If you wear this brand, you will be seen as someone of success. If you drive this car, you will be seen as someone of success and potential. It insinuates that I do not currently have success or potential and you can achieve it through these brands or products. They are typical aspirational messages used to get you to aim for something higher and more in life and that product or service can help you get there. When I sit back and look at this process, I think it breeds personal incompleteness and shortcomings.

Potential: Aspirational versus inspirational awareness

People have a lot of potential within them, especially when they exponentially accelerate it, using collaboration and co-creation. But, sadly I found the bulk of us are not aware of that. Usually when I ask people what they know, they respond with a job title. This denies all the other knowledge they have and apply in their daily lives. If you are a parent of teenagers, you’re probably good at conflict resolution and change management.

These skills we do so well and so often that they actually fade into obscurity and unconsciousness. And with that any value we might attach to it.

So, in actual fact you sit with a handful of skills that the world might be ready and willing to pay for, but you do not value it enough to charge for it. If I do not value something, I will simply give it away. When you value it, you engage in fair and equitable exchange. You see the value in yourself, the skill and what it can mean in someone else’s world or life. Never ever forget that your self worth determines your net worth. But if you only see worth in what you do in your daily job, you will have very little net worth. But what if you valued ALL of you and ALL the skills, talents and experiences you had, enough to sell it? Like the parent of the teenagers that use their unconscious skill of conflict resolution and change management.

Your potential is a force of change to be reckoned with

If you value all that you have to offer, you become a force of change in this world. You bring everything you were created to be to life. That is living a life of inspiration.

So, when I look at aspirational messages, I see that it could breed unawareness of our true and current talents and possibly lead to a diminishing of our true potential. What if we could have marketing messages that make us aware of our true potential and how products and services are mere tools to help us to be a bigger change within this world using what we already have?

Is anyone even to blame

I cannot lay blame at anyone’s doorstep, this is just what I observe and what I have experienced the world has become. Can and will this argument be argued? Probably, hopefully. But, ask yourself the following question. What if only 10% of the world population had a conscious awareness of their true potential? I think we will be living in a world of positive change and major possibilities. What do you think? What talents and skills do you do so often and well that they fall into obscurity and unconsciousness? There lies a world of opportunity within each individual once they come to realize ALL their potential and getting them to actually apply it.

It is actually the only way forward

The current economic landscape seems to be changing faster and faster each year. To think that your one and only skill (your job and job title) will be able to adapt fast enough to maintain your financial needs might not be achievable. The answer might just lie in all the hidden skills and talents you have that you can apply as the you deliver your value to the world in ever more different platform and ways.