Interpreting yourself to the world.

The truth is no one yet knows how great they can be. No one has discovered the totality of their
potential. You may have a million books inside of you, inventions and innovations but unless
you convert, they will only remain untapped. Most times, we don’t know what we can do. This is
either due to the fact that we’ve not discovered ourselves yet or we have not taken the initiative.

Learning to convert time and energy is the key to tapping your hidden potential. When you never
take time to involve yourself in activities that bring out the creative genius in you, you will rarely
know what you are capable of.

It’s easy for anyone to conclude that they’re incapable of attaining a certain goal or doing a
certain task. However, the capacity to do whatever we want to do still remain in us.

If God were to open your eyes to see the amount of potentials and resources He has given you, it
will be mind-blowing. But unless you interpret those things, the world cannot be impacted by
them. And it is within each and every one of us.

You Must Cultivate and Feed Your Potential

If God were to open your eyes to see the amount of potentials and resources He has given you, it
will be mind-blowing. But unless you interpret those things, the world cannot be impacted by
them. And it is within each and every one of us.

We need to change our mentality about our potential. If we believe we’re not capable and say the
same, sooner or later, we’ll see the result of our thinking and negative confession. God doesn’t
look at you and say negative words about us. He knows that our lives are greater than our past
mistake. He also knows that our past experiences are never limits to our true potential.

Scientific experiments have revealed that when words of love and gratitude are spoken over
water crystals, the water crystals begin to form beautiful geometric shapes. But when evil words
were uttered upon another sample of water taken from the same source, the same crystals
smashed and turned into destructive shapes.

The water crystals had the potential to be as beautiful as can be. But the words spoken over it
determined how it turned out. Hence, we saw the wrong thing—the ugly shapes of the crystals—
not what the creator put into it.
Perhaps people are not getting to see the real you. Maybe you need to examine what your believe
about yourself and what your consciously and subconsciously affirmations are about yourself.
One thing that might get you to never reveal your true self to the world is your fear of what other
people think.

When you live by the opinion of others, you’ll become like a snail covered in its shell—hiding
from the opinions of others. We need to learn to damn what the world thinks and choose to do
what we believe God has given us to do on the earth.

Imagine sharing a great idea that you have with a friend only to have him tell you 50 reasons
why it won’t work. Too often such criticism prompts us to discard our plan because we
believe in the lie that our friend told us. If you want to know what you can do and what you can
achieve on the earth, don’t look for confidence from your friend; instead, look to God. He
believes in you.

When you are afraid of what other people would think, you become a slave to every person
whose opinion scares you, where in fact, you’re supposed to be a slave to God. For example,
God believes you have unlimited potential but man believe you have no potential. If you live by
the opinion of others, you will end up as slave to their belief instead living your life based on
what God believes about you.

Interpreting yourself to the world requires some intentional acts of audacity. You might think it’s
going to always be easy but it’s not. Many people would have been known on the world stage for
their craft, inventions, books, songs, etc., but they’re not because they do not have the boldness
to show the world their potential.

When you discover your purpose, you discover your potential. When you discover your potential
and begin to live up to it, you interpret yourself to the world. But just imagine if you allow
distractions take you away from God’s purpose for your life, that would greatly hamper God’s
dream for you.

To achieve your dream, you must feed your dream. Imagine the regretful feeling of spending
your whole life climbing a ladder, just to find out that your ladder was leaning against the wrong
wall.
You see, God is very intentional. When he places a talent in you, he wants you to specifically use
that talent. He didn’t put it there for decoration. Yet, distracted people spend their lives doing
every other thing but what God purposed for them.

When you’re interpreting yourself to the world, you’re showing the world why you came to plant
earth. If you came to solve the problem of poverty, that means people on the earth would only
know you as one that solve the poverty problem.

When you take the necessary action in line with the dreams, aspirations and inspiration you are
having about solving the problem of poverty, you’re living a life of accuracy and purpose. You
are doing what you came to earth for. The world might never come out of the mess and menace
that poverty brings if you don’t ‘show up.’ You ought to show up for the world. You ought to
interpret yourself to the world.

