When you hear the words ‘human potential’, do you think of Olympic caliber athletes, or someone who has achieved great wealth or perhaps well-known figures who have shaped this world we live in or someone who has managed to harness the full capacity of their mind…such as Einstein?
I learned through a quick google search that the Human Potential Movement (I did not know there was such a thing) was popular from the 1960’s to 1980’s – the very years I grew up in. So perhaps this is the reason why I have had an interest in human behavior dating back to age twelve or so, when I read the book Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. Or maybe it began in my early twenties (also the early 80’s) attending every seminar offered by an organization called Context Training. Or maybe it was sitting in the front row at a Tony Robbin’s seminar back when his events attracted a couple hundred people (these days its thousands).
I had a good laugh at this sentence I read about the Human Potential Movement on RationalWiki, “While mainstream science quickly discredited much of the human-potential movement’s maunderings, many Human-Potential advocates shifted into using a more religious and spiritual tone, and the whole rotten mess was absorbed into the New Age movement of the 1980s…”
The New Age movement – ah, that I remember! I owned various shiny rocks that held powerful energies, I recall meditating under a copper pyramid and I frequented New Age stores and enjoyed (well, not really) daily doses of spirulina!
So why was it then at age 19, I attempted suicide? Why is that I’ve spent a good portion of my adult life struggling with ‘not enough’ syndrome? And why is it that I felt I constantly needed to be striving for more?
My theory is this – the Human Potential Movement was an outward movement that led us to following other people’s ideas for how we should live, behave and who we should be. And even though these ideas may have been great ones, because this movement morphed into the Human Busyness Movement (or perhaps a better name would be the Human Avoidance Movement), we humans never slow down long enough to ask the question, is this for me?
So why not take a moment right now and say to yourself, “Hey [your name], how are you? What’s working in your life? What makes you happy? Are you avoiding something? What’s inspiring you? What’s draining you? What is blocking your full human potential and what is one step you can take today to let your true and authentic light shine?
Back to Spirulina…I followed my High school Commercial Arts teacher. She was beautiful, talented, popular and funny…I wanted to be her. She drank spirulina, so I did too.
Not anymore – now I have a whole lot of fun being me without drinking that nasty green stuff! ?
Please post your thoughts below! xo
