personal development on Potential

The mind is an instrument of staggering potential, but its potential is not measured by IQ or academic degrees.

Whatever happens to me in life, I must believe that somewhere, In the mess or madness of it all, There is a sacred potential— possibility for wondrous redemption In the embracing of all that is.

Too many people hear the word capacity and assume it’s a limitation. They assume their capacity is set—especially if they’re beyond a certain age. People give up on the idea that their capacity or the...

The world is full of presence. Every moment of life is crammed full of potential encounters with people and things that are present to us even though we may not be present to them: the presence of a c...

Success offers a hoped-for future goal. Excellence provides a striven-for present standard. Success bases our worth on a comparison with others. Excellence gauges our value by measuring us against ...

If you are a pastor…this one’s for you. Sabbath. So many things have been written. Most of us have taught our people or preached about Sabbath, and underscored how busy people in our churches re...

Judgment and joy don’t go well together – no, judgment leads to grumbling. I’m sure you’ve met people in your life who are hard to please – maybe even your parents, or your boss. People for whom n...

Lord Almighty, you have given us a purpose in life. You have gifted us with abilities and passions. Sometimes we choose to live according to that purpose you have designed for us. Other times we live ...

As much as we laugh at it, trying to keep kids safe, avoiding failing or falling, has its own consequences. My friend, Dr. Tim Ellmore says that the removal of monkey bars on playgrounds is perhaps th...

We all love a good comeback story. In such tales, the young upstart rises like a meteor, fails big, then fights back against the odds to win the victory. Tech whiz Steve Jobs was like that. After prod...

For me the appropriate metaphor for the inner spiritual centre is a garden, a place of potential peace and tranquility. This garden is a place where the Spirit of God comes to make self-disclosure to ...

What if the solution to our society’s biggest issues has been right under our noses for the past two thousand years? When Jesus was asked to reduce everything in the Bible into one command he said: Lo...

We can prostitute our very souls in our attempts to be successful. We can sell out, cave in and go morally bankrupt chasing the god of success. Knowing this perilous potential, Jesus himself warns us ...

Many of the greatest Christian spiritual teachers and mystics such as Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Ignatius Loyola, or some of the seventeenth-century Anglican spiritual writers focus on the language...

Critics of Christianity correctly point out that the church has proved an unreliable carrier of moral values. The church has indeed made mistakes, launching Crusades, censuring scientists, burning wit...

You know the adage “People resist change.” It is not really true. People are not stupid. People love change when they know it is a good thing. No one gives back a winning lottery ticket. What people r...

More often than not, park-it-at-the-door thinking [about religious faith] has less to do with hostility to faith than with the avoidance of risk, for many employer’s fear that any hint of religion is ...

We can rightly ask, What does it mean to take responsibility for my life in response to the way God has made and called me? The response to this question is that we learn how to work with the hand tha...

I sense that mental illness resembles a bone fracture. Bones have remarkable durability, but also, once broken, can rapidly heal and be reset. With normal daily use, one might never be aware of past p...

I love the following story because it illustrates both our natural defensiveness when we are attacked and the potential for transformation. As the illustration demonstrates, this is only possible when...

A common trait of human beings is a fear of failure. Most of us find ways of coping with it, but whenever failure rears its ugly head, it’s difficult not to experience the sting of feeling like we are...

You know the adage “People resist change.” It is not really true. People are not stupid. People love change when they know it is a good thing. No one gives back a winning lottery ticket. What people r...

Until I understand where I am, I can’t get to where I am going. This is the value of a compass when we are out walking or hiking and need to know we’re going in the right direction. But we also have a...

“My therapist says I’m afraid of success. I guess I could understand that, because after all, fulfilling my potential would really cut into my sitting-around time.”

This wasn't the person he'd thought he was, or would have chosen to be if he'd been free to choose, but there was something comforting and liberating about being an actual definite someone...

If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, p...

The vulnerability that leads to flourishing requires risk, which is the possibility of loss—the chance that when we act, we will lose something we value. Risk, like life, is always about probabilities...

Treat a man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.

No other animal plays non-zero sum games as tirelessly as we do. Much of your emotional life is natural selection’s way of getting you to play. Gratitude for favors rendered and guilt over neglecting ...

One of the most controversial decisions in Super Bowl history took place in the closing seconds of Super Bowl XLIX in 2015. The Seattle Seahawks, with twenty-six seconds remaining and trailing by four...