Use of the term underachievement exploded in the '90s. In classrooms, in boardrooms, in locker rooms, and even in bedrooms, Americans lamented a seemingly growing trend toward mediocrity from people with potential. Reports of underachieving athletes, underachieving work teams, under-performing corporations, and declining student test scores became commonplace in the media.

Everyone readily understood the concept: despite talent, assets, market position, or other obvious advantages, someone or something failed to live up to potential. But no one could explain why it happened or what to do about it. Until now.

Working initially with concerned parents of children underachieving in school, Dr. Christian found that existing theories and methods focused on underachievement as an external behavior and not an internal experience-and had failed to produce significant results or improvements. By Looking at the problem in a new way, he developed a system of specially designed treatment tools and techniques and, in 1990, founded the Maximum Potential Project.

The Project achieved unprecedented results quickly; children became productive and engaged. Before long, as word of the effectiveness of the program spread, Dr. Christian began hearing more and more from adults who recognized a continuing pattern underachievement in their own lives, and desperately wanted help.

Do you recognize:

Taking shortcuts and doing the minimum possible even with important matters.

Spending more time getting ready to work, getting out of work, or getting others to do it, than working.

Inconsistent, insufficient effort.

A lack of real engagement even in your most important life activities and relationships.

Ambivalence in making decisions.

Planning, scheming, and talking about things but not following through on them.

Difficulties organizing work and organizing your life in general.

Difficulties reaching distant goals due to a lack of appropriate planning and persistence.

Repeated initial excitement for new ventures, followed by disappointment when the new wears off.

False starts and frequent changes in direction and goals due to boredom, and a preference to start something new.

Failure to complete important projects, whether pleasant or unpleasant.

A tendency to quit things just as you begin to achieve success doing them.

Procrastination.

A history of being involved with relationships, jobs, or other situations that demand less than your true capabilities and therefore provide less than full satisfaction.

Gravitating toward non-traditional occupations in order to avoid traditional structured work schedules or the demands of bosses or supervisors.

A history of being stuck in situations that you thought would be temporary.

Self-doubt and low or varying self-esteem.

Fears that you will not be able to live up to your own expectations or those of others.

Recurrent fears of that you are faking it or are a fraud and about to be found out.

A paralyzing fear of striving for what you really want because you do not want to be disappointed or fail.

Unrealistic notions of what is actually required for success.

A history of keeping your options open by postponing serious commitments.

Difficulties in appropriately balancing risks and opportunities with an habitual tendency to take unnecessary risks, or to play it too safe, or to alternate between the two strategies.

Blaming failures on "bad luck" or other people instead of accepting personal responsibility for them.

A feeling that you are socially inadequate and younger than your age and that you have fallen behind your peers in reaching important milestones.

A feeling that time is running out and you haven't gotten started.

Periods of depression.

The list is a summary of the characteristics of high-potential people with whom I have worked who fell into habitual patterns that blocked the kind of success they wanted. Your answers can alert you to ways you have limited your possibilities and provide information from which to begin to change your course.

The greater the number of statements to which you said "yes," the more likely it is that you have adopted at least some similar patterns. It is not only by answering the questions above, however, but also in your heart that you know to what degree you may have thus far cheated yourself of a fuller sense of self-realization.