7 Ways You're Not Reaching Your Full Potential

Keeping sight of your goals is often a very difficult thing to do. Things you aim for can very easily get lost amongst the noise of day to day life.

Not staying focused on your goal or goals and not staying motivated and driven to achieve those goals is one of the biggest reasons why you aren't reaching your full potential.

Try sitting down with a blank page and write down all the things that you want to achieve. Thing both short term and long term. Examples can be like: learning how to ride a bike or something more long term like owning and successfully running your own business.

Making sure you know why you are doing what you are doing is of paramount importance. Drive yourself to work hard and push against adversity. Remind yourself every day, every hour if necessary where you are and where you want to go and be.

Self doubt can grow from many different places. It can often be extremely crippling and can leave you feeling like you are somehow unworthy of success or the achieving of your goals.

We ask ourselves questions like: "What if I can't do this?" or "What if I fail?" and once these questions start popping up, they give rise to inaction and just generally being depressed at the rate of your work or progress.

Remind yourself that your goals are a working progress and that Rome was not built overnight. Be fair with yourself and make sure you are setting smaller realistic goals. The satisfaction you will enjoy from achieving your smaller and more realistic goals will far outweigh your frustration at being stagnant.

A great strategy to negate self-doubt is the use of positive self affirmations. Pinpoint your skills and your attributes, write them down and even though it might feel a little ridiculous, stand in a mirror, look yourself dead straight in the eye and compliment yourself at least once a day.

Don't rely on other people to validate you, be observant of your progress so far and learn to be patient with yourself and your success.

Change can be difficult and can often come from the most unexpected places. Old habits, old places and faces are familiar and comfortable. However if you are too focused on maintaining the status quo, the success and potential you are hoping for and to reach will not eventuate.

Being adaptable and open to change is one of the most valuable skills you can learn in today's day and age. Versatility means you can cope with the ebbs and flows that life will push and pull you through.

Remind yourself, that even if a change feels difficult or negative that you will do your best to make the most of it. Persistence through change is invaluable and believing that no matter what the change, be it positive or negative, the sun will rise tomorrow and you can begin again.

We've all been there. You pour your heart, soul, sweat, tears and money into something that you so desperately want to see succeed and it all falls to pieces.

Failure can often feel devastating and can stop us from coming back again at full force and trying again.

Persistence in the face of failure is the mark of a truly incredible individual. To be knocked back time after time and yet come back each and every time, more stubborn, more impassioned and wiser than ever.

Often there are individuals who want to see us fail and we ask ourselves the question, "Why do those people breathe a sigh of relief when I fail and are so unhappy when I succeed?". One of the biggest issues challenging humanity today is the inability to want others to succeed.

Rising above and against is how you succeed and reach your full potential.

Be stubborn, be persistent, go to that seminar or event that people who don't want you to succeed don't want you to go to. Push past adversity and seize the opportunity to learn resilience and grow a thicker skin.

Be brave and realise that you are not your failures. Failures and setbacks are lessons that give you an opportunity to reassess, regroup and re-channel your energy into more successful avenues.

We often compare ourselves to our more successful peers and co-workers. We level our worst traits against the best of theirs and leave ourselves feeling that we are in some way lacking and lesser.

Getting out of the cycle of comparison is a key step in reaching your full potential.

Acknowledge the fact that you are your own person. Your skills, your traits and mannerisms are your own and acknowledge the fantastic simplicity of achieving great things just by embracing yourself and who you are.

Know who you are, know what you care about and where you want to be and focus on that rather than on what other people are doing.

Feel free to study the successes of others in order to inspire yourself but don't allow it to control how you see yourself and don't allow it to upset you because you have yet to reach their level of success.

You are a work in progress that may not be completed today or tomorrow but nonetheless use this mission for personal and professional growth as your motivation to achieve your goals.

Not taking the time to learn new things and gain new knowledge is a huge crutch to your success. Make time to up skill yourself in your area of personal or professional interest.

Take a course, watch a how-to youtube video, read a crash course for dummies book. Do whatever you can in your spare time to have the appropriate and relevant knowledge to succeed in whatever field you are trying to succeed in.

Organise your learning priorities by addressing your goals and coming up with strategies to increase your expertise within each category or goal.

Reaching your full potential is not easy. You might face setbacks and encounter people that will attempt to make things more difficult for you.

People will often tell you to 'stay positive', which can feel difficult, reductive and redundant. This article will not end by telling you to 'stay positive' but rather, stay emphatic.

Know what you want, come up with a decisive strategy and confidently persist for it.

Try, try and try again until you get to where you want to be.

Be stubborn about your goals and be flexible with your methods.