Wondrium Insights: Achieve Your Potential

Imagine that you have decided to try something that no human has ever done before: swim 110 miles from Cuba to Florida. You’ve trained your whole life in hopes of completing this. Now, the day has arrived. You’re in the water, and everything is rolling smoothly when suddenly, your entire body lights on fire as if you are being dipped into a vat of burning oil. Do you give up? Or do you keep swimming?

Such is the harrowing and inspirational story of Diana Nyad—American author, motivational speaker, and long-distance swimmer.

Since the beginning of time, humans have been driven by the desire to persevere and achieve tremendous feats of all varieties, from athletic to humanitarian to the conquering of unimaginable personal battles.

But life is not an upward trajectory. Along with the drive to succeed that is inherent in our nature, we also have the innate tendency to lose sight of our goals during the weeks, months, and years of trial, error, and hard work that we must slog through to get to the finish line. And then, even after we’ve crossed the finish line, we’re often left with the hollow feeling of “what’s next?”

So how does one find, keep, and apply the grit it takes to fulfill your highest dreams? And where do you go after your dreams come true?

In Achieve Your Potential, all of these questions will be answered as you are treated to five incredible stories of human perseverance and accomplishment. Hosted by neuroscientist and science communicator Crystal Dilworth, this series contains interviews with extraordinary individuals who have defied the odds and who exemplify human achievement.

But these people did not start out any different from the rest of us. Coming from diverse backgrounds and with unique personal life stories, each of them made a series of decisions somewhere along the way that led them down a path toward building and changing their lives. In the process of doing so, they found themselves impacting other people’s lives as well.

Here is a sneak peek into their insights.

Using Your Privilege for Good

We begin with Shiza Shahid. By the age of 24, Shiza was already an internationally recognized global entrepreneur and social activist. Now, she lives out her life mission to empower and educate girls and women around the world as the CEO of the Malala Fund while running her own cookware company, Our Place.

Shiza shares how deeply her upbringing impacted her as her parents taught her to “plant trees under the shade of which you’ll never sit.” She explains that we can allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the enormous problems of society, but the solutions are simple

Show up.
Create connections.
Find meaning and joy in the same places where there is suffering.
Shiza reveals that when you find a way to impact just one life, it is all worth it.

Finding Joy in Hardship

How do you prepare yourself to undertake a grueling physical feat that has never been done before? Meet Kevin Jorgeson, who, together with his climbing partner, scaled the Dawn Wall of El Capitan in Yosemite. It took 19 days of free climbing, but years of rigorous training, during which he almost quit.

Kevin talks about the fun scale that delineates between what an experience is like in the moment and what it’s like in retrospect

Type One Fun: Things that are both fun in the moment and in retrospect, like a vacation.

Type Two Fun: Things that are scary or stressful or painful in the moment but create a fantastic memory afterward.

As it turns out, to achieve hard things, you need to learn to enjoy and embrace Type Two Fun.

You Are an Answer to a Problem

You will also meet philanthropist and mentor Ivy McGregor, who heads up BEYGood, the philanthropic branch of Beyonce’s Parkwood Entertainment. Ivy tells the story of her mother, who struggled as a single mom of five. From a very young age, Ivy knew that her goal in life would be to take the weariness out of her mother’s eyes. She would later take that to a much larger scale, helping not only her mother but many more like her.

Ivy suggests four framing questions when deciding your next steps

What do you want?
Why do you want it?
Whom will it help?
How will you do it?
As Ivy puts it, there are around 20 global issues and 8 billion people on the planet. Imagine if each of us believed we were an answer to a problem: We would have more solutions than problems.

The Importance of Positivity

Three years into his professional career as a Pittsburgh Steeler, Ryan Shazier made a routine head-first tackle that left him with a severe back injury. He was told he had a 20% chance of ever walking again.

Despite the odds, Ryan fought hard and taught himself to walk again. Today, he’s a husband, father, and motivational speaker who presses the importance of surrounding yourself with positivity and a strong support team. Ryan will teach you how to use difficult things from your past to prepare you for your future.

The Power of Your Will

Let’s get back to the swimmer who achieved the impossible. Those burning sensations that Diana felt over her entire body were from the deadly stings of a swarm of box jellyfish. After being briefly treated by the emergency medical team, Diana continued swimming through that night. Later, they told her that there was no way she should have lived, let alone be able to keep putting one arm in front of the other.

What special powers did Diana have that gave her the will to keep going? She gives away her approach in the interview and discusses the crucial concept of understanding the intersection between will and grace and knowing when it’s time to let go and say, “Maybe I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.”

With Achieve Your Potential, you’ll have the opportunity to sit at the table with this group of resilient and inspirational individuals who, through perseverance, have uncovered the secrets to becoming their best selves. Now you, too, can gain from their wisdom as they share everything they know about inventing and reinventing one’s dream life. Perhaps the biggest realization is that achieving your potential will ultimately be more about appreciating the journey than reaching that big goal. All you have to do is show up every day.

What Will You Learn?
Get an inside look at five high achievers and gain insight into their methods for great success

Find out how to find, keep, and apply the grit it takes to fulfill your highest dreams, and where to go after your dreams come true

See how it is possible to find solutions to enormous problems by showing up, creating connections, and finding meaning and joy in the same places there is suffering

Explore framing questions which can make it easier to decide your next steps

Discover how to enjoy and embrace the process of achieving challenging goals