A Battle of Words

We held our first Journey Institute Retreat today.  The purpose was to delve into what we do and why we do it.  We used an exercise Dafna created and modified it for ourselves.  We plunged into our own personal mission statements, we developed a statement of purpose, we talked about our vision, our mission, our beliefs and principles; we covered it all.

We spent all day on it.  Normally this type of strategic visioning for a full day would make my ears bleed but at one point we looked up and nine hours had passed and we didn’t even realize it.  Sure, it was intense and at times even difficult, but there really is something to be said for the statement that when you’re doing what you love you won’t work a day in your life.  Today wasn’t work, it was about following our passion and doing what we love to do.

In the end, we were talking about some of the guiding principles behind why we do what we do, our vision and mission statements and one particular phrase came up.  In all of our discussion we had used two words in the same phrase. They were:

Maximizing Human Potential
and
Transforming Human Potential

The question we were struggling with was which was the right word?
Our work, whether we’re speaking, writing, consulting, giving workshops or working with someone one on one, is always about helping other people. We have many beliefs but chief among them is that we are first and foremost focused on helping someone else. We want to help them achieve greatness, live more fulfilling lives, and often that means helping them identifying their communities and ways in which they can have positive impact both personally and professionally for themselves and their communities.

So, we really are talking about maximizing their potential; or are we?

I certainly believe that our work results in helping people do more, be more, achieve more, but in and of itself that’s not what we do.
What we really do is transform the way people live, the way they view themselves and the world around them. Often we help them identify communities they belong to they had never thought of as communities before. We help transform the way they view challenges that affect them, their communities and the lives of those around them. We teach them to transform the way they approach living such that they learn how to appreciate and enjoy life along their journey to those grander goals and dreams.

There are plenty of people who can help you increase whatever it is you want; more wealth, more fame, more power, more anything. We want to transform your life, to help you get more out of it, to give more to it, to enjoy it more and to see it in ways you never had before. And yes, more than likely that will result in you having more of those whatever things you want too, but it’s more of a side benefit, not the real purpose.
We hope your story is one of transformation that drives you to actions to enrich not only your life but the lives of others in the various communities you touch, and perhaps, maybe even across the globe.

Here’s to transforming your human potential.

Photo credit: See-ming Lee ??? SML / Foter.com / CC BY-SA