Mindfulness Exercises for Removing the Obstacles to Fulfilling Your Potential

You may be thinking, what do mindfulness exercises have to do with my potential? As you will see, they are indispensable.

Do you fear that you won’t fulfill your potential in life?

Do you carry an inner sense of guilt, as though you are falling short of what is possible for you?

On the one hand, such fears and concerns reflect how much you truly care about fulfilling your potential. Yet, fear and guilt also stand in the way of fulfilling that potential.

If only you could follow a few linear, step-by-step techniques to realize your potential. Mindfulness exercises are more exploratory and nonlinear.

Fulfilling your potential is akin to uncovering an inner calling or unexpressed creative impulse.

So where does that leave you?

It leaves you open to discovery.

Implicit in the term ‘mindful’ is the acknowledgment that there are hidden aspects of ourselves, patterns of thinking, and repressed feelings that we are not aware of. Mindfulness exercises reveal the ways in which you unknowingly obscure the positive qualities and potential that already exist within.

These unconscious influences are like the classic spiritual metaphor of the clouds covering the light of the sun.

In seeking to fulfill your potential, your task is not to strive to create the sun or somehow make it shine brighter, but to recognize, own and remove the clouds blocking its light and potential. As the clouds clear, the light of the sun shines effortlessly.

The 2 mindfulness exercises shared below are designed to help you discover the unconscious obstacles to the fulfillment of your intrinsic potential. Adapted from the work of great minds like Hawkins, Freud and Jung, these are some of the practices most meaningful to many clients I work with in my Boulder/Denver psychotherapy practice.

Obstacle # 1: Hidden, Unconscious Resistance

It is difficult to access unconscious fear and resolve resistances without ‘real life’ conditions challenging us to face things. If you care about your metaphoric hat, you’ll summon the courage to confront what comes up within.

That’s why this mindfulness exercise is...

A fast way to bring up unconscious obstacles. The key is to literally schedule something meaningful you have been putting off. This might mean giving your word to finish a project, scheduling a call with someone you want to contact but feel uneasy about, or taking tangible steps to do something inspiring to you. The more literal your commitment and the more accountable you are for making it, the better.

Next, watch your mind closely and be willing to allow yourself to feel whatever uneasy sensations start to emerge. 90% of the time you will fail at this. And that’s okay. Simply being willing to watch your thoughts and experience uneasy feelings gets things moving.

The applications of this mindfulness exercise are infinite and unique. However, a general propensity I observe in myself and many clients I have worked with is this: the resistance to ‘do’ a thing in the world is actually resistance to feel an awkward feeling within. A central aspect of psychotherapy is to assist a client in making this unconscious resistance conscious.

In actuality, you don’t resist being honest about your feelings in a relationship. Instead, you may resist the awkwardness, fear, or anxiety that comes up as an obstacle to being honest.

Why not get started on a creative, inspiring project? You may actually resist getting started due to some unconscious beliefs about success and ambition. For instance, if you unconsciously hate success, you resist taking action to avoid feeling guilty.

So remember…

Set the intention to be willing to focus your awareness on whatever difficult thoughts and feelings arise, however briefly. As you do this, you will likely gradually come to understand your situation in ways you couldn’t before.

In future articles, I will cover more of the How-tos and many of the mindfulness exercises available for undoing these resistances. The heart of this practice is to throw your hat over the fence and be willing to watch what comes up in your mind and body.

Paradoxically, the more you mindfully watch your thoughts and experience your feelings, the greater the likelihood your resistance will diminish over time.

Obstacle #2: Careful not to confuse fulfilling your potential with accomplishing an outcome

If you fall short of achieving the results you set for yourself you might experience tremendous guilt and shame. This may occur despite genuine hard work and discipline. In both cases, you are vulnerable as your inner worth is determined by outcomes. One of the greatest obstacles to the fulfillment of your potential is misidentifying the realization of potential with the realization of desired outcomes.

In his book, Transcending the Levels of Consciousness, psychiatrist, David R. Hawkins, suggests a way to avoid bringing up excessive guilt or unhealthy pride by focusing your sense of inner satisfaction on the effort you put forth, not the outcome. This approach is akin to the classic saying in 12-step programs to “live one day at a time.” Rather than dwell on yesterday or worry about tomorrow, the idea is to keep your attention focused on today.

In practice, both suggestions are very powerful mindfulness exercises.

As with any successful mindfulness exercise, you will know you’re engaged in the practice when you catch yourself off course. Success means you will notice the ways in which you are predominantly focused on tomorrow or yesterday. You may realize just how significantly your sense of worth fluctuates with changing conditions in life.

As Hawkins notes, a core characteristic of the human ego is to seek fulfillment and worth “out there,” in accomplishment, appearance, and approval etc… This is to mistake fulfilling your potential with the accomplishment of outcomes. In reality, fulfilling your potential is more akin to a way of being in the world.

Becoming a more loving husband, for instance, has nothing to do with the size of your home. Nor is becoming a more creative musician a function of the # of records sold. While becoming more creative and loving will likely result in greater success “out there”, the source of the fulfillment arises within.

In his pioneering book Creativity Revealed: Discovering the Source of Inspiration, Scott Jeffrey writes of four “Creative Archetypes,” or ways of being in the world shared by creative geniuses throughout history. Blake, Puccini, Brahms, Beethoven, Jung and Aristotle alike, each looked to the Light of Consciousness within for the source of their creativity. For all, realizing their potential was a process of becoming, not doing.

Your task is not to endeavor to create something out of nothing. Instead, you are to focus your attention on the clouds obscuring the creative impulse that pre-exists within. What are the clouds? They could be any number of unconscious feelings and beliefs. Whatever they are, they may pull you into dwelling on yesterday or feeling anxious about tomorrow.

Keep noticing…

Throughout the day, hold the intention to simply witness the thoughts and feelings that arise within and how they may reveal one of these obstacles. The mere act of witnessing and experiencing this unconscious material tends to undo it.

Remember…

Becoming your potential is the effortless consequence of removing the obstacles that stand in the way.

As Hawkins states...

"We change the world not by what we say or do but as a consequence of what we have become.” - Dr. David R. Hawkins

Make sure to read my latest article on mindfulness and depression

Matt Laughlin, MA

Psychotherapist

303-929-3353

References

Hawkins, David R. 2006. Transcending the Levels of Consciousness. Sedona, AZ: Veritas Publishing.

Jeffrey, Scott. 2008. Creativity Revealed. Kingston, NY: Creative Crayon Publishers.

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