What’s your potential?  Are you living up to it?  How do you know when you are or you aren’t?  What can you do about it . . . either way? Do you use your potential only as a means of motivating you, or have you used it in the past as a way of punishing yourself when you’ve focused on not living up to it? Is your perception of your potential a moving target that has mirage-like qualities?

Potential means “the inherent capacity for coming into being.” Potential from an engineering perspective roughly means the capacity – or the ability – of a structure to bear a specific load.

For human beings, our potential is probably less a fixed number than a range of possibilities that can be impacted – positively or negatively – by a tremendous range of variables.

How much do you access or consult the idea of your potential with the intention of being motivated and inspired by it?  Less pleasantly, how frequently have you consulted your potential – and the difference between where you are and where you could be – as a means of beating yourself up?  What is the optimal relationship to potential?

Please see my P.S. to explain my recent travels as well as my heartfelt thanks to my great friend, Keith Ferrell, for hosting Study Hall for the last six days. Now, on to serendipity:

It seems as though “positive serendipity” gets all the attention. Even plain old serendipity is sufficiently controversial, but what about “negative serendipity”? Have we actually been able to attract difficulty, despair and even disease?

Likely, we can all agree that if we are thinking defeatist thoughts, we are more likely to fail at what we are attempting to do. Perhaps we can also agree that the dynamics on which we focus in our lives actually expand – that is, we’re thinking about them, so they occupy more space in our minds. If so, it’s logical that the more we think about them, the more likely they become.

“Attracting” is rather esoteric: so, consider the likelihood that the possibilities we entertain are more likely to come true than the ones that we don’t entertain. But maybe there’s a “psychic circuit breaker” that prevents those sometimes-entertained images of doom-and-gloom from actually happening – at least for a time. Who knows?

What do you think? One would probably have to “believe” in serendipity to even ponder the question of whether or not “negative serendipity” could exist. For me, there’s enough evidence to think that I need to at least be careful what I “ask for” in the form of negative visioning lest they become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Have you ever felt burdened with difficult thoughts which have sometimes materialized? How have you handled that?

P.S.: My great friend and partner in Being Point Press, Keith Ferrell, has done an amazing job at facilitating Study Hall for the past six business days while I have been in Italy celebrating the launch of THE BACK SIDE OF WONDERFUL by Doug Jack. Doug and I were privileged to be able to launch his book by presenting it to Jacques Rogge, the President of the International Olympic Committee, at the Opening Ceremonies of the 2009 Mediterranean Games in Pescara, Italy, which Doug added to the long list of Opening Ceremonies which he has choreographed / directed including his Emmy-award-winning work at the Salt Lake City Olympic Games.

As Editor-In-Chief of Being Point Press, Keith edited Doug’s first terrific book about how it is to be behind the scenes at events which are viewed by over three billion people and most heads of state on the planet.

Read more about Doug’s book at (feel free to order it, too, before it gets listed on Amazon later this month):
http://www.beingpointpress.com/backsideofwonderful/index.html

Congratulations, Doug, on an amazingly beautiful book! Looking forward to many more! (And maybe more trips to world-class destinations? Thinking London Olympics 2012 – PLEASE!!!)

PSS: Thank YOU, Craig Barbour, for your invaluable networking skills!!!! Hats off to Sydney!!!

The word “decide” has much in common with words like “homicide” or “fratricide.” A literal interpretation of the word “decide” connotes a cutting – a powerful image in the context of making a decision. The power of decision making can be so strong as to cut away all other alternatives – never to be able to be undone in the future.

Some people pride themselves on never looking back after they have “decided,” and they are the people most in congruence with the original meaning of the word “decide.”

Who are your primary role models in decision making? Do you admire people in history, literature, politics or popular culture who are known for having strong opinions and being decisive?

Do your decisions often have the quality of cutting away all other possibilities, or do you hold some options open even after making a decision?

Renewal can result in feelings of optimism and expanded energy if we process information as though we are experiencing something for the first time. I’m a big fan of first times, and I actively cultivate memories of wonderful first times in my life. They are full of joy and possibility.

To experience people, situations, places and things as though you are experiencing them for the first time is to be revitalized and, in a real sense, have your relationship to them be reborn. We have become so accustomed to processing situations as if they are always the same that we have missed the new-ness of each moment.

Try this exercise: Say, “I am experiencing _______ for the first time. What are things about this situation that I have never noticed before? How can I make it better? What can I learn? Where do I best look from the perspective of beginner’s mind so that I can have a fresh relationship to life’s circumstances?”

Copyright 2009. E. B. Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.

There is a store near my home that has in its display windows in letters six-feet high: “HOPE IS A VERB.” Those words caused me to look up “hope” as a verb – and it appears to me to be the intersection of expecting, wishing and being optimistic. Clearly, “hope as a verb” implies action.

I wondered: Can hope ever be passive and be a verb? What does “hoping as a verb” look like or feel like? What are they trying to say with that message in the window?

Someone mentioned in Study Hall on Monday that Christopher Reeve said, “Once you choose hope, anything is possible.” Hope, in that context is an active choice in favor of particular results . . . . and in favor of limitless possibility.

How often are your hopes backed by action? What needs to happen to make “hope a verb” that we can all use in service of having lives that work brilliantly on all levels? Is there any truth to, “I hope; therefore, I am”?

Copyright 2009. E. B. Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.