“Well, that officially makes you a late bloomer“
Man, that was a smack in the face. I was sitting in a bar across the table from one of my most successful clients, both in my training program but also in life in general. “S”, is the type of guy who had sailed across the ocean, built a massive company, and sold it to “retire” at around age 40, but rather than rest on his laurels he used that time to dabble in other business areas, raise his kids, and generally squeeze the juice out of life.
I had asked him to grab a beer and talk about a major opportunity I had been presented with, one that would allow/force me to go from personal training at the local Y to opening my own facility. The kind of scary jump that would take me from the small but comfortable position I was largely miserable in to a risky, chaotic but potentially amazing journey of being at the helm of my own business destiny.
When he hit me with that, after asking about my age, my initial reaction was to want to smack him. After recovering, I thought…
“He’s right”
You see, I’d always had enough talent to fill the small pool I was in. By no means am I a natural superstar, but I always had enough of the goods that I could coast a bit. I tested well in school without really putting in the study time. Once I figured out the iron game (that was a lynchpin for me) I performed well enough in athletics to earn my place. Growing up on a farm in Maine made my version of “showing up” a work ethic that made me one of the better employees at any job I held.
Everywhere I went, all I had heard was that I had a ton of potential.
The problem?
I believed that shit. Or, rather, I believed that shit and used it as my self-currency.
In my mind, I took the word “potential” and turned into “successful”.
That worked really well in the short term, but in the long game of life it had come back on me. I was frustrated that I wasn’t enjoying more success. After all, didn’t I have so much potential?
That’s when I realized that I was operating from a fundamental mismatch – I had achieved a great deal of success… within the confines of the environment that my current workplace and social circle had delivered. I was the busiest trainer at the place I was at and generally well-regarded by clients, members, and peers. That was pretty much the top results I could get in that particular pond.
I wasn’t dissatisfied because I wasn’t finding success in the life that I was living. In truth I was living exactly the life that I had built and my day-to-day was fairly comfortable. What made me feel dissatisfied was that I knew that the way I was living barely scratched the surface of what I was capable of and it was the comparing of my current situation to that ideal that made me miserable. I was eating success junk food – Potential, and pretending it would nourish me like Achievement.
I needed a bigger pond.
I was eating success junk food – Potential, and pretending it would nourish me like Achievement.
The thing is, I don’t think I’m alone in suffering from this mismatch. Actually, I know I’m not. I think it’s becoming one of the most common “diseases” of our culture.
If you’ve stuck around this long then I suspect you feel the same way, too. You know that there is so much more inside of you, ready to come out. There’s potential for a great, fantastic life (however you define that) but it’s being held in a locked box of “normal life success”.
So what do you do about it?
- Celebrate that you have unused potential. That’s awesome! That means there are more hills to climb and more adventures for you to attack. Imagine if you were literally keeping the pedal to the metal to stay right here? Let’s reframe things: You can be upset that it hasn’t happened yet or you can be pumped because it’s ahead of you. I vote the latter.
- Let go of your own bullshit. Where there is a stroke there often needs to be a slap. Point #1 was the stroke, here’s the slap. It’s probably a combination of believing your own hype and shifting blame away from yourself that’s keeping you right, smack in the middle of your current comfortable misery.
It doesn’t matter what circumstances there are if you’re not doing something to make forward progress. That’s your fault. - Take the next step. You don’t need to blow your life up, quit your job, divorce your spouse, alienate your kids, or throw yourself into a whatever-life crisis just to try to rebuild yourself. While chaos can be a powerful cleanser, I think we can both agree that being a bit more strategic will have a higher likelihood of success.
Probably the most common question I ask my clients to advance their journey is “what is the step you can take today to move you further down the path?”. That step is going to be different for everyone, but find it and take it.
If you’re looking for that next step, then my free 5-Day Ignite the Spark Course might be the ticket. We’ll be starting with my Relentless “Plant the Flags” exercise, then move on through simple habit building to help fan that spark you’ve got left in you into a flame.