The Learning Lens: Identifying Your Potential

Level 5: Master Player

Future Guardian,

Picture for me a person who is dull, distracted, and delusional.¹

They go through life, doing the same things over and over again.

Sometimes those things change, but for the most part the outcome isn't different. Year after year they find themselves the same person they are, perhaps feeling "stuck" in their situation.

Often they are distracted, not just by life going on around them that must be attended to, but by the short reach they have to easy dopamine.

There are things they think they want to do, challenges they think they want to overcome, but often times they can't and they have plenty of excuses.

Life is too busy. There's not enough time in the day. They don't have enough energy.

Despite all this they keep going. They push hard because they believe if they can overcome their challenges, they will get what they want. They will succeed. They will change. They will grow. If they just keep on going even though they are stuck and nothing seems to be changing or working.

You might think this person is not doing much. Stagnating in a life that just kind of works, not quite sure how to proceed or grow or change.

You might recognize what's going on and see,

On the contrary,

They are doing a whole lot.

They might have a full time job they are keeping for paying the bills, they have kids and have to manage the kids time and activities, and they slip in time on the side to try to grow a business to replace their job.

Maybe they are further down entrepreneurial path and have figured out a way to sustain themselves financially with freelance or contract work, and their days are filled staying afloat.

Maybe they've made a full on business they pieced together and their days are filled orchestrating all the parts of that business while maintaining their family and home life.

It's so very easy to get overwhelmed,

To have so much on your plate that the only option you feel you can do is to keep pushing forward.

But,

How can you live your full potential, in a life that is complete with meaning and purpose, where you get everything you want ...

If your life looks like

THAT?

Filled with work that is, ultimately, taking you nowhere?

Especially if you find yourself in the same situation, month after month, year after year ... feeling like your stuck, distracting yourself from the frustration of that feeling, but all the while sticking your foot on the gas because that's the only answer, right?

Thing is ...

While this person may be dull, distracted, and delusional with most things ...

There's probably something they are doing which taps into who they really are, their uniqueness, the thing which can lead them to the life they really desire.

Something which unravels their known potential and sets the stage to reveal their unknown potential (in the right situation).

In a life that is jammed with things that don't work,

Where you're stuck, distracted, and delusional ...

How do you identify the one thing that's working and move forward with clarity?

(It may very well be not what you think is "working" - but something hidden beneath)

There is a way ...

The Function of Your Potential

This is not just about doing things, its about figuring out who you are, what you want in life. It's about uncovering your gifts.

We must take where we're at NOW,

And make sure we are moving forward well with our known potential, giving ourselves the best opportunities to unlock our unknown potential, to release our full potential.

How do we grow out of a place where we're stuck, to move beyond all that is not who we truly are?

Known potential is about the choices and actions you take.

Because that’s what we can control today, that is where we will focus.

Unknown potential is about putting yourself in a position to have that revealed through others, but you must also be working on revealing your known potential for that to be effective.

Full potential then follows.

So

Your task is to look at all the things you are doing now and figure out the one thing to focus on in order to intentionally unravel your known potential.²

I say it this way because I think it's likely that many of us, especially the entrepreneurial, the dreamers, the doers, the creators ... we can very easily find ourselves in a position where we are doing so much, and a lot of what we are doing is what we think we should be doing, or what becomes necessary based on context of all the things we are doing.

This is not dissimilar to life.

We start off with core purpose, drive, meaning, interest, and then as a necessity for moving through the structures of life and those around us, much is piled on top of who we really are - and one of our jobs as full grown people is to make sure we continually chip away and cut that which is not our true self.³

The Pendulum - Tapping Into The Eternal You

In business, or any entrepreneurial or creative endeavor, you start with a core purpose and drive.

It's the spark that makes you go "I think this is going to get me what I want more than anything else."

But, even if you can see that spark, you might not realize what your true gifts are. Unless you begin with perfectly clear understanding of yourself, who you are, what that all means ...

How can you start something knowing that it is what you are meant to be doing?

I think for most people, our purpose, our drive, our gifts, what makes us unique, our game, all emerge to us through the things we are doing.

This is why we say Engage the Field. Because that is the process of learning and growth.

When you are in a position where you have a ton piled on top of you, many different roles you take on, many different obligations, many different paths that you feel like you should take ...

How do you figure out the one that is the truest you?

How do you figure out which path lies your known potential?

When it feels like you are Engaging the Field every day, how do you sort through that to find the best path forward?

How do you figure out what your game is, if you have to play so many different games to make things happen?

Some people I think are able to naturally eventually stumble into this. They follow the thing which interests them the most, their interest and drive continually pulls them down the path.

