Maximizing Your Potential by Myles Munroe [Summary] 

Main Summary: Maximizing Your Potential by Myles Munroe reveals that every person is born with God-given potential, but most die with it buried. You must discover your purpose, protect your gifts from enemies like fear and comparison, cultivate them through knowledge and work, share them with others, and “die empty” for the next generation.

Lessons You’ll Learn From This Post 

• Why Maximize?
• How to Become Your Potential
• The Enemies of Potential
• Guard and Protect Your Potential
• Cultivate and Feed Your Potential
• Share Your Potential
• Your Potential and the Next Generation
• Understand and Obey the Laws of Limitation
• Recovering Your Potential
• Potential and God’s Purpose

Also read Understanding Your Potential by Myles Munroe [Summary] 

True success is what you have done compared to what you could have done. Living to the maximum is competing with yourself.

Why Maximize?

• Nothing creates more guilt than an unfinished book or an unlived life.
• Great minds never confuse what they have done with what they can still do.
• Retirement is a myth that traps untapped potential and causes people to settle for mediocrity.
• Abraham received his vision of a child at age 70 and saw it fulfilled at 100.
• Moses changed careers at midlife from a shepherd to a national leader of three million people.
• The apostle Paul never retired, even while imprisoned, and wrote most of the New Testament from chains.
• True success is not a project but a lifelong journey of discovery and growth.
• Mediocrity means living below your known, true potential and accepting the norm.
• Anything less than maximum living is mediocrity.
• Comparison with others is a curse that steals your true potential.
• A car’s true capacity is set by the manufacturer, not by the driver’s past experience.
• Your true capacity is not limited by others’ opinions or your past failures.
• True success is measured by what you have done compared to what you could have done, not against others.
• Experience does not cancel capacity; your past does not determine your future potential.
• Crises are life’s wake-up calls that push you beyond mediocrity.
• God uses discomfort like a mother eagle disturbing her nest to force you to fly.
• Most people have negotiated an agreement with mediocrity and signed a contract with the average.

Life outside your ideal environment will destroy your potential because a wrong environment always means death.

How to Become Your Potential

• Your life resembles a decaying house with hidden treasures waiting to be discovered behind locked doors.
• Unexposed, dormant potential rests beneath the surface of your daily existence.
• You are capable of more than others expect of you, even beyond your own wildest dreams.
• Our discouragement and dissatisfaction with life are results of separation from God.
• God’s original design for you remains intact beneath the attitudes and assumptions that cover it.
• Know your Source: No one knows a product like its manufacturer.
• Without reconnecting to God, your Creator, you cannot release your full potential.
• Understand your function: God designed you to operate by faith, not by sight.
• God is not influenced by outward appearances or limited by impossible obstacles.
• Understand your purpose: Your potential enables you to fulfill your purpose, and your purpose reveals your hidden potential.
• Success without understanding purpose is meaningless.
• Know your resources: God provides everything you need to accomplish His plans for you.
• Maintain the right environment: Life outside your ideal environment destroys potential because a wrong environment always means death.
• God’s laws protect you by maintaining the ideal environment for maximum performance.
• Work is the master key to releasing your potential.
• Dreams without work accomplish nothing.
• Work is God’s gift to help you discover your potential, not a punishment for sin.
• Work provides physical needs, builds self-esteem, and teaches that using your talents matters more than acquiring money.
• You must work out what God works in.

Also read Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren [Summary]

Fear is dwelling on all that could go wrong instead of what will go right.

