Exploiting Your Potentials in a Constraint Environment

As a little girl growing up under the protection and provision of my parents, I had a very easy picture of life. To me, life was very easy and everything I desired and wished for, or wanted to be, I could have or be. As life progressed, I started experiencing some hitches and challenges in my teenagehood but I stayed very optimistic and positive, my childhood vision of me becoming whatever I wanted to be still remained until I matured into full youthfulness where I finally accepted and realized the fact that life is not a smooth ride – yes, I can achieve all my dreams and be who I want to be but these are guaranteed by several factors in the universe and in my environment that I must deal with or overcome in order to get where I want to be. I realized that God is the creator and owner of everything in the heavens and the earth (Psalm 24:1), He has put me in an environment of my own to acknowledge His great power by faithfully rising above the constraints in my environment and becoming who He intended for me to be, and subsequently who I desire to be.
God has given us everything we need for a successful and prosperous life (2 Peter 1:3), but we must rise up especially in youthfulness when we are still very strong, buoyant and active, and exploit these potentials. It is just like finding ourselves in the common saying which goes thus: “you can take a horse to the water but you cannot force it to drink”, we were all created with the innate ability to exploit our potentials for greatness no one can do it for us, it is our sole responsibility. The following tips will be very helpful;

1. Build Yourself
Building oneself involves acquiring skills and talents that will render one great and successful. A person who builds herself will be able to stand out in any environment no matter its constraints. Building oneself requires a determined and hardworking mind ready to research, read, and learn new things. It involves finding out different methods to achieve intended goals, applying the good methods and discarding the bad or ineffective ones.
Self-building is a continuous life long process that must be applied by people who intend to always rise up above the constraints in their environment. A person who continuously builds herself will always have the courage and confidence to victoriously approach any constraint that may arise in her environment because she has exploited her potentials by building on herself.

2. Rise up no matter how many times you fall
A common characteristic of celebrated successful people today is that they all experienced lots of challenges and constraints, some of which led them failing over and over, consequently falling down from the punches from their environments. Well, they are however successful today because they did not remain on the ground, they chose to rise up regardless of the number of times they fell.
In life we fall down from rejection, failures, loses, abandonment, criticism, low self-esteem, discouragement etc. But all these downward instruments are not from God but from the devil, they are tools he uses to defeat great people, he uses these tools to stop us from exploiting our potentials and becoming who God destined us to be. God however permits the tools of the devil in our lives, to test us for the purpose of promotion. Rick Joyner in his book ‘The Surpassing Greatness of His Power’ points out the beauty behind rejection. He says, “The more spiritual authority we are called to walk in, the greater the rejection test will usually be in our lives”
Therefore, to successfully develop our potentials in a constraint environment, we must learn to see the positive in every failure and rejection. We must accept setbacks as stepping stones to higher levels; we must keep growing stronger no matter the failures. We must put in mind that life is all about challenges; a good pencil can only be effective if it is sharpened and properly shaped, after a dark weather comes sunshine and brightness, a woman feels the pain of labour, sheds a lot of tears but gets her bundle of joy at the end. Challenges do not come to render us failures but victors, let us therefore keep on standing tall, working hard and exploiting our potentials no matter the number of failures.

3. Networking
For a person to effectively exploit and develop her potentials to become who she intends to be, she must follow the right path and interact with the right people. You cannot desire to be a motivational speaker and you hang out with negative inexperienced people all the days of your life! You will never get there. An aspiring businesswoman will consult those who have made it in her area of interest, a successful student will associate with successful, intelligent and disciplined students, an aspiring politician will associate with politicians etc.
Our potentials can only be fully developed when we meet and interact with the right people, when we put ourselves out there to meeting and finding the right people, and when we are sociable in a positive direction. Do not be an introvert, introverts miss out a lot and are very slow in exploiting their potentials because they scarcely share their opinions with others or learn from the experiences of others because they are not sociable. It is always good to be approachable, learn to say hi even to strangers; many people have had jobs, promotion, won prizes etc because of the relationships / networks they created with the people they met.
Networking brings information to your door step, it brings people in to your life that will help build and redefine you into achieving your destiny. Man is not an island, man lives in an environment full of people from all works of life, with different thoughts and potentials, and when they start interacting, sharing these opinions, sharing these potentials, an exceedingly powerful force is created that makes a greater difference than a single effort.