Welcome to Visionary’s Pursuit, a podcast where we explore what it takes to turn your bold and inspiring ideas into reality. I'm Carolina Zuleta. I'm a life and business coach and your host for this podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here.
Hi, welcome back. This is episode 85 of The Visionary's Pursuit podcast. One of the things I've been fascinated by since my late teens is the concept of our potential.
For me, I've seen it as a possibility, something that I could achieve or I could develop or I could learn, and for me, it has been very motivating. This idea of fulfilling my potential, discovering what I'm capable of has been a very positive thought.
And yet, throughout the years, talking with my friends and my clients, I've heard a lot of stories about how people think about potential as something that they're not good enough if they don't develop it.
Maybe when they were growing up, they would hear things like, "You're wasting your potential," or, "If only you worked a little bit more. Look, you have so much potential, and you're not using it." So their relationship to their potential comes more from a place of lack, of I'm not living up to my potential. I'm not where I should be. I'm not good enough. I wanted to mention both sides of the way we can relate to the potential because I want us to start from a clean slate and talk about potential as all those things we could learn, develop, grow, achieve.
And there's a lot of potential that we'll never use. For example, I have the potential to learn a new language like French or Mandarin But I don't have any intention of using that potential. Or I probably have the potential of becoming a really good pickleball player, but I'm not into that, so it's a potential that I'm not gonna use.
Also, I want all of us to make peace with the fact that even at the end of our life, there's gonna be potential that we haven't developed. So to fulfill our potential, it's not a place we all need to get to. It's not an end line.
There will always be possibility for us to learn something new, to develop a new skill, to make more money, to have a bigger business, to achieve something that we hadn't achieved in the past. That possibility will always be there for all of us. But because that possibility exists, it doesn't mean that where we are today is wrong or is not enough or that we are not good enough because we're not developing certain potential.
I wholeheartedly believe that if I don't learn how to play pickleball really well, I'm not gonna be more or less because of that. So that's true for any potential that we won't realize, that we choose not to realize, or that we haven't realized yet.
Potential is different than talent. Talent is maybe something we're naturally good at. Potential is more about a possibility, and you can think about it as emotional capacity, leadership abilities, creativity, discipline, self-awareness, achievements.
Living into our potential, is more about becoming more fully expressed, more aligned, and more intentional with the way we lead and live. So the first place is we need to decide what type of potential we wanna develop.
We don't have to develop all of our potential. We get to choose. Right now, for example, for me, I'm developing the potential of becoming the CEO of a multi-seven-figure business. I wanna develop the potential of becoming better at my workouts, lifting more weights, becoming more agile, every day becoming a better mom.
I still don't think I have fulfilled my potential as a mom. Every day I'm learning and becoming more aware of the impact I have on my kids, of my limiting beliefs, of how my stories have an impact on them, letting them go, managing my emotions better. So I want you to take a moment right now and think about what is the potential you wanna develop, and it has to come from a place of desire, of what is important to you, what is exciting to you, what is something that is meaningful to you.
Andrew, my husband, has a lot of hobbies, and I really admire how he takes them seriously and he learns so much about them. He's developing his potential of cultivating beautiful bonsais and orchids, and he draws incredible, and he's been focusing on drawing portraits of people, and they're absolutely fantastic.
That is his path. Those are his passions right now, and mine are different, and I think that's something that is so beautiful, that we all have different things that we wanna develop, different abilities, different interests, different desires. Take a moment and think about what is the potential that you want to develop, and really make sure it's coming from a place of desire and not from a place of lack.
And when it comes from a place of lack or scarcity there's almost like a little bit of shame that I'm not there yet, that I haven't done it yet. Versus when it comes from desire, it's more exciting. What is it that I'm going to explore?
What is it that I'm going to learn? How is it that I'm gonna evolve into this next version of myself?
In the book 10X Is Easier Than 2X, The authors present a concept that's called the gap and the gain, and I think It's closely related to this idea of our potential. And basically, what they're saying is how we measure our progress is gonna give us happiness, confidence, motivation, or it's gonna make us anxious, worried. It will make us feel not enough, not good enough. So the idea is there is this potential, there is this vision you have of yourself, these things you wanna learn or achieve or make happen.
And the moment we cast that vision, there is a gap between where we are today and who we are gonna be in the future. When we decide this is the potential I wanna develop, immediately there's a gap, the potential is the gap that exists between who we are today and who we want to be in the future.
But there's also a gain. The gain is when we look our past, and we can see how we have already fulfilled some of that potential when we see the things that we have learned or evolved or achieved or gained. And , the authors, what they explain is those people who are focused more on the gap, on thinking, "Ah, this is still all that I have to learn. This is still all that I have to achieve. I'm so behind. It's so far away. It feels so hard to get there," their level of satisfaction with themselves is a lot less than the people that look towards their past, towards their gain and see, "Wow, look what I've learned. Look at the new ideas I have. Look at who I am becoming. Look at the achievements we've already realized." And it's interesting because, I see it in my clients. My clients are high performers. They're really exceptional in their lives. And I was having a conversation with one of my clients, and she was telling me that when she was in her early 20s, some of her professors would say, "Look, you have so much potential, but you're not fully using it."
