Day
1
Baseline
Write: Where do I stand today – career, body, meaning?
↳ What surprised you?
Back to the audiobook
Transfer & Worksheets
Your Potential Compass – Reflection Exercises & 7-Day Plan
Turn the audiobook into real change with five reflection exercises and a 7-day transfer plan.
Printable version of all 5 exercises + 7-day plan · A4 · free
5 reflection exercises for the audiobook
Give each exercise 15–20 minutes. Try whether writing by hand helps you reflect more consciously on your answers.
1. Your three most alive moments
20 minRecall three moments – professional or personal – in which you felt fully alive.
- →What exactly were you doing?
- →Which of your strengths were at work?
- →What common pattern do you see?
2. Values compass
15 minFrom a values list (autonomy, meaning, connection, mastery, safety, impact, freedom, growth …) pick your top 5.
- →Which value is most underfed in your daily life?
- →Which top value are you violating right now – and why?
- →What small step would strengthen one of these values this week?
3. The eulogy perspective
20 minImagine a close friend gives a speech about your life 30 years from now.
- →What should they be able to say about you?
- →What do you want to be remembered for?
- →Which compromise today would prevent that speech?
4. Strengths × Values × Meaning
20 minDraw three circles and put 3–5 items in each: top strengths, core values, topics that give you meaning.
- →Where do all three overlap?
- →What life or work picture emerges in the intersection?
- →What keeps you from spending more time there?
5. Your next courageous step
15 minTranslate the previous exercises into one concrete action.
- →What will you do in the next 7 days (small, specific, dated)?
- →What in the next 90 days?
- →Whom do you need as a sparring partner or coach?
7 × Impulse
7-day transfer plan
One impulse per day – 10 to 20 minutes.
Day
2
Spot strengths
Ask 3 people: 'Why do you come to me?' Note patterns.
↳ Which strength was confirmed from outside?
Day
3
Clarify values
Choose and rank your top 5 values.
↳ Which value surprises you most?
Day
4
Meaning question
Complete in one sentence: 'I am most myself when I …'
↳ Does this match your daily reality?
Day
5
Prototype
Sketch a possible future version of your work in 5 lines.
↳ Does the sketch trigger energy or resistance?
Day
6
Reality check
Share the sketch with a trusted person and gather feedback.
↳ What did the feedback change?
Day
7
Decide & start
Define the first real step you'll take this week – with a date.
↳ What are you afraid of – and what happens if you do it anyway?
Interactive 7-day checklist
Tick each day once you've done the impulse. Progress is stored on this device.
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Context
What is behind your potential?
The Potential Compass combines three perspectives: What are you particularly good at? What truly matters to you? And where do you want to apply those abilities and values?
The exercises are designed as structured self-reflection. They help you make everyday observations visible and derive concrete next steps from them.
The Potential Compass is not meant to tell you who you should be. It helps you see more clearly what is already there – and what you want to do with it.
Why focus on strengths?
Positive psychology has studied for years what role personal strengths play for well-being and development. A longitudinal study by Wood and colleagues with 207 participants found associations between greater use of personal strengths and lower stress as well as higher self-esteem, more vitality and more positive affect across three and six months.
Additional evidence comes from a meta-analysis by Cebolla and colleagues published in Clinical Psychology Review in 2026. It synthesises 109 randomised controlled trials with a total of 20,494 participants on interventions cultivating human strengths and virtues, supporting the assumption that such interventions can foster psychological well-being.
For your Potential Compass this means: knowing your strengths is often not enough. It gets interesting where you start using them deliberately.
On handwriting we stay deliberately cautious. Mueller and Oppenheimer found indications that longhand notes can encourage more processing in one's own words than typing on a laptop. A direct replication by Urry and colleagues, however, did not confirm a general learning advantage. So the rule here is not „handwriting is scientifically proven to be better“, but rather: try whether writing more slowly by hand helps you think less automatically and more consciously about your answers.
Sources
Definitions: potential, strengths and values
What is potential?
Potential describes the possibilities a person already carries but has not yet fully realised.
It emerges from the interplay of abilities, strengths, experience, motivation, values and development opportunities.
So potential is not only about „what could I theoretically do?“
What could emerge if I used my abilities more deliberately?
What is a strength?
Strengths are personal qualities and abilities that allow someone to handle tasks particularly effectively and in their own way.
A strength shows not only in being able to do something. What matters just as much is how naturally, repeatably and effectively you can apply that ability.
That is why you often recognise your strongest abilities not from your CV, but from recurring situations in which something comes easily to you and others seek your support.
What do I repeatedly do particularly well – and when do I experience myself as effective?
What are values?
Values are personal guiding principles for what matters and feels worth pursuing.
They shape decisions, priorities and the way we want to live and work.
A useful test question is: „Does this really matter to me – or do I only believe it should?“
What matters so much to me that it should influence my decisions?
Coaching practice
From coaching practice
Three anonymised observations from coaching practice. They show how the exercises are used in concrete situations and are not statistical proof of effectiveness.
Example 1: „I can do many things – but what is my actual strength?“
- Starting point
- A client could list many professional skills but struggled to see what actually set him apart.
- Application
- Instead of listing competencies, he collected concrete situations in which tasks came easily to him and others sought his support. A recurring pattern emerged:
- In complex situations he quickly recognised connections.
- He was able to structure those connections clearly.
- From there he developed concrete next steps.
- Result
- A long list of general competencies turned into a much clearer personal strengths profile, which he then used as orientation for his professional development.
Insight: You often recognise your strongest abilities not from what your CV says – but from what you repeatedly do particularly effectively.
Example 2: Successful – but do the tasks still fit?
- Starting point
- A client was professionally successful but noticed that certain tasks increasingly drained her energy.
- Application
- In the Potential Compass she compared three areas:
- What am I good at?
- What gives me energy?
- What matters to me?
- Result
- She realised that part of her work matched her competencies but hardly matched her most important values and preferred strengths. She defined more clearly which tasks to expand and which to reduce – and derived concrete criteria for her next career steps.
Insight: Just because you are good at something does not mean it is what you should do more of.
Example 3: From insight to experiment
- Starting point
- A client had already described his key strengths and values well. Yet little changed in his daily routine.
- Application
- In the 7-day transfer plan he therefore chose one single strength and asked himself the same question every morning – noting briefly in the evening what had happened:
- „Where can I deliberately use this strength today?“
- „What went differently because of it?“
- Result
- The abstract strength became connected to concrete situations. This allowed him to see more precisely when and under which conditions it was especially helpful.
Insight: Self-knowledge becomes truly valuable when it leads to observable behaviour.
Your Potential Compass in three questions
Strengths: What do I repeatedly do particularly well – and when do I experience myself as effective?
Values: What matters so much to me that it should influence my decisions?
Transfer: What will I concretely do differently over the next seven days?
So the decisive question is not:
„Which strengths do I have on paper?“
„Where will I deliberately use my most important strength in the next seven days?“
Frequently asked questions about the Potential Compass
Your next step
Note your most important strength, the value that should guide your decisions more strongly – and the one action you will do differently within the next seven days.
That turns a self-assessment into an observable experiment.
„Where can I deliberately use my most important strength today?“
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A4 · printable · 5 reflection exercises + 7-day transfer plan
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Printable version of all 5 exercises + 7-day plan · A4 · free
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