Unlocking Your Best Self: Ben Lytle on Human Potential, Wisdom, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

“I will do my best to be my best and leave the world and the people I meet a little better than when I found them.”   These twenty-five words, said from the heart, represent nature’s highest calling to all living things: to reach their potential and contribute to their species and the whole . . .   All it takes is this commitment to do your best to be your best – days, serial entrepreneur Ben Lytle, author of THE PURSUIT OF WISDOM, as that’s how he led and launched seven successful companies to date, creating billions in market value, including New York Stock Exchange-listed Acordia, Inc. and Anthem (now Elevance Health), which have a current market value of more than $120 billion. He also co-founded Silver Sneakers, a fitness program designed for older adults that became one of the world’s largest exercise programs.   Sharing his knowledge now as an author of THE POTENTIALIST series, his latest installment, The Pursuit of Wisdom was published Fall of 2024. He shares the importance of wisdom and its practice in everything from business to intimacy in relationships. The series is intended as a guidebook for success during the fast-changing, turbulent, and opportunity-rich times ahead—named The Fourth Industrial Revolution by the World Economic Forum.   Ben's devotion to individual and collective human potential through accelerated wisdom guides much of his work and sharing.   Among many nuggets, Ben Lytle shares about leadership, human potential, and wisdom from THE POTENTIALIST: The Pursuit of Wisdom                                                                     Human potential has consistently been underestimated. Humanity, especially its leaders, has yet to grasp this timeless truth.                                         How can I be sure that my intentions are genuine and my actions are consistent?                     Gratitude is powerful in its presence or absence.   If you struggle with judging yourself, you are trapped in the ego’s cognitive distortion of perfection, which does not exist in nature and cannot exist in you.   Inside everyone, buried more deeply in some, lies a craving for an ecstatic connection called intimacy that unites us with others and all things in nature.   Humanity will achieve an unprecedented elevation in potential and wisdom when intimate relationships are as familiar as social acquaintances are today.   Intimacy, unconditional love, and empathy are not subject to the law of consumption but to infinity, from which they are derived. The more we give, the more we have available to offer.   Intimacy may be the most potent force we experience in life.                                           Think of intimacy as a healthy contagion spreading outward and altering every person and thing you touch.   Intimacy is the North Star of the art of living well, our most basic need, our highest calling, and the surest path to potential and wisdom.   Fear owns you, or you own it. Only you can decide who’s in charge.   Adversity is a teacher, not a punishing warden.   What we spend time with and where we spend our time makes who we are. Decisions made wisely throughout life accelerate potential and wisdom.   At family intimacy, unconditional love and belonging are, at their best, protective membranes between you and the rest of the world from birth to death.   It is impossible to become wise without gratitude.   Many people remain tragically defined by inaccurate memories that limit their potential and quality of life.                                                      Questions to ponder:   • Will working and living with humanlike automation emphasize or blur my human distinctiveness?   • How do I integrate with automation like AI and robotics without losing my humanity?    • What security, backup, and controls should I insist on as my life increasingly depends upon more intelligent and competent automation?   • How do I prepare for career opportunities as automation assumes the grunt work