What is it that prevents people from living to their full potential?

As someone who has an interest in spiritual works. I have a question I would love to get the members views on.

What is it that prevents people from living to their full potential?

When asking the question about potential I tend to think of fear. The reason is that fear only gets loud when you do things that matter. Fear never bothers you if you're average but the second you dare to be more than ordinary, fear awakens. It’s time to have faith in your resilience so you can face your fears. Think about your life and the things that make you worry or cause you stress. Write them down. This act will allow you to focus on what you need to fix to get control of your life. Living with a lot of unknown or unrecognized fear can cause stress-like responses in your body. One of the most common stress-induced symptoms is feeling sick. If you never know what your biggest fears are you'll never be able to conquer them.

"Only when you are really afraid of the next step, real changes occur. But remember: fear is an illusion."


This little sentence accompanies me for a lifetime and your contribution reminded me of it immediately.

Yes, of course, fear is a disability and has enormous potential.
But it is not really fear that prevents people from reaching their potential. At least not exclusively.

When I look at myself, my environment or the people I meet, it is often society that, with its rules and expectations,
shows limits to which we adhere.
Expectations are always double-edged, in my eyes an expectation always implies a disappointment.

Fear, expectations, disappointments ... in summary: attachments and illusions.

Our brains are hardwired from our evolutionary history to scan for threats and trigger reactions to make us protect ourselves from those threats. Because of this, fear is necessary and useful.

What many don't often develop is knowledge of this mechanism and how to keep it under control and set it aside for when we know a situation actually is a threat.

So, what we experience is that the mechanism goes off, by design, on a very broad scale to make sure all corners are covered. So that means it is designed to be at least somewhat irrational and triggers during times and situations where there actually is no threat, but even if we are uncomfortable about a situation or there is an element of the unknown. (Is there a tiger in those woods? Well, to keep us alive, let's assume there is, and stay away from it)

The way to move past this is to learn how your own human psychology works regarding your fear, what triggers it, and practice facing fears, gradually working yourself up from smallest ones to larger ones until you've gotten used to working with it. This builds up courage which means, you still have fear, but you know how to take action in the face of it.

Jedi_J wrote: As someone who has an interest in spiritual works. I have a question I would love to get the members views on.

What is it that prevents people from living to their full potential?

When asking the question about potential, I tend to think of fear. The reason is that fear only gets loud when you do things that matter. Fear never bothers you if you're average but the second you dare to be more than ordinary, fear awakens. It’s time to have faith in your resilience so you can face your fears. Think about your life and the things that make you worry or cause you stress. Write them down. This act will allow you to focus on what you need to fix to get control of your life. Living with a lot of unknown or unrecognized fear can cause stress-like responses in your body. One of the most common stress-induced symptoms is feeling sick. If you never know what your biggest fears are you'll never be able to conquer them.

Pastor Carlos here, greetings and hi friend. Welcome to the Temple of the Jedi Order. This place is a very unique place in a way that this is ONE of many ideas that already exist here. Its never ONLY the SOLO idea that does. In the Star Wars films there is a common idea that can be described as "THE STORY" or as we call it here some times that "Hero's Journey" we all can take. This idea can come and DOES come in many forms. The more I study the more I realize we are all asking the same questions and we are all taking our own very personal paths.
One of the books or IDEAS that took a hammer to my glass ideas was Jiddu K with a book called "Freedom from the known" Its in our library for free review any time. In it, we are reminded that some things we know can be seen as "spoon fed." This can be taken many ways but the easiest for me is to remember that if I can learn it I can un learn it too. I learned many fears as well. Just like I learned many spoon fed ideas. Later in life , I began to think and create or CULTIVATE a bit more than just a wild field in my mind and in my heart. Cultivation and virtue are two friends in my own path I HOPE to pass on to others.
In this place we self reflect often. Lets be honest, who can really tell any one anything, who has that right then by consent? We share here. That's all really. The biggest questions from a place like this can be... "why haven't I or why cant I..." because only then can YOU answer that one 100 percent.

