818 - The Dangers of Pursuing Your Potential
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[00:00:00] Hey, hey, what's up everybody? It's the Sam here. Welcome to unleash the man within. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you're having an amazing day. Look, I want to thank those of you who continue to leave ratings reviews on our podcast, uh, really means the world to us. I want to thank you for that.
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Today we are talking about the dangers of pursuing your potential and I have to kind of scale back a little bit and give you some context for why we're talking about this today and then we're going to dive into some really good nuggets on how you guys can step more into this. Uh, I don't know about you, but I think about my potential a lot.
Uh, and I, I find often as a man, I'm just thinking about who I could be and what I could do and what I want in my life. And I, I feel like as men, we naturally. [00:02:00] Think about these things, you know, like a man without a vision is no man at all. And, and, and there's something about us having vision and dreaming about the future and thinking about what could be that can really go a long, long, long way.
So, um, where am I going with all this? What am I trying to say? Well, I think we all think about our potential. And one of the things that I realized probably about, you know, two, three years into the work I'm doing, helping guys quit pornography is that I. was actually not that passionate about helping guys quit porn.
And it wasn't like, Oh, I I'm losing passion for the business and this business sucks and I want something now, but I've just stuck it through for three years so I could help more people. Uh, no, I don't mean it that way at all. In fact, I've never been more passionate. About the work we're doing my word.
I'm so excited about the work. We're doing guys like you you can't imagine just The results we see and the way god shows up in the breakthroughs and the marriage is restored and guys making, you know big moves in their lives because they're finally confident to do it and [00:03:00] It's just fun. It's fun.
Anyways, let me not uh tangent too bad over here. Um What I realized is the reason I love helping guys quit porn and the reason this stuff excites me so much is because they step into their potentials and their calling when they quit porn. In other words, this was not really about helping guys quit porn.
This is actually about helping people and men become everything that they can be because if we change the man, then we change the world. And so I've been really camped out on this thought for for years now, just thinking like, wow, what an interesting concept helping guys fulfill their potential, you know?
And what does that mean? You know, even the book that I launched two years ago now, the last relapse was all about realize your potential. Reclaim intimacy. Resolve the root issues. The first statement there is realize your potential. Like, even, even in the book, when we were kind of identifying, like, what's the core message that we're trying to get across, The subject upon [00:04:00] potential came up.
I don't think there's any guy here listening who would say, I don't want to fulfill my potential. I'm not interested in that. You know, it's not, it's not exciting or whatever. We all want to fulfill our potential. Um, today's episode is titled the dangers of reaching your potential or, you know, pursuing your potential, uh, because there is an embedded, risk in the whole subject of potential.
And to be honest, it's caused me to wonder if I need to use a different word. And I, I've so far decided not to, but honestly, I might, in the future, we'll have to see when you were in high school and you thought about reaching your potential, what did you think about? Maybe it was having a nice car, you know, having a corner office in a big corporate suite.
Is having a big house, you know, or having a pool in the back. I don't know. I don't know what it was for you. Um, I know for me, you know, when I thought about reaching my potential when I was in high school, [00:05:00] it was about becoming a doctor and making great money and changing a lot of people's lives. Those are some of the pillars of what I thought about potential, right?
We have this idea. So, you know, a lot of you guys listening are in your careers now. And what I want to ask is number one, Is what you're doing at all a reflection of what you envisioned when you were in high school? You know, when you thought you were going to be your age currently 55, whatever, you know, I'm 34 years old.
Is this how you envision life? Uh, truthfully for me, not even close. I mean, like I said, I thought I was going to be a doctor. I thought I'd be living in a, you know, mansion somewhere or not, probably not a mansion, but you know, a big house and a bougie neighborhood driving a nice car, um, with, you know, A bunch of kids and a wife, so there's pieces of that.
I have a wife and she's amazing. She's better than anything I could have imagined in high school. Uh, we have our first kid together as of about seven, eight months ago, so that's cool. So, you know, some pieces are there. Uh, we don't live in a mansion. We live in [00:06:00] a 800 foot square home. We drive a 2017 Chevy Cruze, so we don't have this super fancy car either.
Um, and we are in a, you know, we're in a financial position that we don't have to complain about. But my, my appetite, you know, or my priority for, you know, these really bougie assets has just shifted. And so we've, you know, chose to invest in real estate and stuff like that instead of buying a big home and whatever.
