I have a potential to lose. When we think of that, like it’s so much easier and I’m not saying this is a good thing obviously. It’s so much easier to lean into negative outcomes when it comes to potential. And I really just want to acknowledge that, we need to acknowledge that, and we need to start working toward this because we need to learn how to move into positive potential. Literally get into that state of expressing possibility around positive outcomes as easily as we express it around negative outcomes. And I just wanted to point that out. I’m going to leave you with this.
We spend so much more time and energy thinking around negative possible outcomes than we do positive. And it’s gotten us to a point where I don’t know about you, but it’s easier for me to just get into that state of when somebody says you could potentially lose everything. Yeah, I could. Or then somebody says you could potentially gain a million dollars or a billion dollars. That’s a little bit harder to lean into that potential. And so I think we really need to practice that potential muscle and really start you know, just leaning into our potential for greatness, whatever that is for you.
And I happen to use the, you know, potential around money just because it’s something that I think we all relate to. But also, you know, when we say I have the potential to put on 20 pounds versus I have the potential to lose 20 pounds and be ripped, it’s a lot easier to lean into the potential in our mindset and how we see it, the potential to put on weight than it is to lose weight. Because it’s harder. It’s like it’s so much easier because of bad habits because of just letting things go. It takes a lot of work for us to achieve our full potential in a positive outcome. And it takes so much less work to fall into bad potential, our worst case potential. Yeah, and again, you know, just even putting on weight, it’s so much easier to put on weight than it is to lose weight.
So your potential to gain 10 pounds is so much easier and more probable and more possible really than the potential to lose weight and put on a six pack. And so I just wanted to point that out. I want to get you thinking the word potential, and I want you to start shifting the way we think about us, the way we think about ourselves and the potential that we have in life.
Because I fully believe that we do have the potential, everything exists in possibility. We have the capability of bringing whatever we want into actuality. We can express that possibility, we can cause that to be in existence in our life. But it takes a lot of work. It’s a lot easier to fall into the negative possibilities and the negative potential than it is the positive. So I hope that helps.
It’s just really, it’s all about, you know, just exercising it in our brain and just going after it. And so go out there, start thinking about your positive potential, start thinking about what if, start thinking about what if I actually achieved my full potential in life? What would that look like and go out there and just make some amazing things happen. We need more people reaching their full potential. So many problems in the world would just disappear if we all started just getting 50% toward our full potential. So go out there and make amazing things happen. Thanks for listening.
