Unfold Your Wings and Watch Life Take Off

Part 2 - Your Potential

Your Potential Needs To Be Understood

Many people find it difficult to stay calm and breath gently because they are afraid of making mistakes. We are bound to make mistakes while exploring our potential. Making mistakes is natural and normal. We learn by making mistakes. If we do not learn from our mistakes then we will simply repeat the mistakes until we do learn from them.

We follow our star to learn about love. We learn about love through lessons from mistakes we make along the way. These lessons teach us to understand love, which underpins the whole of life. Understanding lessons presented while exploring our potential will also greatly help us to discern our calling. This is because the call is suffused with love. It is vital that we learn from mistakes we make while following our star. If we fail to learn then we fail to grow and we will be fruitlessly repeating outmoded patterns of behaviour.

Our potential needs to be understood.

Sometimes it has taken time for me to learn lessons I received from following my star. All my life I have felt drawn to undertaking freelance projects. Doing freelance projects has been an important part of realising my potential.

I remember when I undertook to design a glider. I always loved flying and thought I could create a better motor glider than was available on the market. The project failed.

A few years later I met an aeronautical engineer at Queens University. He had a project to design and manufacture a light aircraft. I decided to help him by producing a marketing plan to launch the project. The marketing plan got nowhere.

The following year I decided to design a new type of vehicle for developing countries. I spent 3 months on the design but the project failed to progress beyond the report stage. (See Your Healing From Arrogance).

Why did all these projects fail? The first project failed because I didn't:

• Involve others in the project
• Gather together the necessary resources
• Acquire knowledge needed to carry out the project
• Cultivate contacts to make it a success
• Respond to a proven need
• Have a humble approach to carrying out the project

Interestingly the second and third projects failed for exactly the same reasons. I didn't learn the lessons that were repeated from the first project. That is why these projects also failed.

I hadn't understood my life-path because I hadn't used my insight.

After the third failure I decided to take a serious look at why I was failing in my freelance projects. I reflected on my past projects and I wrote down what I had learned from the lessons they presented.

A few years later I decided to research running a business exhibition in Northern Ireland as my next freelance project. This time I decided to learn from my insight. I wrote down lessons from my three previous failed projects and made sure I had learned from those lessons...

• Involve others in the project: I involved the Federation of Small Businesses

• Gather together the necessary resources: I organized major sponsorship from an international telecommunications company

• Acquire the knowledge I needed to carry out the project: I talked to others who had organized exhibitions

• Cultivate contacts needed to make it a success: I worked alongside an exhibition company with a proven track record

• Respond to a proven need: I carried out a questionnaire to establish that the small business community would support such an initiative (the questionnaire showed they would).

• Have a humble approach to carrying out the project: I did not think I had all the answers. I involved others and acted as a facilitator for other people's efforts.

When the time came to decide to go ahead with the project my inner guide was absolutely clear. It said, "Do this project". We received many appreciative letters from exhibitors. It was a great success. I had learned my lessons. I could now apply what I had learned to any future freelance projects.

	UNFOLDING YOUR WINGS
Experiment in fulfilling your potential by pursuing activities that you feel guided to undertake. This is the best way I know to grow as a person. If you are afraid of failure try and reduce the power of that word by seeing failure as an opportunity to learn something new. If you feel attracted to a particular activity but are afraid of the risk involved, ask your guidance to show you a simple first step where the risk is minimal.

Our potential needs to be understood. When we follow our star we will fail and we will attract lessons. These lessons will apply to every aspect of our lives including hobbies, friends, family, work and relationships. If we reflect on our failures and difficulties and learn our lessons, our understanding will grow. As a consequence we will learn about love and we will become more sensitive to the inner call.

Envoi

I am opening to my potential.
I have made a mistake.
What am I to do?

The mistake has been made. What is past is past.
How can I make the mistake into success?
I can learn from the mistake.
I can learn the lesson given from following my potential.
I can learn about love.

I learn my lesson.
My mistake is transformed into success.
Next time I know how to behave,
And I am grateful.