Hi, it's Andy, and welcome to another Mid-Week Mastery!

Let me ask you something:

How long are you going to wait for somebody to recognize your potential before you finally do something about it?

We are going to think about your career trajectory and what's really important for you!

What do you want your work to make possible?

Who is better off because you did the work?

Who is better off because I did this work?

Let's answer these questions today!

I’m sure almost all of you have seen the movie Forrest Gump, but if you haven’t the main character recites an expression his Mother taught him, “My mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

So I wanted to dig into that question and ask if we should believe that's really true. Is life something more that you control and get what you want or is it a game of chance?

We cannot control everything that enters the box but we have enormous influence over what we choose, what we do with it, and what we reach for next.

Let's talk about it!

Alain de Botton has written about the idea that a meaningful life cannot simply be prescribed to us by somebody else.

We have to discover it ourselves.

And sometimes that takes a long time.

You may spend years pursuing something because you were taught that achieving it would make your life matter.

I understand how life can make progress genuinely difficult. People have responsibilities and obstacles I can’t see. I’m talking about the moments when we do have a choice and we quietly choose what’s familiar.

So here’s the question I want to put to you today:

Where are you saying you want to be excellent, while continuing to practice being average?

Today, I want to pull 6 lessons from The Power of Us and use them to ask a bigger question:

Are we still capable of working together?

I believe we are. But it may require remembering something we've forgotten.

And I think the problem isn’t that we disagree too much. The problem is that we’ve forgotten how to belong to something bigger than our disagreement.

Let's learn how to expand "us."

Who or what from your past are you still allowing to have too much authority over your future?

Acknowledge what happened.

Tell the truth about it.

Learn from it.

But don’t give it the steering wheel.

(Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/music/tracks/christopher-galovan/essentia

License code: DCSI3VQV5F7VYPTN)

Think about one person on your team you're frustrated with right now. Before you make a permanent judgment about them, ask yourself three questions: Have I coached them clearly? Have I given them enough repetitions? Have I given them a real opportunity to improve?”

If the answer to any of those is no, you may not know their potential yet.

Let's talk about how to uncover the greatness in your team!