Living up to Potential

I recently had the honor of presenting an award to one of our students.  That meant, of course, that I had to think of what to say about her in front of a crowd of people–what it was about her that impressed me the most.  It was a pretty difficult task, as there are quite a few things about her that impress me–her work ethic, the effort that she gives to everything she does, how nice she is to other people, the respect that she shows to everyone.  After a lot of thought, though, I realized that all of those things together worked towards one particular thing–she is constantly doing her best to fulfill her potential in all that she does.

Reaching to fulfill our potential isn’t all that easy sometimes.  After all, it often takes hard work, and it takes making decisions that may not involve the easy ways of doing things.  We may have to decide to try to do something very difficult or very frightening if we want to live up to our potential.  After all, I’m never going to reach my potential as a runner if I never push myself hard when I’m training.  I’m never going to reach my potential as a teacher if I don’t take risks in the classroom, and if I don’t work hard to keep up on current literature and research, and if I don’t try hard to get to know my students and determine their needs.  I could just come to class every day and present the same old stuff in the same old ways, but then how will I ever come close to reaching my potential?

Perhaps we never reach our potential.  Perhaps as we improve, our potential improves, too.  But whether we reach it or not isn’t important; the important thing is whether we attempt to reach it, whether we give all that we have to try to do things better than we ever have before, whether we take the risks to learn more and become more.  I have a great role model in my life now, someone who gives everything she has to reach her potential, and I’m very grateful that I was assigned the honor of presenting her award.  After all, if I hadn’t had the chance to do so I might never have started thinking about reaching my own potential in all that I do.

With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence
in one’s ability, one can build a better world.

The Dalai Lama