When you reflect on your childhood, it may have felt like your potential was free to be expressed and could travel wherever it needed to.
Until it wasn’t.
Now, as adults, despite our best efforts, we often find ourselves feeling—or even knowing—that there’s untapped potential within us, leaving us wondering why we aren’t fully accessing our true capabilities.
The answer often lies in a powerful, yet often unnoticed influence: human conditioning.
Conditioning shapes how we think, behave, and interact with the world, often steering us away from our natural selves, both our True Self and as importantly our Human Potential.
To unlock our full potential, we first need to understand what conditioning is and how it has influenced our behaviors, beliefs, and approaches to life.
The answer often lies in a powerful, yet often unnoticed influence: conditioning.
Conditioning shapes how we think, behave, and interact with the world, often steering us away from our natural selves, both our True Self and as importantly our Human Potential.
To unlock our full potential, we first need to understand what conditioning is and how it has influenced our behaviors, beliefs, and approaches to life.
What Is Conditioning?
Conditioning is the process by which we learn and adapt our behaviors, often without being conscious of it.
From the moment we are born, we are influenced by the people, environments, and experiences around us.
We observe, absorb, and mimic behaviors, processing, and ways of being that become ingrained as part of our personality and approach to life.
This learning process can shape not only how we behave but also what we believe is acceptable, valuable, and right.
Over time, our learned ways become our “normal” ways of being, that generally is not truly natural to us.
The Natural vs The Conditioned You
Conditioning often occurs when we learn what is acceptable or unacceptable, what is rewarded or punished, and how we should act to fit in with those around us. This conditioning can suppress or modify our natural tendencies, leading us to express behaviors that are not truly our own or causing us to favor certain preferences while leaving other aspects of our potential untapped.
The natural processes of your human self consist of the innate abilities, expressions, and behaviors you were born with simply by having a human body.
In contrast, your conditioned self represents the adaptations to these parts of you, that you’ve made in response to external influences. These changes may have been imposed upon you by societal expectations, family dynamics, or life experiences, leading you to adopt behaviors that may not reflect your true nature.
This is the process of HUMAN CONDITIONING, conditioning that impacts the human processes you access and express. Your untapped potential.
How Conditioning Shapes Your Behavior
Conditioning is deeply rooted in our desire to belong and be accepted. From a young age, WE LEARN TO NAVIGATE OUR ENVIRONMENTS BY ADOTPING BEHAVIORS THAT MEET THE EXPECTATIONS OF OTHERS.
This can mean suppressing certain aspects of ourselves, such as our natural assertiveness, playfulness, sensitivity, or meticulousness, to avoid conflict, gain approval, or feel safe.
For example, if you were naturally assertive but were repeatedly told as a child to "be quiet" or "not to challenge authority," you may have suppressed this trait and learned to be more reserved.
On the flip side, if you grew up in a lively and energetic household, you might have adopted behaviors that emphasized being outgoing or the life of the party, even if that didn’t come naturally to you.
The Impact of Conditioning on Your Potential
When you act in ways that are conditioned rather than natural, you may be unknowingly restricting access to your full potential. Conditioning can lead you to behave in ways that feel forced, uncomfortable, or stressful, as you constantly strive to meet external expectations.
This disconnection between your natural and conditioned selves can result in feelings of dissatisfaction, low self-worth, or a sense that you are not fully expressing who you are.
Understanding your conditioning is key to unlocking untapped areas of your potential. By recognizing what is natural versus what has been conditioned, you can begin to peel back the layers of learned behavior and reconnect with your true self.
This process allows you to access a fuller range of your abilities, emotions, and expressions, ultimately leading to a more authentic and fulfilling life.
Recognizing Your Conditioning
Here are some signs that you may be operating from a conditioned rather than a natural place:
- Feeling disconnected or unnatural: You may sense that you are not acting in alignment with who you truly are.
- Experiencing stress or pressure: Conditioned behaviors often come with a sense of effort or struggle because they don’t flow naturally.
- Suppressing certain aspects of yourself: You may hide or downplay parts of your personality that were discouraged or not accepted by others.
- Rigid expectations of yourself: You hold yourself to high standards that are not necessarily aligned with your natural tendencies.
Reclaiming Your Natural Self
Reclaiming your natural self involves becoming aware of your conditioning and giving yourself permission to express all parts of who you are. It’s about exploring, accessing and allowing all of the processes that are natural to you, to have focus, to develop and to be expressed.
It requires letting go of the need to fit into others’ expectations and embracing the flexibility to navigate through all aspects of your behavior.
This process can be both liberating and challenging, as it requires you to confront deeply ingrained beliefs and habits. However, by doing so, you open the door to accessing your untapped potential and living in a way that feels more true to you.
Embracing all of the natural processes and elements of your humanness, allows you to access the full spectrum of your human potential, enabling you to live with greater authenticity, ease, and fulfillment.
This is what we explore in The Human Potential Membership
By understanding the role of conditioning in your life, you can start to break free from its limitations and unlock the powerful, untapped potential that lies within you.
MELINDA CATES
Founder and creator of U Make a Difference, I Make a Difference and life transition and true self empowerment facilitator. If you are interested in tapping into and expressing your human potential, then make sure you join the U Make a Difference community – Connect Now!