Everything that doesn’t help our progress hinders it. You must look for ways to get your mind
focused on continuous productivity. This way, you would be more conscious of things that
hinder and hamper your growth, productivity and progress.

Believe it or not, one way to find progress is thorough failing. Failure isn’t the end of the world;
in fact, it’s the beginning of and path to progress. Let us take Thomas Edison as an example. He
was the famed inventor of the incandescent bulb. He was known to have tried for about 10,000
times.

Yet, when he was asked about his failures, he said he didn’t fail 10,000 times, he only found
10,000 ways to not do it. We can take a cue from him and find out that failure perhaps can be
viewed another way: As a stepping stone to success. Most times, the success we’re hoping to
achieve might not happen in a flash. Concert pianists, for example, and Olympic athletes aren’t
born. They made and developed themselves through practice and numerous failures.

When you are focused on a task and you find out that you don’t seem to be progressing as you
might want to. Well, you are in good company. Thomas Edison went through the same period of
trial and error. Hence, one challenge that you might encounter is failure. But do not despair.
Failure is a stepping stone to continuous progress and success.
A person can be tempted to look at the bad part of their live: their failures and setback. They
might conclude that this is what they’re capable of doing—failing. They might come to a wrong
judgement about their abilities and capabilities as an individual.

The problem is that they probably aren’t seeing what God is seeing in them. When God looks
inside us, he isn’t seeing failures, mistakes and errors of the past. Rather, he is seeing potential
for the future.

Since God is our creator. And he has unlimited potential. This then mean we, as his children,
also have unlimited potential. We have potential to do whatever we put our mind to. Through
diligence, we can focus on a task and see it fulfilled. When you discover and pour out the
unlimited resources hidden on the inside of you, what you’re doing is you’re interpreting
yourself to the world.

Pour Yourself Out to the World

This brings to mind the words of apostle Paul where he said, “For I am already being poured out
as an offering, and the time for me to depart is at hand. I have competed well; I have finished the
race; I have kept the faith!” (2 Timothy 4:6-7, NET Bible). We can see that he dedicated his life
to an endless pursuit of pouring out the resources hidden on the inside of him.

This is why he could boldly acclaim “I have finished the race.” Yet, when you look at that
statement from a superficial standpoint, it could become easy for you to assume that he had a
rosy ride through life. You could quickly think that he had a great ride where he encountered
only seamless success. Well, that’s not the case here. He had some encounters with failure.

For Paul, he encountered a lot of failure. Success wasn’t dropped on his laps. However, he
triumphed through it all. For Paul, you could say, success is going from failure to failure without
loss of enthusiasm. Now that’s a way of releasing all that you’ve got to offer the world without
loss of enthusiasm.

When it comes to pouring out the unlimited resources within you, one sure thing is that your
success could become greatest enemy. You might reach a level of success and then decide to
stop ‘pouring’ yourself out to the world.
It’s easy to think that all you’ve revealed to the world is all there is. You could assume that
you’ve done all that you could do. But the truth remains that your resources are unlimited. You
can only do so much ‘pouring’ when it comes to giving out the resources hidden on the inside of
you.

When it comes to failure, you must have a short memory. The same goes with success: you must
have a short memory regarding your past success. This is because your success could stall you.
You park at that parking lot thinking you’ve reached your final destination.

You mentality ought to be one of leaving your current success so you could go create another.
You should do one thing and immediately start looking for another thing to start. Do not stay at
one level of success all your life.

“True success is being right with God and completing His assignment
and purpose for our lives. It’s knowing God and obeying Him. Thus, we cannot
succeed without discovering and doing what God asks of us.” (MYLES MUNROE)

Develop a healthy level of dissatisfaction toward everything that you achieve in your life. This
doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be happy with your current level of success, it just mean you don’t
get so overwhelmed that you think you cannot do any better than you are already doing.