Although she was exceptional at what she was doing, she also enjoyed a lot her free time. So instead of being like many of her classmates who were studying Nonstop, she would take breaks, she would hang out with her friends, two hours before the important test, she would be talking or hanging out with her friends and having fun instead of, studying until the last minute.
And because the professors or other classmates would tell her, "Listen, if you could put a little bit more effort, you would be, number one in our class. You have all this potential," she developed a little bit of a belief of maybe, you know, she wasn't that great, or she was wasting some of her potential, or she wasn't prioritizing correctly.
So when we started working together, there were all these changes she wanted to make, and after two weeks of us setting the vision of where she wanted to go, she came to me and she said, "Maybe it's not the right time. Maybe I don't have it in me to fulfill my potential."
What I thought was interesting is how that concept was focused on the gap, right? If I had studied those two extra hours, maybe I have been valedictorian in my class. Or maybe if in these two weeks I have done all these other things, then I would be further along. The focus was on the gap. But the moment we turned the focus into the gain, and when she started working with me, she had already made so much progress in two weeks.
The fact was that she set a very big vision, a very big goal. And of course, in two weeks, even if she'd made a lot of progress, that progress is so small compared to the huge vision she has. But when I pointed out this to her and we started focusing on the gain, on the things she's learned, on the things she's developed, on how she's seeing the world so differently, Her perspective of the world has completely changed, and she's starting to take the action steps to take her to her vision.
She felt again so motivated and excited for her vision and full of energy. And also, what I thought about, reflecting on her story about in her, early 20s when she was in college and how professors would tell her that if she studied a little bit more, she would be fulfilling her true potential.
I was thinking, well, potential has to come from a desire, and her desire was never to be number one in her class. She also valued hanging out with her friends and play and fun, and that is also potential, right? So that's why I'm talking about potential cannot be this rigid thing that we think we should be.
It really has to come from our true desires. And if our desire is maybe to have a billion-dollar company, wonderful. But if our desire is to have a smaller company that is sustainable, that gives us enough money to live the lifestyle we wanna live, but also gives us the freedom to travel, to be with our family, then that is our potential.
That is the potential to have all the things we want, not just what society or others think should be our goal or should be the thing we make progress toward because we have certain natural abilities or natural strengths, people think we should be using them in a certain way. So stop here for a second, right? Think about what is the potential you wanna develop from your desire, and notice if you're paying more attention to the gap or to the gain. And notice also when you switch your perspective more towards the gain than towards the gap, how different do you feel?
How much more motivated, proud of yourself, grateful Energetic, right? When we're focusing on the things that we have already made happen.
The last concept I wanted to share here with you is something I learned from Brooke Castillo, who is the founder of the Life Coach School where I got my second coaching certification. And she talks about how life is 50/50. And what she means about that is no matter how much money we make, no matter if we found the love of our life or we're still looking for them, or we have the perfect job, or if we have kids or don't have kids, or if we finally run that marathon we wanted to run, no matter what happens in our life, our feelings are always gonna be 50/50. 50% of the time we're gonna feel happy, joyful, we're gonna experience love and gratitude and feeling proud of ourselves, and 50% of the time we're gonna be worried and anxious and scared and sad and confused and overwhelmed.
Because although I think we could all agree that some emotions are more pleasant than others. All of them color our human experience, and we need them all. And we know we are alive because we're experiencing them all. And there are no amount of circumstances that are gonna make that go away, because this is what it means to be human.
There's no amount of money, of success, number of clients, of being on demand, of time, of freedom, of people around us that are gonna make the human experience be 100% happy.
And I think that especially here in the West, we have been sold the idea that happiness is a place to arrive. That if we graduate from this university, and then we have this job, and then we have a business that is this successful, or we're making this amount of money, or we finally get married, or we lose this weight, then we're gonna be fully happy.
But I think when we make peace and we really see our life for what it is, that is the human experience is colored with all different kinds of emotions, and that that is a beautiful thing, all of a sudden, the rush, the urgency to get somewhere is not as high.
I often notice that in me and in my clients, when we're feeling this urgency, I have to make this amount of revenue, I have to achieve this thing, it usually is because some part of our brain is telling us that there, there, when I mean there, is when we fulfill that potential or when we achieve that goal, is significantly better than here. And that is not true.
Listen, I know a lot of my clients have fought me in this one, and even for me, it's been like, "Is that actually true?" But one way to see it is look at the past. Think of a goal you really wanted to achieve that you've already achieved. And for a moment, you thought that when you were going to achieve that goal, you would be happy.