But I think that's not always the case.

At the very least, though your interest and drive may be pulling you down a path, you might not realize where your best gifts lie for many many iterations.

Assuming you don't give up.

The longer you are in the game, the more you get to benefit from time and randomness. And the more likely the thing you do best, which is where your full potential lies, will show up.

Some people figure out the answer by asking themselves "what do I do best? " or "what do I enjoy most?" And the answer is clear (or eventually becomes clear), and they can find a more certain path forward.

For me it wasn't easy.

Because the truth is, I show up best when I filter all my understanding and perspective of philosophy and principle through the action of writing in order to disseminate useful and powerful clarity and understanding for others ...

But I couldn't see this for a long time.

I could only see the surface.

Things I've known for a long time:

I have a tendency toward foundational understanding. I want to know the reason why behind things. And I'm pretty good at figuring out why something works - from a principle level.

I've also been pretty good at communicating this understanding to others.

In coffee, I was pretty good at helping people find their way into a deep enjoyment and appreciation of specialty coffee. Not something you can force on people but something you can lead them into.

I discovered an ability and a tendency toward seeing paths of experience and understanding how to build paths of experience that many people can follow, and may be inclined to be led down.

Things I thought this all meant:

I was good at teaching and thats what I should focus on.

I was good at building systems and thats what I should focus on.

I was good at building highly effective consistent marketing systems for businesses which would lead to inevitable growth and thats what I should focus on.

I was good at creating delightful experiences for people to get obsessed about and thats what I should focus on.

I was good at bringing people joy in their everyday life and thats what I should focus on.

All of those things may be true,

But they weren't where I could find my potential.

Because the path of my potential was actually underlying every single one of those.

The writing.

My way of discovering understanding, clarity, perspective, and my way of communicating that through a number of those lenses.

I got lucky.

I didn't consciously realize this,

But the entire time I was doing all the things, and trying every conceivable idea to get what I wanted in life (all the while remaining dull, distracted, and delusional), there was one thing underscoring it all ...

Which I kept returning to.

Every time something failed I'd return to this.

Every time I did something well,

I'd return to this.

Every time I tried something new, saw what happened, gained understanding, I'd return to this with the new understanding and keep going.

And all the while,

Thinking it was such a mundane component of my life ... my writing slowly improved.

How I wrote ... slowly improved and changed.

And every iteration of trying something was improved because the writing improved.

In time, I consciously chose a thing to focus on - copywriting and email - because I thought I was supposed to do and be a thing (a copywriter, a marketer, etc).

I thought - that's where I can make my stand, unleash my potential, and finally have the life I want.

I didn't know why it was email and copywriting,

Aside from these logical assessments:

- In my magazine business, the email was the thing I did "best" - to the point where I'd had people asking me to do for them what I'd done for myself

- Email was a "thing" that I could focus on and improve

- Copywriting was a "thing" I could focus on and improve

- They are skills I can continue to master which I can always return to in order to make a necessary living

All great assessments.

But are email and copywriting where my potential lie?

NO

The clues that were always there which reveal that truth:

- I saw copywriting as a means to an end, a tool, and I always worked to rise above it

- I saw email as a means to an end, a tool, and I always worked to rise above it

- All the things I was doing were a means to an end that I've always worked to rise above

I believe now that your Full Potential is not something that you use and rise above, it's who you are - the greatest fulfillment of your own being which when released can have the greatest impact in a life of meaning and purpose using those tools.

I'm stringing that all out there,

Because I think it's really easy to get focused on the thing we're doing.

Go back to Form vs. Function.

From Form to Function: How To Think Your Way to Clarity

If you have a high level of self awareness and clarity you can go through your whole life and figure out where you focused on form and what function that form was serving.

And if you're blessed to be living a life of Full Potential, I'd wager the way you live it focusing on a Function.

For me, writing is a function. Copywriting is a form of that.

Here's the challenge,

If you don't have the full clarity and understanding of yourself - especially if you are dull, distracted, delusional ... overwhelmed ...

How can you figure out the function of your full potential?

So if you are sitting here,

Not quite clear on the path to playing YOUR game.

Not quite clear on exactly what you want to focus on and build your path around.

Not quite clear on how to move toward living a life of full potential when the thing you've been focusing on doesn't seem to be taking you there but you feel deep down in your bones you have to head that way ...

I have a framework for you to consider.

It's a framework that already exists, so this is really just a different perspective, a different use of this framework which can help you unravel the truth of what you are staring at day in and day out.

Similar to "From Form to Function⁴," how we can backwards engineer an understanding of what we want to do by looking at the things we are focusing on and asking ourselves "why this" until we have a clear answer ...

