Playing to Your True Potential
In this edition: Exploring what playing to our unique potential entails - with a book recommendation and a sketchnote
Hey,
Welcome to this edition of Clarity Canvas Weekly - a newsletter that goes out to nearly 2700 leaders, learners and change-makers.
Today, we delve into insights about how to design work and life so that you can play to your unique potential.
Finding the Right Balance
Most of the self-help literature around playing to your potential is prescriptive and formulaic. It does not factor the unique contexts that we find ourselves in.
When I was a fresher with no liabilities or responsibilities, my ability to devote 100% of my energy to career was possible. But when one matures and builds a family, balancing between work, family, social relationships, alternative creative pursuits and health requires a lot of work. And yet, we often see people who simply run unilaterally after one goal (e.g. career or more money) at the cost of several other factors that make for a well-rounded life. We have also seen people who carry the weight of regret for not being able to balance between these when they could have.
Through my own journey involving significant career transitions over last 25 years, I have learned that success for me is about being independent and finding the right balance between intellectual, social, emotional and spiritual pursuits. It is about filling my jar with big rocks first - family, health, relationships, money and work.
Our definition of success evolves and changes as we progress through life, and that’s okay. The key is to navigate life using our internal compass (self-awareness) and not the external one.
The other thing that I have realized is this: to really play to our true potential, we need to build courage to step into the unknown, guided by our self-awareness and unique set of skills we have developed over the years that we can leverage to serve others in a significant way.
Play to Potential: A New Book by Deepak Jayaraman
I love books that offer a nuanced conversation about a topic with the intent of helping the reader find their own answers. My friend Deepak Jayaraman’s new book “Play to Potential - Lead a full life, become the best you” does exactly that.
The book encourages us to reflect on our lives through the lens of play rather than work. Drawing wisdom from his renowned podcast, coaching practice, and personal journey, Deepak introduces the engaging FLAVOUR framework to navigate life’s pulls and pressures with purpose and balance.
I had the wonderful privilege of reading and discussing the book with Deepak Jayaraman while it was being written, since I illustrated the framework, chapter summaries and visual stories of individuals featured in the book. The book beautifully stiches together a conversation starting with acknowledgement of mid-life conundrum that we face, building our self-awareness, tuning into our values/principles and meta-skills required to craft what the author calls ‘A FLAVOURful life”.
I have been listening to Deepak Jayaraman’s wonderful podcast since many years and have been fascinated by the insights shared by wonderful and diverse set of guests on the podcast. Highly recommended.
Reinventing Yourself
It was through the Play to Potential podcast that I had stumbled upon the work of Herminia Ibarra - a Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School, Author and Speaker.
She wrote an amazing article on HBR titled “Reinventing Your Career in the Time of Coronavirus” which I found very relevant to the conversation of playing to our potential. In the article, Herminia outlines five insights that enable career reinvention in disruptive times. This might be a very useful read for those who are thinking about a career change or simply going through a situation where some level of personal reinvention is inevitable.
Here is a #Sketchnote summary of the HBR article.
From My Journal
We do stuff. Some of it works and grows. And that ends up defining us.
How will we explore our multitudes if we remain stuck in whatever has worked for us in the past?
We are not coins with just two sides. We are diamonds with many facets.
Lao Tzu has some wise words to offer.
- Via my Instagram feed
Visual Leadership Pack of 90+ HD Sketchnotes
If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 90+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.
That’s it for this edition. Thank you for subscribing and reading.
Until next week,
Thank you,
Loved reading this post Tanmay. Exploring all the different facets of life and nature is something I have been trying. But torn between advices of having a singular focus. And that’s where the inner compass will be helpful. It’s hard to believe that because since childhood we are conditioned to stay true to external merits. And then the career sketchnote is relatable even in non covid world. Enjoyed reading this article.
Hi @Tanmay. It's great to be seeing your newsletter and sketchnotes on Substack! Enjoying reading and being a subscriber 🙂