The Enemies of Potential

• Your ability is your responsibility.
• Vision can be aborted like a pregnancy; beginning a journey does not guarantee you will finish it.
• The world is proficient at aborting potential through its false standards of success.
• Tragedy strikes when success dies in failure, hope dies in despair, and visions die in the absence of confidence.
• Satan is your enemy who comes to steal, kill, and destroy your potential.
• Your dreams, plans, and ideas are direct targets of satan’s evil forces.
• The minute you have a good idea, someone will criticize it.
• Disobedience wastes potential and retards the attainment of your goals.
• Sin is a declaration of independence from your Source and caps the well of your potential.
• Fear is dwelling on what could go wrong instead of what will go right.
• He who fears to try will never know what he could have done.
• Discouragement destroys potential when you allow sour notes to stop your practice.
• Procrastination eats away at the core of your time and motivation.
• If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done.
• Past failures are never a reason to stop trying.
• You cannot make progress by looking in the rearview mirror.
• Satan uses those closest to you, whose opinions you value most, to destroy your potential.
• No human being can be trusted to defend your potential except you.
• Distractions are one of the principal enemies of maximizing potential.
• Everything that doesn’t help your progress hinders it.
• Success is also an enemy when you complete a task and quit because you think you have arrived.
• Leave your success and create another.
• Traditions are powerful enemies because they are full of security and prevent creativity.
• No matter how good the present system is, there is always a better way.
• A wrong environment corrupts good character; many dreams die because they are shared with the wrong people.
• Comparison with others forfeits your uniqueness because there is no comparison.
• Opposition is proof that you are swimming, not floating.
• Society’s pressure kills dreams through laughter and ridicule.
• Never is as old as the first time it changes.

God doesn’t just want us to know who we are in Him; He wants us to become it.

Guard and Protect Your Potential

• You were created to perform for an audience of one, the Lord Jesus Christ.
• Guarding is a preventive action taken before a threat becomes active and near.
• Protecting is an active defense during an assault.
• You alone are responsible for defending the treasure God placed inside you.
• The treasure you must defend includes God’s wisdom, God’s power, and God’s Holy Spirit living in you.
• God sees beyond your vessel of clay to His wisdom within you and calls forth what He sees.
• God doesn’t want you just to know who you are in Him; He wants you to become it.
• All the great things God put inside you—your visions, dreams, plans, and talents—are satan’s targets.
• Your struggle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces of evil.
• Learn to recognize and combat the enemies of potential for what they truly are.
• No matter what you do, you will always have critics.
• People don’t care about you until you start doing something big.
• Those who are doing nothing with their potential will be your greatest critics.
• Never answer your critics directly; turn to God in prayer instead.
• Post a guard to lessen the likelihood of attack.
• Allow God to fight for you.
• Don’t confuse a quiet season with permanent peace; the war may not be over.
• Stay away from your opposition; don’t waste time talking to them.
• Refuse to be intimidated by threats and accusations.
• Fight for your vision by sharing it only when necessary and with carefully chosen people.
• God helps those who help themselves.
• The Holy Spirit is your Helper, not your replacement; He assists you as you move.
• A boat that is still cannot be steered; you must start moving before God can guide you.
• God won’t take a bad habit from you because He didn’t give it to you; He will affirm your decisions when you start taking positive steps.

Also read Plans Purposes & Pursuits by Kenneth Hagin [Summary]

Pregnancy is no guarantee of fruitfulness, and performance is not ensured by plans and dreams.

Cultivate and Feed Your Potential

• Whatever you eat eventually eats you.
• Potential does not guarantee performance; pregnancy is no guarantee of fruitfulness.
• God created all life to depend on cultivation to maximize its existence.
• Potential is like soil; it must be worked and fed to produce fruit.
• Knowledge must always precede action, or much time and effort will be wasted on misguided efforts.
• Ignorance is the single greatest destroyer of God’s people.
• What you don’t know can kill you.
• God rejects those who reject His knowledge, saying, “We can’t do business.”
• Ignorance affects how God answers your prayers because you ask for things you don’t need or shouldn’t want.
• Ignorance is generational and transferable; every book you read affects your grandchildren.
• The world devalues what God values and elevates what is insignificant to Him.
• You are what you eat—this is true for your body, soul, and spirit.
• Your body requires proper food, exercise, and rest to operate at maximum potential.
• You cannot be effective if you are sick; preserve your body as a temple of the Holy Spirit.
• Your soul consists of your mind, your will, and your emotions.
• The person who doesn’t read is no better off than the person who can’t read.
• Self-discipline is the highest expression of self-management, manifested in a disciplined will.
• Wisdom preserves the life of its possessor.
• The word “meek” means controlled power or disciplined energy, not weakness.
• Maximizing your potential begins with accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior because the measure of your true potential is your spirit.
• The secret wisdom of God concerning your potential cannot influence your life if His Spirit is not living in you.