The Learning Lens Framework

In this case

We're going to look at all the things we are doing on a day to day basis,

And instead of asking ourselves why this?

We are going to ask ourselves ...

Which of these things am I going through the learning process the most?

Recall the learning process:

1) consume

2) reflect

3) engage

4) reflect

5) repeat

That is, we take in an idea, we consider it's interest and meaning and use to use, we put that idea into actual action in the world, we observe what's happened, and then we revisit the original idea to do this process all over again.

This is the foundation of our understanding of Intelligence and Learning⁵, and how we have built the structure for The Arena⁶.

And here's the thing about the learning process.

You can engage in it deliberately.

Most people don't.

And even if you do, this next part is likely true:

It's really really really REALLY hard,

If not impossible, at the very least highly unlikely, that you will engage in the learning process repeatedly through multiple loops for one thing without having some level of natural drive, passion, and interest in that thing.

Personally, I might start multiple loops of learning engagement with something that I end up not interested in ... but as soon as I recognize I don't have the interest, I'm either going to consciously cut that from my life to recapture resources, or it's just going to slowly linger and die in the background.

How many things have you started in life that have dwindled away?

That's me and duolingo. I'm like, hey I'll learn this language! And depending on the motivations and interest surrounding it, I can sometimes go for quite awhile (especially in that format since it's so dopamine focused) ... but eventually it falls away.

Because, as interesting as learning a different language is to me, it's clearly just not compelling enough for me to keep going through that loop endlessly for all time. My potential doesn't lie on that path.

I’m not returning to language learning, when things fall apart and fail. I’m not unintentionally going through the loop over and over.

(Doesn't mean I can't learn a language, just means my potential doesn't lie there)

So, this is the framework.

The trick perhaps. Maybe it's a hack.

You're going to look at every single thing you do.

And think very very deeply ...

About what it is that you engage in the learning loop, repeatedly, the most.

What do you naturally do where you take in some new idea, put it into action, reflect on the outcome, and then repeat the process.

What do you naturally do where you learn and grow without prompting, without bribing, without external forces?

What is the thing you keep returning to no matter what?

What is the function that thing (or things) keeps serving?

For me.

That was the writing.

It's the only thing I've continually worked on, learned with, gone through that loop with, over, and over, and over, and over again for as long as I can remember.

I just never realized it.

I always thought of the writing as a means to an end.

Not as function that serves something deeper.

And I kept working on my process with it, because I found as I improved on my writing, everything else the writing served turned out better.

First it was just writing itself.

Then it was writing with the intent to communicate certain ideas and understanding.

It was writing for the purpose of publishing in a magazine.

It was writing for the purpose of creating marketing for my business.

It was writing for the purpose of email marketing and creating experiences and systems for the business.

It was writing for the purpose of mastering copywriting as a craft I could sell and always making a living with.

It was writing for the purpose of being useful.

Now - as I've realized it's function - it's writing for the purpose of growing myself, for uncovering things I can't see until I write, for going through this process intentionally,

Because the writing lifts myself and others.

Because the writing is where I can chip away and reveal my known potential and put myself into the position for pulling out my unknown potential.

Because it's the thing where I'll happily, for all time, continue to go through the learning process because I am always delighted at what I discover.

Because even in the hardest days, the most tired days, the most distracted days, the days where I want to go be on a lazy river, camping in the woods, lying in a hammock, playing a game ...

I can still sit down, put my fingers to the words and create and find myself in deep focus and intent.

This is the only thing I've continually applied the learning process to over and over and over for as far back as I can remember. Even when I thought I sucked at writing. Even when I hated writing. Even when I figured I'd never do anything in my life with writing ...

I applied it.

Without realizing it.

Because that's where my potential lies.

Maybe I'm an outlier.

But I see something in this process of learning, of Engaging the Field, which not only allows us to discover new things, but which is so based on our natural tendency toward living and growing that left unchecked, reveals the thing that naturally wants to grow from us whether we like it or not.

I think if you find the thing you naturally, unknowingly, go through the learning process with, you'll find the thing you can focus your willful intent upon which will satisfy your desire for a purpose drive life.

Because you'll then be living your purpose.

What better way to satiate any desire that you have?

What better way to make the most of the time that is given to us?

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Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson

, CMO The Guardian Academy

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1. Dull, Distracted and Delusional are the three sins in the Engaging The Field Handbook

2. Known potential, unknown potential and full potential are the three phases of the Engaging The Field Handbook

3. The Pendulum - Tapping Into The Eternal You

4. From Form to Function: How To Think Your Way to Clarity

5. TGA Foundations: Open Loops and Learning

6. Stepping Into The Arena - An Invite