You must come to terms with the fact that that a small success does not keep you from
accomplishing your larger goal. For every task completed, there is always something else that
could be done. There is always another task that you could embark on and see it to completion.
Let everything you do be a challenge for you to go and do even better than you already did. This
is where true momentum for success is birthed.

What the benchmark for success? Could it be that the accolades and trophies that the world gives
you aren’t really a representation of success in the eye of God? Understanding the true measure
of success could be the first key in interpreting yourself to the world.

When we talk about success, we’re talking about achieving a goal that we set for ourselves. But
what if this goal isn’t the one God himself set for us? What if it’s the world that set this standard
of success? What if you’re not living up to the expectation of God for you?
The real thing is God wants you to not judge your success by your personal standards or by the
world’s standards—he wants you to judge your success by the standards that he set for you.

True success is accomplishing God’s assignment for your life. True success is reaching God’s
goal for your life. So, when next you are about to relax on a particular level of success, maybe
you should ask yourself this question: Is God pleased with this level of achievement? You might
be gaining some level of clarity with that question.

Hear this: Only you and God know how successful you really are—the world doesn’t really
know. Hence, let your drive, motivation and inspiration comes from your level of alignment with
God’s assignment for your life. Do not let the world decide your level of success in life.

You might be shocked, but some people that we consider to be ‘world best’ in their various fields
are probably not even close to God’s real dream for them. It could be that they’re just scratching
the surface of what God really wants them to do on the earth.

Life becomes a beautiful compendium of endless compilation of success if we judge ourselves

from this standpoint. Here, real excitement is birthed. So when it comes to interpreting yourself
to the world, maybe you should make it a life goal, not just one-off thing.

When you think of creative and innovative people of the world, one thing you would be able to
use to describe them is their potential. This is because they interpreted themselves to the world.

When you think of J. K. Rowling, famed author of Harry Potter, you see an example of someone
that interpreted themselves to the world. It occurred that she came up with the Harry Potter idea
while riding on a train that was delayed. By the time it got to the station, she had the whole series
of books plotted out in her mind. She started writing right away. She didn’t waste time.

If she never took the time and energy to convert the idea that God put in her into some physical
form—a physical book—we would have never gotten to know J. K. Rowling and what she could
offer the world. So, if famous people did not find ways to interpret themselves to the world the
world would not understand them.

When you meet a person what you actually see is not the real potential. It is not the original
thing. Because the real thing has not yet been interpreted. Even though you have books inside of
you, no one can read them, unless you ‘interpret yourself.’ However, the way you will interpret
yourself is through conversion, conversion occurs through self-education.

Conversion Occurs Through Self-education.