Why prevents Pastor Carlos from living to that FULL potential...
For me, these questions we share CAN help CULTIVATE something different, plant new seeds get new crops. Plant old dead ones, well , you know what you can expect. What keeps me from living my potential... your gunna love this one, nothing but me. There are some mornings when I am NOT in the way as well. Welcome to the Temple and may the Force be with you as you continue to seek it.

Thank you all for your input.

I know there is never one full answer to any of life's greatest problems.

I think money has a lot to do with it. If you can barely afford to pay your rent, you can't afford well-planned and nutritious meals. You also can't afford to see the world. Often times people work away the best hours of their day, then are too exhausted to do anything at all. On weekends they just rest to try and catch up on sleep. They can't afford to save up enough to invest and gain passive income. I can't tell you how many people I know who have college degrees but work minimum wage and have to have multiple roommates to rent a small place -- it's a lot, though. If you're constantly out of money, you simply can't engage in many of the activities which would help you actualize your potential.

Are you fishing for Maslow's hierarchy?
I think desire is a built in part of human nature and an insatiable one. A lot of people say "if I had X, I would be happy (fulfilled, actualized, etc.)" in their internal monologue at least implicitly, no thing nor accomplishment by itself will complete you. These things can help for sure, but are neither sufficient nor necessary in my opinion.

I would argue we can do nothing BUT live at our full potential, which includes being disappointed and wanting more.

The first thing that came to mind was fear. But I think fear is a symptom. It is a mental daemon designed to protect your psyche or your id. There is nothing wrong with fear if fear is balanced. Fear can be balanced with hope. If your hope for a good outcome is greater than your fear of a bad outcome then whatever fear you have wont stop you from moving forward. So maybe you have the right amount of fear but not enough hope. Do you see?

Now what is it that manages our hopes and fears? It's us. So all these other things are symptoms. The cause is us. We get in our own way. We stop ourselves from acting because we're not brave enough, smart enough, experienced enough, etc. when these things may be meaningless and irrelevant without us thinking about them. So we are always our own worst enemies. Often we don't even get to fight someone else because we're too busy fighting ourselves or the reason we're fighting someone else may be because we've already lost a battle to ourselves.

This is why Jedi practice meditation and gravitate to forms of spirituality that focus in on the elevating the self and freeing it from all the many forms of imbalance.

Not understanding that they are not their brains. Their constant judgements about themselves and others. And what they make circumstances mean in their minds.

I, personally, thought about comfort.

One could agree what I'm about to write is another aspect of fear and I'd be inclined to agree - but I believe is it that, and a bit more.

We are creatures of habit. Once a habit (a routine) is solidified, it is extremely hard to get rid of. Living life on autopilot is comfortable and provides a sense of security - there is a reason we have the concept called "comfort zone".

Living life to full potential (for me) means you have to overhaul your habits, take risks, dedicate time to knowing yourself and assessing your strength. That requires effort, while routines do not. It's easier to enjoy their warm embrace and let life simply pass by.

My thought is that it's the stories we tell ourselves, versus just living in reality.
A friend is unable to meet for a chat and I make up a story that they don't want to spend with us. In reality there are a million possible explanations that aren't about me.
I have a doctor's appointment and I make up a story about him judging me or giving me bad news. In reality, the future is non-existent and by the time it's the present, anything could happen.
I make up limiting stories about my frailties, my capabilities, and my weaknesses all the time. In reality, I am the Force and the Force is in me.

As to why we make up limiting stories, I think there are probably mearly 8 billion reasons, one for each human. For me personally it's fear, and the fear has three main flavors. The first is, my past taught me that being too seen gets you hurt and that's a belief that I'm still working to get rid of. The second is, I'm afraid that if I am too capable, I will be given or get too much responsibility and it will be stressful and the resulting break down will make me lose all I've worked for. And the third is, I'll make too mistakes that are too big and hurt people.

...But honestly, reading it over, those fears are still just stories I'm telling myself instead of living in reality.

Tolerance to frustration could expand my range of productive action to do gradual experiments. Discipline, training and processes are always necessary, I can use imagination to motivate myself but there is no magic. And I need to focus, sustain my goals, schedule and complete my training in a timely manner, also assimilate errors and develop learnings/adjustments.
I can think of obstacles and springboards...

