Do You Know YOUR Potential? Or, Why You Shouldn’t Try To Be Moshe
September 19th, 2008
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You might think you should try to be as great as Moshe Rabeinu – after all, he was the greatest prophet.
However, that has one major problem: you don’t really believe you could be as great as Moshe. You will sabotage your our own plans because it just doesn’t feel real. “Me, try to be like Moshe? Who am I kidding?” R’ Zushe said that when he enters the heavenly court, he wasn’t afraid of being asked “Why weren’t you as great as Moshe,” rather he was afraid of being asked “Why weren’t you R’ Zushe?”
We have to reach for our own potential because we can believe it is possible. Napoleon Hill said that anything the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. If you don’t believe it - “If you grab too much, you don’t get anything.” So don’t try to be as great as Moshe. Try something more believable: be as great as you can be.
So how great can you be? For most of us, the idea of always being happy, greeting everyone with a pleasant face, and complimenting and praising everyone around us seems way beyond us. Just to keep our mouth shut on that juicy bit of information may be quite an effort! What is the absolute outermost edge that you can believe yourself doing? Achieving THAT is should seem possible to you.
How do you determine the outermost edges of your personal potential in all areas of your life? Here is a very powerful question to help your brain give you a better answer: What is the best possible position you could be in 30 years from now?
- Would you start a chesed organization?
- How would your middos look? e.g., happiness, courage, calmness, enthusiasm, and sensitivity to others.
- If you work, how will your job change for the better? What would you accomplish in your career? What is important about it? What position would you like to reach? How little overtime will you work?
- In learning, what will you have learned? What would you want to be learning? With who? What depth? What clarity/skill?
Now keep in mind that I am asking about THIRTY years in future. If you answer these questions and find that you can accomplish most of them in 5 or 10 years (as I found), keep pushing your answers until it is something that may take 30 years. Write it out year by year so you can keep incrementing the growth. The time table is irrelevant, you are only trying to see what you believe you can do.
Being limited by what you currently believe is really an imaginary boundary, because you can control what you believe. Anything is within reach - if you are willing to pay the price. So how do you start pushing the edges of what you believe is possible?
One way is simply to grow. When you reach your current edge, you will see further. Your edges are like trail markers. When hiking, you look for the next trail marker. Once you get there, you look for the next. Growth isn’t a destination, but a journey.
To change your beliefs quicker, change your attitude towards the outermost edge of what is possible. Here, referring to Moshe may help. If Moshe was dealing with these people, he would be amazingly calm and helpful, even to people that were incredibly rude. “If he could do that, then I could at least hold myself back from yelling…”
When you constantly consider what THE edge is, YOUR edge will expand. Read biographies of massive Torah scholars or people that have done incredible things for the Jewish people. Look at everyone for inspiration - how can they help expands your view of the edge? Keep reading, listening, and reflecting on such stories until they sound more normal to you.
What are your edges in life? How will you expand them even more?
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