But then you got there and, yeah, you were happy. Of course, you were proud, you celebrated. Maybe the positive emotions were highlighted for a little bit, but then life went back to fifty-fifty. remember a client who hired me some years ago because she was in a job that she had put all her effort, she had grown within this company, but she was feeling stuck, unfulfilled.
She didn't like that job anymore, that company anymore. She was having differences with the founders of the company, and she really was craving finding a better job. And we spent our first weeks coaching together, getting very clear on the job she wanted, that it really came from her desires and not what other people believe she should be doing.
And she came up with a job that was very unique and that people would say, "Why would you go? That doesn't exist." It had very specific things that were not like the common jobs. And we worked really hard, and she worked really hard on finding that job, and she got it. And she negotiated her salary, she negotiated some stock.
And at that point, it felt like this thing that seemed impossible had happened, and she was so happy and excited, and she started her job, and then a few weeks later, life happened, right? She was having employees who were not performing and differences with the CEO and, you know, just the normal things that are in our human life.
And she worked in this job for about a year or a little bit more, and she accomplished incredible things. But then another job opportunity came up, and it was significantly better: better pay, a bigger company, more support. I mean, really, she was at a whole new level.
And this job that we coached on and worked on and worked on her belief that she could have it and all the things was now part of her past. But what had stayed with her was all the skills she developed, believing in herself, managing her brain, leading other people, influencing other people, having difficult conversations, negotiating different things, talking about money, connecting to her ambition.
And that's why I think this idea of potential is so cool to get somewhere. But we have to remember that that place is not better than where we are. What is exciting is the journey. What is exciting is what we learn about ourselves, how we discover we have more strength, more capacity, more creativity, more leadership than we ever thought.
So my invitation today is can we all have big dreams, big ambition, and at the same time be incredibly loving and grateful with where we are today? Can we hold on one hand so much pride and love and joy for the human being we are today? Can we hold the belief that even if we don't learn anything else, we don't achieve anything else, we don't make any progress, we are perfectly enough today as we are.
We are worthy and we're amazing and we are worthy of being celebrated. While at the same time, on the other hand, we get excited about our potential, about all the other things we can achieve, we can learn, we can develop, we can grow. Most of us have been taught that in order to have big goals, it means because where we are is not enough.
Because we have to diminish where we are in order to accept that there's something bigger for us.
The truth is that we can be content and proud of who we are today and want coaching because there's the excitement and the joy of developing more, and not because there is better than here, but because we get to. We get to use our life to explore different things, to explore what we're capable of, to discover other strengths and abilities within ourselves.
One of my favorite conversations to have, and we have it a couple of times a year, is with Sebastian, one of my brothers. When we were in college, we lived together. So we grew up in a city called Medellin in Colombia, but we both went to the university in the capital of Colombia, which is called Bogota, and we shared an apartment.
And sometimes Sundays afternoons, we would, hang out watching a movie, and we would have conversations about our dreams, about what we wanted to achieve. And back then, his dream was he wanted to be working in studios producing music for film and television.
And today he's worked as a music editor in many movies, you know, movies that we've seen, Father of the Bride and Moana 2 and Wish, the Disney movie. and think about how Sebastian in his early 20s would feel when he would see the new version he is today, that he walks into Disney Studios and there's a parking spot with his name written on it, or when he's had the opportunity recording Abbey Road or at Skywalker Ranch or at the best studios in New York and LA, and how he's so known and respected in his industry, and how much people love him. And we love looking at that because that's looking at the gain.
That's looking at his journey and how much he's grown. And to see it through the eyes of the 20-year-old it always fills both of us with so much joy and so much gratitude because that 20-year-old dreamed of the life he has now. But really, this life he lives now is way bigger than that dream So I think all of us can do that.
All of us can go back and remember ourselves when we were 17 or 18, and we were dreaming about the life we have today, I feel so much gratitude for the journey we've already been on.
And that is the secret to sustain our ambition, to be able to dream bigger and to not collapse because we're just focused on the gap of, on how far away we're still are from the bigger dream. So to summarize for today, think about what is the potential you want to develop, that make sure it's coming from your desire.
Connect to your journey so far. Celebrate yourself. Be proud of yourself. Honor who you've already become. And from here on, know that there, , is not significantly better, but that the journey is worth it. And when you focus on the things that you're gonna learn and the excitement about that while you're celebrating who you have already become, that's how you will be able to sustain big dreams and make incredible things happen.
All right, my friends, I really enjoy getting to talk with all of you every week, and I'll see you next time. Bye.
If you're currently pursuing a big, bold idea and would love some support, let's talk. In my coaching program, I'll teach you how to manage yourself, your own thoughts and emotions. as well as your team and your money so you can turn your beautiful idea into a reality. Go now to carozuleta.com slash consult that is c a r o z u l e t a dot com slash consult and complete the form to book a complimentary call with me.
See you there!