What else Allow, Cause and Encourage us to develop more skills? Skills are specific in their definitions and the Bloom's taxonomy could give us hints to "watch" the threshold between "Full potential and subcomponents".

I feel that it is in two parts. The first is ignorance arising from the inability to recognize an awareness of self. We see it often. People go about their lives seemingly blind of this life we chose of self-growth and progress. Their view is outside of themselves, to the beauty and wonder this temporal world has to offer. Sometimes they get unhappy, but this mode of life is all they’ve known for a lifetime. They are not illuminated, the darkness of unawareness blinds them. Why would they change unless they’ve seen the state of themselves, introspectively observing the needs of the mind and spirit, and ultimately realizing their potential. I argue often that awareness of self is the foundation of a better life. You cannot finish the IP, much less anything else, if you fail to recognize “the self”. Until then, one is stuck in the limbo of the ignorance of even having potential.

Second, I feel full potential does not exist. Maybe it does, I don’t know for sure. Daily I contend with this choice: shall I continue to improve today, or shall I allow myself to stall in my progress. It is a commitment. Everyday somehow, someway we become better, we progress our understandings, we find our center, and even discover something a bit new about ourselves. We don’t stop learning, because we know the world doesn’t stop teaching. Maybe our full potential is only recognized in our finality, when we pass into the Force; but, even death is a new adventure of its own. We can always do better.

Thank you for a great discussion, I learned a lot reading from the responses.

Jedi_J wrote: What is it that prevents people from living to their full potential?

The way this question tends to be worded makes me think we have come to expect life to work like some sort of RPG, where you start out with a low-level character and consistently level up in different skills until we reach max power and can basically "play the game" without risking losing.

Even in RPGs, certain characters can only develop in certain ways.

I feel the illusion of "full potential" keeps us navel-gazing the "best" way to live, rather than simply tackling life, one battle at a time, levelling up in those skills which we actually find useful as adaptation to the particular battles we face.

We act, receive feedback, and adapt. There is only so much "basic training" we can go through before we need to decide what we actually want from life, and what we are willing to endure for those particular things. And that passion rarely manifests all over the board.

So, rewording the initial question, what stops us from living to our own particular version of our full potential? The paralysis from second-guessing whether we are there yet, which prevents us from simply moving towards it.

Now, does the Human Potential count as navel gazing ? Asking for a friend Manu.. smiley face !

Carlos.Martinez3 wrote: Now, does the Human Potential count as navel gazing ? Asking for a friend Manu.. smiley face !

The problem with "Human Potential" is that is so giganticly broad and abstract that it does not lend itself towards constructing a hypothesis that can then be tested. So, many will fall into the trap of gazing out forever into space searching for some sort of definition, some sort of "form" for it, while ironically wasting away any actual human potential during the futile exercise.

A better approach is to forget "Human Potential" and instead start with "What do I want to achieve (and why)?". Potential, in this context, is both meaningless and irrelevant.

Perhaps society itself.

By not accepting that we are already living up to our potential, we are unable to take stock of our lives. Without a clear picture of who we are and why we do what we do, we can not hope to formulate any sort of reasonable plan. It is a lack of critical information. It is akin to trying to fly but not accepting that our arms are not wings. That is to say, you CAN succeed, but not by doing what your doing now. So what are you doing now that detracts from what you want to be?

Everyone fears of the unknown. Even though we say it’s an illusion everyone gets afraid from time to time no matter how strong you are a controlling fear. Our society fears risk, doesn’t see the rewards in taking risk. Sure, taking too many risks can have very harsh consequences if you don’t turn up on the positive side of the situation whether it be stocks, loaning money, leaving a good job to start a business, standing up against the odds of situations, etc.

Another that hinders IMO is patience. We live in a society ,” I want it now.” I gotta have the latest gadget now, I cannot wait! Why are fast foods, Amazon, credit card companies, weight loss/supplements shops successful? Because we cannot wait.

Our better version is today. If we work on ourselves today we are slowly becoming our better versions but it takes time, effort and Needed risks.

One last thought does one plant a tree thinking it will shoot up in a day, a month, a year? Or never? Yes. Because society has taught us that. But no, in reality in ten years time that tree will show results.