You Aren’t Using Your Full Potential Until You Embrace Your Instincts

It’s not enough to be the smartest person in the room. 

Or the one who wants it the most. 

You can be a certified genius with all of the motivation in the world, but you will never reach your full potential until you grasp a simple concept: 

There are three parts of the mind, and you need to embrace all three. 

The Three Parts of the Mind  

Chances are, you’re pretty familiar with two parts of the mind.  

You’ve likely put a lot of time and resources into honing your skills, gaining knowledge, and building experience. That’s the cognitive part. 

Like many people, you’re also probably pretty in touch with your preferences, have invested in motivation, and spent time considering your values. That’s the affective part. 

But how much consideration have you put into how you naturally operate? Are you in tune with your instincts? Are you in control of your mental energy?  

That’s the conative part. And neglecting it can be just as detrimental to your long-term success as a lack of motivation or skills. 

Understanding the Third Part of the Mind 

We all have natural ways of taking action.  

You were born with instinctive strengths, based on how you: 

• Gather and share information 
• Organize and design 
• Deal with risk and uncertainty 
• Handle space and tangibles 

Everyone has conative strengths in each of these areas, but those strengths are different for different people. And when you work against your conative strengths, it causes all sorts of issues that will limit your potential over the long-term every time. 

Some people need to ask questions and research in depth to problem-solve at their best. Routinely asking one of these people to routinely do tasks with limited information will cause them stress and slow down their production. They may be extremely skilled and motivated, meaning they will get those tasks done. But over time…they will suffer from the drain working against their grain will take on them, and it will inevitably lead to burnout. 

Many people instinctively create shortcuts and thrive by varying their approach to problem-solving. Let’s say you hired the smartest, most dedicated salesperson on the job market. They have decades of experience, endless motivation, and proven results. (And they instinctively create shortcuts and thrive by varying their approach to problem-solving.) If you bring this person in and make them follow the meticulous and strict sales system that has worked so well for you, you will absolutely limit their ceiling. They may have the strengths to overcome and do well, at least for awhile. But unless they are free to be themselves conatively, they will never deliver on their potential. 

Reaching Your Full Potential 

While the resources for learning about the third part of the mind are not as vast as those for the first two, there is plenty of guidance out there to maximize your conative strengths. 

In Do More, More Naturally, a guidebook for effortless success via using your instincts, human performance experts David Kolbe and Amy Bruske outline the 3 C’s to Sustainable Performance: 

1. Clarity — Become crystal clear about your strengths in all three parts of the mind 
2. Commitment — Make wise choices every day about how to use those strengths and when to say ‘no’ to save your energy 
3. Collaboration — Be strategic about who you collaborate with and when you should be working alone to accomplish your goals 

By clarifying how you instinctively operate, committing to using your mental energy effectively and collaborating with conative strengths in mind, you will begin to see results that transcend your intelligence and desires. You’ll finally be able to operate at your full potential, using all three parts of your mind to do the things you care about most.  

Ready to start meeting that potential? The best first step to gaining clarity on your conative strengths is by taking the Kolbe A™ Index.