Harnessing Inner Power: Prioritising Potential Over Performance
When I launched my business, I knew a core business line would be speaking and writing. Of all the decisions I had to make it was the easiest because I had complete clarity about it. No doubt other routes may have proved to be easier, faster to market, simpler for others to understand, potentially more lucrative or ticked some other performance metric if I felt so inclined. But I knew somewhere deep inside me, as unusual or risky as it may have appeared to others, that this was the calling. And if I was brave enough to go after it, it would unlock my potential, the person I was destined to be, in the most potent way.
In the early stages, it meant I had to be less sensitive to typical performance metrics that others might prioritise. To take this road meant I had to commit to myself and the potentially longer time frame it would require to tick the other boxes our culture has decided define success. Do I care about all the other metrics? Of course. I like money and achievement as much as the next person. Yet I knew if I fell into the trap of tracking my performance through other people’s definition of what success would look like for me, I would restrict the very potential I was trying to set free. In hindsight, I realise I had the one critical element I needed most; I had belief in myself and what my inner voice was telling me. This sustained me in the moments when evidence would have suggested I change course.
In truth, this is still something I can struggle with. I find the inclination is always there to accelerate ‘performance’, a sense of impatience to have everything completed. This tension between potential and performance sits within us all. We all share the desire to have life ‘sorted’. The idea that if we have it all figured out – life, a home, right relationships, enough money etc, we will be ok. It is the human search for certainty. Underneath that need for certainty is the ubiquitous desire to be safe. This desire to be safe feeds our need to measure things; to understand if we are succeeding in this plan for certainty. We look for performance indicators that everything is ok, that we are doing life right. But these metrics can make us chase results which don’t matter rather than take a risk on those that do.
There is nothing wrong with performance per se. Who hasn’t set goals around earning more money or setting a personal best in your next 5k and so on? But where is the tipping point when a focus on performance simply becomes performing? An act for someone else’s benefit. Living and leading well in life and work starts when we get clarity around what we know we really want over the pull of external performance. It is a key attribute in the purpose-led individual.
Performance Does Not Guarantee Potential
Within the personal development industry, there is a big focus on performance. The words ‘Performance’ or ‘High Performance’ precede many coaching or training programs. The mass appropriation of the word performance from sport into coaching and other personal development services has excellent roots but we must acknowledge it has limits. This widespread use of the word performance has brought a very ‘yang’ energy to how we view human potential. While there are elements of sports psychology that can be applied to both work and life, the goal of sport is always to win. To compete. Human potential and self-actualisation are not about winning but about ‘becoming’. The very idea of self-actualisation is that the only thing you are ever in competition with is yourself.
The word ‘perform’ means ‘to accomplish or complete something’. Both accomplish and complete suggest an end point. It is easy to see why it is so popular and appropriate in sport; ‘we win the match, the tournament, the game’. All of these have an end point, a finishing line so are finite by definition. Most sports stars have a professional life which rarely exceeds 20 years. Being human is a much longer, more expansive, and multi-faceted endeavour. Trying to perform in a similar fashion in life or work creates the pressure and competitive nature of finite achievements and timeframes but in an infinite container. In this context, it is easy to see why burnout and disillusionment are growing in workplaces around the globe.
The word potential, conversely, derives from ‘power’ or ‘force’ and shares a root with the word potent. It reminds me of the Gaelic word ‘Neart’ or Sanskrit word ‘Prana’ both of which loosely translate as life force or energy. Potential is about your inner power, your life force, your vitality. How are you creating a life to support that? Performance is only ever worthwhile if it is in service of your potential, what is possible for you. A focus on performance without a link to potential is why we feel drained when our time and life is focused on performing in things we don’t care about enough. This can be the source of a mid-life crisis or a loss of your sense of purpose; that is when the gap between performance and potential becomes too wide for the soul to bear.
One problem performance culture has created is metrics of measurement in life and work are now often set by others. Human potential is not unleashed by a performance review someone else conducts on you. When you think about people currently measuring performance in any area of your life, is their agenda where you wish to place the path of your life? Are they the best steward of your potential? Becoming who you are destined to be first asks you to take control of how success is measured in your life and work.
Adopting Another ‘P’; The Pause
I had been feeling that pull to ‘perform’ again lately. It both surprises and disappoints me that I never quite rid myself of it. When I feel that inner conflict, I have learned the answer is always another P; to pause. Learning to pause is an antidote to the pressure to perform. There is power in the pause. When I inject some spaciousness into my life, everything becomes clearer. Clarity returns around what matters most to me. It helps me say no to things when the world is screaming at me to say yes. It calms me in the moments I worry I am doing life wrong. Of most importance, when I create space in my life, I expand more into myself.
Potential has a dream big feel to it. It won’t be rushed. This can put it in conflict with the immediacy and insistence of performance metrics. It needs dreamtime, space, stillness to make itself known. The most revelatory ideas I have had about my own life have not occurred when I am knee deep in life and work. The moments of great change in my life, the biggest leaps forward I have taken have happened because of dreamtime. I decided to resign while on a flight from Paris. I decided to relocate to Spain for a year while travelling alone on a train from Seville to Malaga. I get my greatest insights and best ideas for speaking engagements out running or walking in nature. Pauses create the space for inspiration to arrive. When I pause, I make better choices about the direction in life and work I should take. I have learned that clarity and the answers I need come quickly in space and slowly in effort.
When I coach CEOs, I remind them their number one job is to have vision. To see potential where others don’t and bravely set the course towards that. It means accepting there may be no established performance metric for it because no one has gone there before. Potential is the same as vision. It is something only you can sense. You can ‘see’ or ‘feel’ it when no one else can. You may or may not be a CEO of a business, but you are certainly the CEO of your life. It is your role to retain the vision for who you could be and to set sail in that direction. To understand the performance metric that matters most is the person you have the potential to become.