Know Your Potential

“You are what you think!”

It is a common expression about self-recognizing to know our potential. It means if we think that we are worthless, the worthlessness will always become our image. When we set our heart and mind negatively, our positive potentials will evaporate.

Knowing our potential is exactly the same as recognizing ourselves. It will bring to following questions:

Who am I?

What was I created to this world for?

Who created me?

What did He created me for?

What can I do for my life in this world?

What can I do for my life in the hereafter?

What is my weakness (negative potentials)?

What is my strength (positive potentials)?

We can answer all those questions by getting in touch with our innermost heart and trying to get closer to the Creator, Allah Azza wa Jalla.

Besides, socializing with other people can be the main way to know our potentials. This enables criticism about us to come out. In other words, we should think positive of what people say about us because they might have more objective views on our potentials.

The easiest way to recognize ourselves is through a harmonious relationship with closest people, that is our family. Our closeness to all the family members enables them to criticize us without hesitation.

Afterwards, we can begin to build a harmonious relationship with our relatives, friends, neighbors, or other people at our workplace. It might be harder since our openness will arouse more criticism. We need to be ready to bear our resentment because people might criticize us more straightforwardly. However, we need to believe that this is InsyaAllah will make our emotion management well developed day after day.

Wallahu’alam bissawab

(Adapted from Jagalah Hati by Abdullah Gymnastiar (2004), MQS Publishing, Bandung)