Achieving Your Potential
By Tony Dungy and Nathan Whitaker
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About this ebook
Read all seven! The complete Uncommon Life Weekly Challenge series includes the following:
- Achieving Your Potential
- Building Your Team
- Developing Your Core
- Living Your Life’s Purpose
- Maximizing Your Influence
- Strengthening Your Faith
- Strengthening Your Family
Tony Dungy
Tony Dungy and his wife Lauren Dungy are active members of a number of family, faith, and community-based organizations, including All Pro Dad, iMom, Fellowship of Chrstian Athletes, Mentors for Life, Family First, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and the Boys and Girls Club of America. Tony is a former NFL player and retired head coach of the 2006 Superbowl Champions, the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League.
Read more from Tony Dungy
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Achieving Your Potential - Tony Dungy
How to Use This Weekly Challenge
We hope you will enjoy reading The Uncommon Life Weekly Challenge—Achieving Your Potential. The potential-achieving principles in this devotional were taken from The One Year Uncommon Life Daily Challenge—a book we collaborated on together.
While The Uncommon Life Weekly Challenge—Achieving Your Potential offers weekly readings instead of daily ones, our hope is that the format will prove useful for regular doses of encouragement and strength—one for each week of the year. It’s possible that instead of getting together every day for devotions, your family opts for a weekly devotional time. Or maybe you’re a coach or a sports chaplain who has set aside time once a week for devotions with your team. Or perhaps you attend a weekly prayer meeting that would benefit from a short devotional time. It may also be the case that weekly personal devotions fit better into your schedule than a daily devotional routine. On the flip side, another option is to go ahead and read the devotions on a daily basis, either consecutively for fifty-two days or sporadically throughout the year. Whether read on a daily or weekly basis, or in a group or an individual setting, the fundamentals highlighted in The Uncommon Life Weekly Challenge—Achieving Your Potential will keep you anchored in what God’s Word says about a successful life. And check out www.coachdungy.com for more resources.
Each Principle for Potential includes Scripture and an Uncommon Key—an application or action to implement based on what you’ve just read. This isn’t just a read-it-and-you’re-done
type of devotional. The goal is not only to engage your mind but also to challenge your heart with the fundamental principles of God’s message to us through his Word, the Bible.
If you miss a week, keep going. Don’t try to catch up, and don’t feel guilty. Last week is gone—spend time with God today. Our prayer is that every week you will be blessed by what you read and challenged to achieve your full potential in God’s Kingdom.
Tony Dungy
Nathan Whitaker
WEEK 1
Principle for Potential: Reaching Incremental Goals
Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.
And God granted his request.
1 Chronicles 4:10,
NIV
Few of us want to remain where we are without any improvement or increase. God has wired us to want to grow. But what kind of growth are we looking for? We have to be careful to focus on what’s really important and within our control, rather than external results we can’t really control.
My goals are usually qualitative, not quantitative. When I coached, my aim each season was not to win a certain number of games, but to have a team that played as well as it could and that was an asset to its community. I measured the team by whether it played up to its potential. And from year to year, I measured it by whether it improved.
That’s also how I measure myself. When I was a young assistant, I wanted to learn enough to one day be considered for a coordinator position. Then as a coordinator, I wanted to learn and improve so I could become a head coach. Sometimes our goals are a steady step-by-step progression, and sometimes they require risk. Whenever we ask God to enlarge our territories, we need faith to move to the next level. That always comes with the possibility of failure, although we can trust Him to be with us either to help us get there or to catch us when we fall. Over time, those steps of faith pay off. We grow and improve and reach higher goals.
Remember to focus on goals that are within your control. As a coach, I worked on learning more and improving my coaching abilities in order to be qualified for positions with greater responsibility. I couldn’t control whether I would be hired for those positions. When you do your part to prepare, you can trust God for the results. In His timing, He’s the one who enlarges your territory. Your job is to make yourself ready for it.
UNCOMMON KEY > A little improvement each day makes a big difference over time.
WEEK 2
Principle for Potential: A Couple of Minutes a Day
Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray. Later Simon and the others went out to find him. When they found him, they said, Everyone is looking for you.
Mark 1:35-37
Do you have moments in your life when you feel like everyone is demanding a piece of you, looking for you everywhere, armed with all their urgent requests and deadlines? So you try to find a place where they don’t know to look. Or maybe you just turn off your phone for a few minutes of peace and quiet.
The Gospels mention some similar moments for Jesus (albeit I’m pretty sure without the phone). Times when He realized it was time for Him to get away to be by Himself. Times when He no doubt spent time talking with His Father about what He was going through. Times to put His feet up—a good thing for a lot of reasons—and think. Maybe sometimes He went off to take a nap. With the amount of walking He was doing, He had to have bouts of fatigue. Perhaps while He rested, He thought about the next day’s plan, what He hoped to accomplish, and asked for guidance from His Father on how to best go about it.
I certainly try to follow Christ’s example. But this idea of stopping what we’re doing and getting alone with the Father? For most of us it’s not part of our DNA. It is certainly not embraced by society. They would most likely label us as recluses or as displaying antisocial behavior. Instead of pulling away, taking some time, getting some rest—society says charge on, full speed ahead.
Why not begin to find some time in your day to be alone and quiet? Find some moments of your day—perhaps in the morning before the day gets legs—to spend time alone with the God who created you and all you see around you. Why not find some time each day to put your feet up and think?
God wants there to be times when you simply escape with Him, alone, and recharge. Like you are doing right now, reading this. He wants to be with you and help you to slow down for a few moments and seek Him. It will give the two of you