Potential can never be attained if it has no opportunity to give.

Share Your Potential

• Giving is the greatest evidence of true freedom; it is more productive to give than to receive.
• The wealth of your potential is minimized when you do not share it with others.
• God shares His potential; He could have kept everything inside Himself, but release through creativity revealed His beauty and power.
• God finds satisfaction in watching you discover and use your potential.
• Whatever God gives you, He gives for others, not for yourself alone.
• Isolation is not good; you need someone with whom to share your potential.
• You may be wired to be single, but you are not designed to live isolated and alone.
• Potential is never given for itself.
• A seed produces nothing if it does not surrender its potential to the soil.
• Treasure is useless unless you expose it; potential can never be attained if it has no opportunity to give.
• It is more blessed to give than to receive.
• God is a giver, and He created you to be like Him.
• Love is worthless until it is given away; it must have an object to be fulfilled.
• Blessings are never given solely for the benefit of the one who receives them.
• God’s pattern is: “I will share with you so you will be blessed, and you in turn will bless others by your sharing.”
• No matter your circumstances, there is some way you can share your potential with others.
• True joy is found not in what you accomplish but in who benefits from your success.
• Selfishness destroys personal happiness and satisfaction.
• Selfishness destroys God’s joy in watching you pass on what He gave you.
• Selfishness destroys the joy of giving, the joy of seeing others share, and ultimately the gift itself.
• Potential that is not shared self-destructs.
• God expects you to pass on to another all He has poured into you; make room for more by giving it away.
• Sharing all God has given you is a must if you want to maximize your potential.

Your sphere of influence is much greater than your private world.

Your Potential and the Next Generation

• To live for today is shortsighted; to live for tomorrow is visionary.
• Potential is not fully maximized until it reproduces itself in the following generation.
• The life and power to reproduce is in the seed, not in the fruit.
• A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children.
• Seedless fruit provides momentary pleasure at the expense of generational reproduction.
• No man is born to live or die to himself.
• God gave you the wealth of your potential for the blessing of others, including the next generation.
• When a seed maximizes its potential, it not only feeds the next generation but also guarantees it through the seeds in the fruit.
• A mother who attempted abortion almost killed an entire school; her son grew up to found a leading academic institution.
• The prophet Elijah wanted to die, but God showed him he had much more to accomplish, including anointing his successor Elisha.
• If Elijah had died when he wanted to quit, Elisha would never have discovered his purpose or fulfilled his potential.
• Thousands of “Elishas” are waiting on your obedience to fulfill their lives.
• The wealthiest place on earth is not the gold mines or oil wells, but the cemetery.
• Buried in graveyards are unwritten books, unpainted paintings, unsung songs, and unreleased ideas.
• The next generation needs your potential.
• Jesus said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children” because He had emptied Himself.
• Your obedience to God’s will is a personal decision but not a private one.
• Your sphere of influence is much greater than your private world.
• If Mary had aborted Jesus, or if the little boy had refused to give his lunch, the biblical record would read very differently.
• Don’t rob the next generation of your contribution to the destiny of mankind.
• He who plants a tree plans for prosperity.

Our potential cannot survive unless we obey God’s laws and live within His limitations.

Understand and Obey the Laws of Limitation

• Freedom always has a price; what frees one person may enslave another.
• The cry for freedom without responsibility leads to lawlessness.
• Freedom without responsibility ends in loss of existing freedoms, slavery, and death.
• Adam and Eve lost their freedom to eat from all the garden trees because they violated one restriction.
• A teenager who stays out past curfew loses the privilege of using the family car.
• Death is the inevitable result of freedom grasped at the expense of obedience to law.
• Laws are not restrictions but protections that alert you to possible danger.
• A child with no rules is much more likely to get hurt than a child with parental guidance.
• Laws assist you, like postal regulations that help your letter reach its intended destination.
• Laws allow full expression within the community by protecting your freedom from being violated by others.
• Laws maximize potential by encouraging positive behavior and discouraging negative behavior.
• Violation of law destroys potential; obedience to law fulfills potential.
• Potential without law is dangerous, like electricity without a breaker switch.
• Power is always given to work through the vehicle of servanthood, not dictatorship.
• Potential is always given to bless, never to harm.
• If your potential is hurting someone, you are using your gifts outside their God-given specifications.
• A man without God is potential without purpose, power without conduction, life without living, ability without responsibility.
• That kind of man is a dangerous live wire.
• Every commandment stated negatively can be restated positively.
• God’s commands are not burdensome; they are given for your benefit.
• Thou shalt nots delineate or explain the limits within which you can live a healthy, happy, productive life.
• Laws and limitations are always given to protect and maximize a product’s potential, not to restrict it.

