Are you living up to your potential? I wasn’t and how I changed that!

This has been a tough year. But it is still a year where you need to ask the question:

Are you living up to your potential?

I wish someone asked me that question “are you living up to your potential?” 30 years ago. I finally figured out that I wasn’t when I was 53.

You can say everything happens for a reason or a dozen other trite statements, but the reality is most people never give themselves time to ask the question. They just keep doing the same thing repeatedly hoping for different results.

The damage repetition does to living up to your potential

For me, it was an even odder pattern of repetition than most people. I had launched my company, Design Resumes after my own job loss. Later, I linked Design Resumes with multiple non-profit contracts. Originally, the first one was just a way to bring in more revenue than the resume business was bringing in way back in 1991. It was a small contract, I think $195 a month, which required a fair amount of work. It grew a bit but still ended with only $565 a month 17 years later.

The other largest contract still only led to $1000 a month after 12 years. I never did the math to realize the fight I had to pay the bills could have been alleviated multiple ways: drop the contracts, seriously build the business, get a job in a different field, or even subcontract write for another career business. In addition, there was the self-esteem I lost as I wore myself down with the rinse and repeat mindset.

Making a big move

In the middle of the recession, I dropped the last contract and vowed to focus on building my business, Design Resumes.

For those of you who think that would be a wonderful time because so many people were out of work, it doesn’t work that way. When masses of people see an adverse economic impact in a recession or pandemic, they tend to draw in and hunker down.

But nonetheless, I persisted, hired an expert to teach me marketing, learned social media marketing, and kept improving my writing. Amazingly, in the first year of solo focus on building Design Resumes, I replaced all the income from the contracts despite the naysayers. The naysayers hurt, people who told my husband I would regret my decision to walk away from the contracts and others who just laughed at me and said I was worthless.

But for every one of those naysayers and detractors, there have been 100s of great clients and new friends who have helped me move forward.

Why do I share these stories?

Every job seeker and solo entrepreneur struggles with the same crisis of confidence.

• Can I do it?
• Will I make it?
• Could this be the right move?
• Is this the right time?

The bottom line is you will never know if you don’t try. I put everything on the line back in December 2009. I dropped any real income to trust clients would come, and I would learn the right marketing strategies.

One issue I faced so like that of job seekers is lack of confidence. I didn’t see my value. Today, I work with clients to unveil their value, dig up their accomplishments, and find out how they helped the companies to succeed.

Don’t determine that there is no hope. Take the first step to define your future and start living up to your potential. To learn more about my interactive process that does more than write your resume, go here.