Are you living up to your full potential?

Are you doing what makes you deeply satisfied and truly happy? If not, then a number of years ago I was in that same boat. In my mid-thirties I realized that the life I dreamed of when I was a kid was passing me by.

I always thought that I would be helping people understand themselves and the people around them better and making the world a better place. Here I was, so many years later not at all living into that dream, and I realized that if I didn’t make a radical change this life I had dreamed of would soon be lost to me forever.

When I started examining my life I felt a little puzzled by this sense of incompleteness because I was married, had a child and ran my own business. According to the generally accepted standard for living the good life, everything looked just fine. But inside there was something gnawing at me.

It was about that time I first read Marianne Williamson’s famous quote.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

After reading that quote I realized something that profoundly changed how I look at life. I realized from a very young age I started to believe that if I shined – if I really did the things that I knew there were for me to do – people would be jealous or get mad at me and I would lose them as friends, or worse.

After reading that quote I saw how I had taken these fears from childhood and unconsciously brought them with me into my adult life. I also understood how these fears were keeping me from playing the bigger game I was meant to play. There I was in an okay marriage, with a beautiful child and a successful business, but there was more for me to do. Then I started doing it, first by breaking free of these limiting beliefs. I’ve chronicled the last part of this journey to freedom in my recently published book, Interviewed by God.

Now I’m not saying that being married, having kids or running a business means you don’t have an amazing, fulfilling life. For some people, that’s exactly what they are meant to do, and living your dream is a beautiful thing. But for me (and maybe for you too) there was much more to living my true purpose than these unconscious beliefs were allowing me to realize.

I am grateful for this profound quote that helped set me on the way to realigning with my divine source of guidance. I hope it can act as a reminder for you to check in and make sure nothing is preventing you from fulfilling your potential as well.