The Potential Principle

July 3, 2017
Entrepreneur and motivational speaker Sanborn (The Fred Factor) delivers a slim, unsatisfying exhortation to constant improvement. Sanborn’s premise is that most people have amazing potential, albeit potential they rarely recognize or reach. Moreover, he tells the reader, you can only find out what you’re capable of by “making your best better.” He recommends benchmarking your potential against your capabilities, rather than against your accomplishments to date. He also pushes readers to seek help from others during this process and not to allow themselves to remain at their current level of accomplishment but to improve with every opportunity and at every moment. His tone is consistently upbeat: “We have no idea what is possible physically, mentally, or organizationally.” However, the space-filling quotes from successful people and lashings of Tony Robbins–esque language do nothing to obscure the fact that this is a superficial illustration of an assertion too broad to be of much interest to readers, and too obvious to be inspiring.