When God put his resources, alongside his plans and purposes inside you, he did it with the
intention that you would treat it like a seed that still needs to be watered. When we talk about
self-education, what do we mean?
Merriam Webster dictionary defines self-education as the act or process of educating oneself by
one’s efforts especially through reading and informal study. This type of education is quite
different from the normal, formal education that we get in school where we just sit in a class and
wait for the discretion of the teacher to guide us on what to learn at that time. With self-
education, it’s quite different. Here, you decide what you learn and how you learn what you
learn.
Many people have several methods of learning. With self-education, you afford yourself the
opportunity to learn at your own time and at your own pace. Now, getting to interpret yourself to
the world requires a process of conversion. And conversion requires a process of self-education.
No man can do more than what he knows. If you want to deliver something to the world that you
have got little to no information about, you might not be able to pull it off. Hence your level of
effectiveness is directly equivalent to how much you are able to gather knowledge and educate
yourself about the subject matter that you are interested in.
Since self-education is about education oneself by one’s effort, one method that a lot of people
would like is the method of mentorship. Did you know that there are 2 way to learn generally?
One way is through your mistakes; the other is through the mistakes of other people—that is
mentorship.
Having a mentor affords you the opportunity to makes a lot of mistakes while having someone to
correct you before you experience the grave effects of your mistakes. This is because if you’re
going to learn from your mistake, then you’re going to suffer a lot of pain. But, since your
mentor has suffered the pain that you are imminently coming to suffer, he can stop you and avoid
you from going through the mess that he went through.
Looking at Michael Phelps, the retired American swimmer, he is an example of someone who
took advantage of the benefit of self-education through mentorship. He currently holds the record
for the most Olympic medals won by any athlete at 28. This includes 23 gold medals and 13
individual gold.
Phelps seemed to be someone that had the natural instinct to be good at swimming because he’d
been competing from a very early age. He first competed in his first Olympics at the age of 15,
as part of the U.S men’s swim team.
But Phelps showed that he was a very good swimmer whether as a teenager or as an adult: At the
2016 Olympic Games, he won one silver and five gold medals, becoming the oldest individual
gold medallist in the history of the Olympic Games. At the same time, he also achieved the feat
of being first swimmer to win four consecutive gold in the same event, 200 –meter individual
medley.
But, as we all know, this all started for Phelps at a tender age, with the help of mentor. He was
discovered at a very young age and mentored by his swimming coach, Cathy Bennett. At a
tender age of 7 Cathy Bennett taught Phelps how to swim. And since then she’s been a family
friend and a long-time supporter. Cathy Bennett became the Program Director at the Michal
Phelps foundation where she teaches thousands of students how to swim. Today, anytime the
word ‘swimming’ is mentioned, the name Michael Phelps comes to mind.
You see, gaining knowledge actually takes time. You need time to study and develop yourself.
Apart from utilizing the great benefit of having a mentor, you can embark on thorough research
where you study and learn all you can about the focus of your subject matter.
Another good example of one who interpreted himself to the world through time conversion and
self-education is French Chemistry professor Louis Pasteur. He lived back in the 1800s. At that
time, people typically did not live long and healthy lives. Serious illness was very common, and
people often died young. Louis Pasteur and his wife had five children, and three of them died in
childhood of typhoid. Being a Chemist professor, Louis Pasteur knew typhoid occurred due to
presence of bacteria in the water they drank. The crisis of the death of his children made Pasteur
make a vow to find out how illnesses like this worked, and to find a way to stop them.

At that time, there was a big debate in the medical profession about the origin of illnesses.
Through research, Pasteur helped clear the doubt when he discovered that germs were carried in
the air and would grow and multiply where they landed. His discovery was achieved through a
conscious decision to research and educate himself.

Unless you create time to discover, to become self-aware, to train yourself, to actualise yourself,
conversion cannot occur. The vast resources inside you cannot be harnessed. You must find ways
to interpret yourself.

Dedicating time to yourself is very paramount because your time is your life. If you don’t have
time for yourself, then you probably don’t really have a life. You could spend all your time
working on another person’s job, but until you discover yourself, you would think the job is what
you’re meant to do with your life.
When you create time alone for yourself, you become more focused. You can use that
opportunity as a time for reality check. You need to see and discover yourself so that you would
know what you’re born to offer to the world.

Discovering Your True Self

As we’ve seen a little about the story of Michael Phelps and Louis Pasture, let’s assume that
these people never took time to discover themselves and their passion drives and desires, what
then would the world have remembered them for? In fact, would the world really have
remembered them for anything?

Normally, when we mention names of people like Michael Jordan, Serena Williams, Beethoven,
Usain Bolt, Ben Carson, etc., a idea comes to mind. When we mention these names we
immediately remember what they live their lives for. We remember their passion and obsession.
We remember what makes them tick.

Sadly, however, studies have shown that one-third of the world population do not know what
they’re good at or what their strengths are. The problem is that they have not really discovered
themselves.

When you do not know who you are, you are likely to pursue the wrong degree in the university
and end up miserable in your first few years at your job. One in three university students told
researchers that they wish they had studies a different course.

When you take the gifts and talents of Michael Jordan and you go use it to study to become a
Ben Carson in the University, you create chaos.

