What is it that prevents people from living to their full potential?

As someone who has an interest in spiritual works. I have a question I would love to get the members views on.

What is it that prevents people from living to their full potential?

When asking the question about potential I tend to think of fear. The reason is that fear only gets loud when you do things that matter. Fear never bothers you if you're average but the second you dare to be more than ordinary, fear awakens. It’s time to have faith in your resilience so you can face your fears. Think about your life and the things that make you worry or cause you stress. Write them down. This act will allow you to focus on what you need to fix to get control of your life. Living with a lot of unknown or unrecognized fear can cause stress-like responses in your body. One of the most common stress-induced symptoms is feeling sick. If you never know what your biggest fears are you'll never be able to conquer them.

"Only when you are really afraid of the next step, real changes occur. But remember: fear is an illusion."


This little sentence accompanies me for a lifetime and your contribution reminded me of it immediately.

Yes, of course, fear is a disability and has enormous potential.
But it is not really fear that prevents people from reaching their potential. At least not exclusively.

When I look at myself, my environment or the people I meet, it is often society that, with its rules and expectations,
shows limits to which we adhere.
Expectations are always double-edged, in my eyes an expectation always implies a disappointment.

Fear, expectations, disappointments ... in summary: attachments and illusions.

Our brains are hardwired from our evolutionary history to scan for threats and trigger reactions to make us protect ourselves from those threats. Because of this, fear is necessary and useful.

What many don't often develop is knowledge of this mechanism and how to keep it under control and set it aside for when we know a situation actually is a threat.

So, what we experience is that the mechanism goes off, by design, on a very broad scale to make sure all corners are covered. So that means it is designed to be at least somewhat irrational and triggers during times and situations where there actually is no threat, but even if we are uncomfortable about a situation or there is an element of the unknown. (Is there a tiger in those woods? Well, to keep us alive, let's assume there is, and stay away from it)

The way to move past this is to learn how your own human psychology works regarding your fear, what triggers it, and practice facing fears, gradually working yourself up from smallest ones to larger ones until you've gotten used to working with it. This builds up courage which means, you still have fear, but you know how to take action in the face of it.

Jedi_J wrote: As someone who has an interest in spiritual works. I have a question I would love to get the members views on.

What is it that prevents people from living to their full potential?

When asking the question about potential, I tend to think of fear. The reason is that fear only gets loud when you do things that matter. Fear never bothers you if you're average but the second you dare to be more than ordinary, fear awakens. It’s time to have faith in your resilience so you can face your fears. Think about your life and the things that make you worry or cause you stress. Write them down. This act will allow you to focus on what you need to fix to get control of your life. Living with a lot of unknown or unrecognized fear can cause stress-like responses in your body. One of the most common stress-induced symptoms is feeling sick. If you never know what your biggest fears are you'll never be able to conquer them.

Pastor Carlos here, greetings and hi friend. Welcome to the Temple of the Jedi Order. This place is a very unique place in a way that this is ONE of many ideas that already exist here. Its never ONLY the SOLO idea that does. In the Star Wars films there is a common idea that can be described as "THE STORY" or as we call it here some times that "Hero's Journey" we all can take. This idea can come and DOES come in many forms. The more I study the more I realize we are all asking the same questions and we are all taking our own very personal paths.
One of the books or IDEAS that took a hammer to my glass ideas was Jiddu K with a book called "Freedom from the known" Its in our library for free review any time. In it, we are reminded that some things we know can be seen as "spoon fed." This can be taken many ways but the easiest for me is to remember that if I can learn it I can un learn it too. I learned many fears as well. Just like I learned many spoon fed ideas. Later in life , I began to think and create or CULTIVATE a bit more than just a wild field in my mind and in my heart. Cultivation and virtue are two friends in my own path I HOPE to pass on to others.
In this place we self reflect often. Lets be honest, who can really tell any one anything, who has that right then by consent? We share here. That's all really. The biggest questions from a place like this can be... "why haven't I or why cant I..." because only then can YOU answer that one 100 percent.

Why prevents Pastor Carlos from living to that FULL potential...
For me, these questions we share CAN help CULTIVATE something different, plant new seeds get new crops. Plant old dead ones, well , you know what you can expect. What keeps me from living my potential... your gunna love this one, nothing but me. There are some mornings when I am NOT in the way as well. Welcome to the Temple and may the Force be with you as you continue to seek it.

Thank you all for your input.

I know there is never one full answer to any of life's greatest problems.

I think money has a lot to do with it. If you can barely afford to pay your rent, you can't afford well-planned and nutritious meals. You also can't afford to see the world. Often times people work away the best hours of their day, then are too exhausted to do anything at all. On weekends they just rest to try and catch up on sleep. They can't afford to save up enough to invest and gain passive income. I can't tell you how many people I know who have college degrees but work minimum wage and have to have multiple roommates to rent a small place -- it's a lot, though. If you're constantly out of money, you simply can't engage in many of the activities which would help you actualize your potential.

Are you fishing for Maslow's hierarchy?
I think desire is a built in part of human nature and an insatiable one. A lot of people say "if I had X, I would be happy (fulfilled, actualized, etc.)" in their internal monologue at least implicitly, no thing nor accomplishment by itself will complete you. These things can help for sure, but are neither sufficient nor necessary in my opinion.

I would argue we can do nothing BUT live at our full potential, which includes being disappointed and wanting more.

The first thing that came to mind was fear. But I think fear is a symptom. It is a mental daemon designed to protect your psyche or your id. There is nothing wrong with fear if fear is balanced. Fear can be balanced with hope. If your hope for a good outcome is greater than your fear of a bad outcome then whatever fear you have wont stop you from moving forward. So maybe you have the right amount of fear but not enough hope. Do you see?

Now what is it that manages our hopes and fears? It's us. So all these other things are symptoms. The cause is us. We get in our own way. We stop ourselves from acting because we're not brave enough, smart enough, experienced enough, etc. when these things may be meaningless and irrelevant without us thinking about them. So we are always our own worst enemies. Often we don't even get to fight someone else because we're too busy fighting ourselves or the reason we're fighting someone else may be because we've already lost a battle to ourselves.

This is why Jedi practice meditation and gravitate to forms of spirituality that focus in on the elevating the self and freeing it from all the many forms of imbalance.

Not understanding that they are not their brains. Their constant judgements about themselves and others. And what they make circumstances mean in their minds.