It is always better to fail at something than to excel at nothing. Get up and try again.

Recovering Your Potential

• It is always better to fail at something than to excel at nothing; get up and try again.
• No sin is too great for God to forgive; no relationship is beyond His restoration.
• No memory is too deep for Him to heal; no problem is beyond His blessing and power.
• The journey to recovering your potential begins with forgiveness—both God’s forgiveness and self-forgiveness.
• God forgives and forgets your sin as soon as you confess it.
• As far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed your transgressions from you.
• Many Christians still think and act as though their sins are not forgiven, placing themselves above God’s Word.
• If God says your sins are forgiven, they are forgiven; no one has the authority to dispute His decision.
• Failure to forgive yourself opens the door for satan to work through doubt and guilt.
• Guilt prevents you from seeking God’s power because you are ashamed to enter His presence.
• Doubt enslaves you to feelings of powerlessness and unworthiness.
• The second step to recovery is moving beyond your past by allowing memories to empower you instead of destroying you.
• Discouraging experiences can become stepping stones to releasing your potential.
• With God’s help, you are capable of rising above your shortcomings and redeeming your less-than-perfect decisions.
• The third step is redeeming the time that remains; you cannot undo the past, but you can make necessary changes for the future.
• Time is God’s gift for accomplishing your purpose and fulfilling your potential.
• You have sufficient time to maximize your potential; the question is whether you will waste it or use it wisely.
• Whenever you use time to do things that neither release your potential nor help you accomplish your purpose, you forfeit or delay your destiny.
• Return to your Manufacturer for a reassessment of your true potential and begin again.
• It is more important to be yourself than to be the best.

The most powerful enemy of mankind is not sin or satan, but ignorance.

Potential and God’s Purpose

• Until a man can see beyond his own loins, the future is in danger.
• God created everything for a purpose and equipped each created thing with the corresponding potential to fulfill that purpose.
• In every bird there is a flock, in every cow a herd, in every fish a school, and in every wolf a pack.
• Everything is pregnant with the potential to become all it was created to be.
• An improper environment can minimize, restrain, or immobilize even the greatest potential.
• Any attempt to restrict, abuse, misuse, oppress, or repress the potential of any living thing has a direct effect on the purpose and will of God.
• The most powerful enemy of mankind is not sin or satan, but ignorance.
• God’s people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.
• Over 4 billion people live in “Third World” conditions, robbed of the opportunity to discover, develop, and maximize their God-given potential.
• The ignorance of man about man is the ultimate cause of all our problems.
• The truth about man cannot be found in great libraries or scientific journals; only the Manufacturer truly knows His product.
• God created all men to dominate the earth, not to dominate one another.
• Every human possesses the ability and potential to rule, govern, and manage the earth.
• Jesus came to restore us to our Creator Father, not to create a religion.
• The gospel has been contaminated by many for personal motives and even used to justify oppression.
• You are so valuable and necessary to the destiny of the human race that God chose to come to earth Himself to redeem you.
• What you were born to do and be caused Jesus Christ to give His life for your reconciliation.
• The world needs your potential.
• Nothing is more tragic than the waste, denial, abuse, and suppression of human potential.
• You are responsible for understanding, releasing, and maximizing your potential.
• The choice is yours.

You have one life and one opportunity to empty every gift inside you. Stop comparing, stop procrastinating, and start sharing your potential today. Read the full book if you can, take action, and refuse to die with your music still in you.

Finally, here is a question we’d love you to answer.

Are you settling for a “normal” life when you were created to be extraordinary, and what is one fear that has been holding you back from your true potential?

We would love to hear from you. Please leave your answer and comment in the comment box below.

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