“Nobody is as miserable as the man who longs to be somebody else other than the person he is,
both physically and mentally.” (ANGELO PATRI)

Steve Jobs realized very early in life that his passion centered on computers. He defied the
common trend of going to the university to get a degree on a course that you’re absolutely not
interested in—perhaps you were even forced to study the course.

But Steve Jobs knew better. He wasn’t going to spend his whole life doing something that he
knew he was not born to do. So he decided to drop out of high school to pursue his dream of
being an innovator and a pioneer in the field of computers.
Thanks to his drastic decision to leave high school, he later went on to change history by creating
the Apple II and the Macintosh—something the world have never seen or heard of before. He
might have come across to you as someone without higher education, but he is counted as the
youngest multi-millionaire and the world has recognized him as a genius who turned his dreams
into a reality.

Perhaps, the story of Steve Jobs brings to mind an equally inspiring story about Bill Gates—a
man who regarded himself as the father of computer software. It’s not news that he also left
college because he knew he wasn’t going to get his dream fulfilled in college.

The sad thing about formal education is that they quickly assume that everybody is the same.
They want us to learn and assimilate the same way and that is just impossible. For Bill Gates, he
knew that he wasn’t like everybody else and decided to make the decision to chase his dream and
fulfil his goal in life.

Today, the whole world doesn’t just know Bill Gates in terms on computer software, but also in
terms of stupendous wealth. The knowledge and successful pursuit of his destiny easily made
him the richest man in the world. From 1996, he’s been nominated by Forbes magazines as the
world’s richest man for almost every year. In the autumn of 2009, his wealth was estimated at
$50 billion.

Like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who became wealthy, being aware of who you are doesn’t just
make your rich, it also ensures you do not waste your time, spending energy on unnecessary
things.

Interestingly, happiness is one of the biggest signs that you’re doing what you were created to
do. The enjoyment that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs derived from chasing their dreams perhaps
couldn’t compare to anything else. You would agree that they didn’t find that much happiness in
college or in any other jobs they’d tried their hands on. So they chose to do what made them
happy.

That way, the energy you expend working wouldn’t be out of frustration but out of love for what
you’re doing. Hence, the reward of doing what you love, apart from the other benefits, begins at
the very moment that you start doing it. Hence we must ensure we look for these cues and use
the inert abilities that God has given us.
Your gifts and talent are God’s responsibility to you, but it is your responsibility to use them.
When you get to know specifically what your inert abilities are, then using it will be the second
step to uncovering your hidden potential.

“Our time is limited, so do not waste it living someone else’s life. Do not be trapped by dogmas
— that means living by using other people’s thoughts. Do not let the noise of other people’s
opinions muffle your own inner voice. The most important thing: have the courage to follow your
heart and mind. Somehow, they already know what you really want to become. Everything else is
of secondary importance.” (STEVE JOBS)

You must place priority on using your gifts and talents and ensure that you allow nothing
smother it—not even college education. If you’re doing anything as a life work, ensure you’re
doing it using your inert abilities because at the end of your life, we all would give account to
God on how we spent our individual gifts and talents.

Let me use the example of Albert Einstein, the famous Physicist. He proposed many brilliant
laws in science. If he wrote all those papers in journals and published those discoveries, how
many people would understand him? Maybe few. To the average person, many of us have picked
journals or subjects outside of our field but did not make any sense of them. Why? Because we
could not relate with the subject. However, Einstein found ways to interpret himself.

He converted his findings, law, theories and journal publications into useful inventions that
blessed the world today. The average person can benefit from his inventions because he took the
time to discover himself and interpret himself to the world. The Gas absorption heat pump and
Einstein refrigerator are credited to Albert Einstein.

Not many people understand the mechanism behind light. But scientists found appropriate ways
to interpret their discoveries and inventions for the benefit of others. Hence, it doesn’t matter
what potential someone has, if they don’t understand and interpret themselves to the world,
people will never be able to benefit from their potential.
Equally, interpreting yourself to the world should be your ultimate goal. When we are able to
help others with our gifts and talents, then we are really living and releasing our potential on the
earth.