How to Coach Yourself and Others Happiness Is No Accident | Page 16

benefit of hindsight? Even if we are doing our best, we might make mistakes or incorrect
decisions. This true potential implies that success, happiness and fulfilment, are linked to
achieving our “full potential”. Seeing as this full potential is always just out of reach, extending
this line of thinking says that we will not be happy or fulfilled unless we reach it. This is why I
think this statement actually demotivates a lot of people.
Doing our full potential implies that we are going to do our best to grow and improve ourselves.
This statement puts the pressure on the present, not the impossibly huge context of our whole lives.
In this sense, as long as we are doing the best we possibly can, we are successful. We can always
do our best, regardless of a specific outcome.
By focusing on doing our full potential we can experience maximum growth and improvement in
our lives. From this improvement and growth we can achieve happiness and fulfilment. Knowing
we are doing the best we can is enough to satisfy. From this context I would say that a recovering
alcoholic doing his best to improve his life is more successful than someone who has settled into
an average life.
Our full potential in the course of our lives is often at the mercy of different factors we cannot
control. If we were to suddenly die tomorrow, I wouldn’t say that where we our right now was our
full potential. Furthermore, this full potential gets us to strive towards a point, rather than focusing
on the growth and direction itself.
This concept of success as being an arbitrary point is prevalent in the way we set goals. I often
hear about people who say that they weren’t any happier after achieving their goals than they were
before. These people would often go on to claim that the problem was with goal setting entirely.
The fact is, the real problem is that they believed success (happiness and fulfilment) was linked
with an arbitrary point, rather than the rate of their own growth. The reason you set goals is to
increase your velocity, to increase the rate of your growth, not just to achieve a specific milestone,
or position, in that development. It may seem odd that the purpose of goal setting isn’t just to
achieve the goal, but rather to get us to push beyond our normal expectations, but it is very true.
I believe that many people who like this expression already use it in the way I describe as doing
instead of reaching a point. For those people I think you’ve already got the right idea. Focus on
how you can do your best right in this moment. As long as you are doing that, you are successful.
Life is a journey not a destination. Don’t focus on reaching an arbitrary point, whether that is our
“full potential” or even your specific goals. Instead focus on whether you are doing your best to
grow, improve and expand. Focus not on living up to your full potential but in doing your full
potential in every moment of your life.

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