Um, those are our own choices, but the point I'm making is we've, we've shifted, you know, we've shifted what, how I would define my potential has shifted. And now, if you ask me, you know, what does it look like for Sophia? Well, I think it means he has one of the top ranking podcasts in the world. Uh, I think it means that instead of changing, you know, maybe thousands of lives a week, he's changing millions of lives a week.
Uh, you know, the, the, the idea of me reaching my potential probably means I'm speaking a bit more. And, you know, there's, there's, I have all these bigger, grandiose things now. And guess what? Guess what, guys? One day, I'm going to be doing all those things. I'm going to be speaking to millions a week. Um, I'm gonna be, you know, uh, in a much [00:07:00] better position financially and I probably will have a big house and a nice car and all that kind of stuff.
Uh, one day, uh, I am, I am gonna be, you know, really like changing people in the masses and we're gonna have one of the top ranked podcasts and, um, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then I will have a new di definition of what it means to reach my potential at that stage. Uh, one thing that I has always, you know, kind of, um, counterbalance is I do believe a huge part of me.
Achieving my potential is relational in nature. And I think the same should be true for you. Uh, so for me, that's being a better husband It's being a better father Those are the two things that i'm very focused on and will be Very focused on you know, the fatherhood piece in particular for the next, you know, 20 to 25 years The husband piece for the rest of my time here on planet earth but the point is You know Potential is actually kind of a moving goalpost and it's hard to actually reach your potential.
There's no such thing as, I'm, I've reached my potential. I'm in my sweet spot
you know, I remember a few years ago I was a traveling [00:08:00] itinerant minister. I was performing music that I had written. My songs were on the radio. I was doing a bunch of really cool stuff and I remember telling someone, you I, I just, I, this is everything I ever imagined for myself career wise. And I remember the words came out of my mouth and I almost wish I could have pulled them back because it was such a dangerous thing to say.
Cause it was like, wow, did I really set the bar that low that I'm, you know, 25 years old and I've accomplished everything I wanted to, you know what I mean? Like it was time to start dreaming again, the danger with your potential, um, and trying to reach your potential is that you'll never reach it. And so the, the thing I want to advise you guys against today is in your pursuit of your potential, make sure you're not falling for the trap of it never being good enough.
And at the same time, I, what I'm not, I'm not saying when you reach some of these plateaus, just settle, don't grow anymore. Okay. I'm not saying that. What I actually want to do instead is suggest two very [00:09:00] specific things. That go a long way to ensuring that yes, you pursue your potential and even when the goalposts are moving, you can still enjoy the process and you know, um, not feel like you're inadequate or insufficient along the way.
Number one is we have to celebrate small victories. This is something I'm talking about a lot lately. Uh, guys are really bad at this, especially guys who are driven and growth minded. Really hard for us to celebrate small victories. Now, I'm not saying, you know, when it's a small victory, throw a party and invite all your friends over and whatever.
Celebration can look like a lot of different things, but you have to find some way to positively reinforce your progress. And you don't just do it when you hit the mountaintop moments where it's like, yeah, everybody's gonna, gonna think that's awesome. Now I'll celebrate because it's socially acceptable.
You need to do it when people are like, what, why are you celebrating that? But for you, you know, this is a big step in the right direction. Okay. Celebrate small victories. Very, very important. Number two, and I cannot stress this enough is make [00:10:00] sure that your steps are guided by the Lord. There's a great proverb.
It's stated multiple times in a slight variations. Throughout the book of Proverbs, many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord who directs his steps. Make sure your steps are being oriented by the Lord. I've always found that when I try to do my own thing in my own strength, my own way, that's often when I feel like I'm, you know, it's like, ah, everything feels not good enough, and it could be better and whatever.
But when the Lord is ordering my steps, and I'm submitted to God, and he is directing my paths, I find often that, yeah, sure, I still have some doubts and I still wonder, and sometimes I'm like, man, I wish that was better. But I'm always able to find a resolve because God is ordering my steps, and I know that even if I did take a wrong step, He's going to use it for my good, He's going to get me back on track, and He's going to lead me to this place of potential, quote unquote.
So that's everything for today. Look, I share this content because I want to see you walking in your potential. And I want to see men around the world doing that. Not [00:11:00] just you, not just our current listenership. We want to reach more people. So if you got value out of the episode today, please make sure you share this with someone that you think would, uh, would get value from it.
Or leaving a rating or review on your platform goes a really long way for us. In the meantime, thanks for listening. God bless. Have an amazing day. We'll talk soon. Bye bye. [00:12:00]