The potential for greatness is in all of us! Greatness is not just for the chosen few. It’s for the ones who believe, raise their own expectations, and push themselves. The journey to greatness starts where we are today.
John Maxwell presents an interesting concept as one of his keys to growth; he refers to this concept as “The Law of the Rubber Band.” What Maxwell suggests is that personal development stops when we lose tension between where we are and where we could be. By continuously stretching ourselves in our professional and personal lives emotionally, physically, and spiritually, we stay out of the dreaded trap of mediocrity known as our “comfort zone.”
I want you to think of ten things you can do with a rubber band. No really—not just a couple of things, but ten. What is the one thing all the uses you came up with have in common? Yep, you guessed it—rubber bands are only useful when they are stretched. This analogy can be applied to us as humans as we maximize the value we bring to our personal development and growth when we are stretched.
A few months ago, I discussed the importance of reading and an interesting statistic: 42% of college graduates never read a book after they graduate. So many people never truly try to reach their full potential and seem willing to settle for average in life. I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand the idea of settling for average. I love this quote from Arnold Bennett, a nonfiction author who was one of the forefathers of self-help books on success: “The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never stretches to his full capacity, never stands up to his full stature.”
Bennett believed that, in order to reach our full potential, we need to be aware of the gap between where we are today and our potential—and then let the strain and tension of the space between those two motivate us to be better.
It is so important to continuously push ourselves in our personal and professional lives. If you’re like me and most others, we are always tempted to simply settle and be comfortable. We run the risk of staying in our comfort zones and settling for mediocrity. I believe that if we never leave our comfort zones, this approach will result in lives filled with dissatisfaction. In order to grow and reach your potential, you need courage to get outside of your comfort zone and break the chains of mediocrity.
A famous quote by Jim Rohn says this: “Every life form seems to strive to its maximum except human beings. How tall will a tree grow? As tall as it possibly can. Human beings, on the other hand, have been given the dignity of choice. You can choose to be all or you can choose to be less. Why not stretch up to the full measure of the challenge and see what all you can do?”
If you are reading this blog, I truly do believe you have a desire to grow and a willingness to be stretched. However, if you want to change and grow, you will have to take some risks. When that moment of risk is staring you in the face, the thing that keeps you from making the stretch is fear. But because we are humans, we have choices—we can choose to step out and be uncomfortable, or we can stay comfortable.
Fear can be a voice telling us to step out, to push ourselves—and that takes courage.
So here’s the point: when we let ourselves experience fear and get out of our comfort zones, we have just moved closer to our true potential. The journey doesn’t stop there, as now we have a new comfort zone, and we will need to push ourselves again if we want to grow more.
Remember, growth stops when we lose the tension between where we are today and where we want to be tomorrow. Having less tension undermines the growth towards our true potential.
I encourage you to embrace the tension along the road to your success!
