Unlimited, Limited

What are the limitations present in your life today? What have you tried to do to rid yourself of these limits, if any? Have your efforts been productive?

You and I live in between unlimited potential and the harsh realities of our limitations. Part of growing up is engaging both ideas and beautiful realities, embracing them to their fullest potential. Paradox at its finest.

These are the things I would say to my younger self. I would encourage her to challenge the negative storylines she rehearsed far too often in her mind — all the self-limitations she placed on herself. I would also encourage her to embrace what is here for today, to see the beauty of the limits surrounding her. To respond with expansiveness, introspection, and from a place of grace, patience and wisdom — even though it's so very hard to do.

I would encourage her to reach out to a wise person and discuss her feelings a lot sooner. I would challenge her to address the falsehoods in her own life in order to break free and really START LIVING.

To embrace the unlimited AND the limited in her life. I would let her know it's okay to live with both.

So let's look at both.

Unlimited

Let's start with the idea (truth?) that we are unstoppable. We have been given such power and it's beautiful and humbling. I love that soaring anthem from the musical Wicked — the one about defying gravity, about being unlimited together, about no fight that can't be won. If you know it, it's probably playing in your head right now.

OHMIGOODNESS, yes, you and I are unlimited.

And I want to be very clear: I believe this. Believing in yourself — fully, without apology — is not optional. It is a necessary skill, and it's one our culture quietly trains many of us out of.

Women especially are taught to shrink, to hedge, to soften our certainty, to wait for permission. The result is a huge deficit in confidence that has nothing to do with actual ability.

So when I say you are unlimited, I'm not being cute. Reclaiming 100% belief in yourself is real, essential work.

When you consider unlimited potential for yourself, you KNOW that you're unstoppable for building: positive relationships, productive social justice, boundless creativity and artistic expression, successful businesses, thriving health and wellness, financial freedom, clarity in thought and communication of those thoughts, powerful non-profit projects, and so on.

The unlimited potential is a beautiful and reverent thing you hold in your hands. Hold it with full confidence.

The wickedness of delusional "unlimitedness"

But somewhere along the way, healthy confidence can curdle into something else — some pretty toxic ideas and choices, ones that will later come back to haunt you. And unfortunately they are celebrated in our culture. You start to believe you can truly control all outcomes — your manifesting efforts are the answer, and that, in fact, there is a playbook, a blueprint, a perfect line of thinking and doing that will give you the results you are after. There is a points system, and if you make enough points, you'll be the clear winner in life.

You become willing to do just about whatever you can — to sacrifice, "hustle" and strive to animate dreams, ideas and successes. You say things like: "Crushing it. Hustle. Powerful. Visualize and manifest" so that you can be seen as WINNING IN LIFE. Hooray you hacked how to be the winner at living your best self life. Or have you?

Thinking like this also means that anything less than the BEST, and any situation that drifts from the script of a perfect life means you are doing something wrong. You look at people not living up to this distorted ideal of "potential" and wonder why they aren't working on their mindset, because then everything would change. Perhaps you sell them on those ideas and soon experience the immense validation that selling the perfection playbook can bring.

I suppose it could make you feel... perfect.

Validated because of your so-called successes and everything "falling into place." If you keep playing the game, selling the game, embodying the game, there is no stopping the manifestation of your dreams and efforts!

This is certainly a fascinating idea we humans hold. But it's pretty boring; and sick. The magic of being out of control and acknowledging realities dissolves — which is a crying shame.

Why? Because the adventure of living includes boundaries.

Beautiful [and difficult] limits

If you are breathing, then there are very real limitations, boundaries, and difficulties that will thwart what you want. There are limits that will not go away, no matter how you try. A power beyond sits you down. Roots your feet so you cannot run. You are injured, rendered powerless, boxed in, sick and find yourself suffocating on the boundary lines you so desperately want to knock down.

Such limits may look like: experiencing failed relationships; seeing that the mindsets you grew up with negatively impact you and the people around you; creative and artistic endeavors that keep falling flat; business efforts that fail (over and over); experiencing acute and chronic physical, mental, emotional (don't forget spiritual) pain or injury; the inability to articulate intentions no matter how sincere; witnessing your own greed and insecurity (embarrassingly) inside yourself, and so on.

Here's some real news (and I say this with all the love, humility and personal experience that I can offer): life limits are a necessity; just as our idea of "unlimited potential manifested" remains, so must our acknowledgment of knowing that our hands are tied. This is the human experience and an authentic path.

An ancient writer, David, understood the pleasantness of being bound up. He wrote that the boundary lines had fallen for him in pleasant places — that he has been assigned a portion and a cup for each moment of living. Pleasant boundaries.

We cannot be unwilling to taste the limits of our lives. Yes, it's so much more fun to think about the unlimitedness of our lives. But it is far more beautiful and powerful when we also wrap our arms (and thoughts) around what contains us.

Respond to unlimited and limited

Once you see the strong things that won't budge, you cannot respond with passive defeat, self-pity, or blaming someone else. We must see the light. Some of it can change. Some of it won't. It's really up to you to work out which is which, and to understand that each new day is just that — a new day. Things can change rapidly, or things can become more rooted. Awareness is key. Knowing we can change is also key.

Nor can we live with the delusion that perfect lives exist — that everything we want will materialize and come our way if we only want it badly enough, work hard enough, struggle enough, know the right people, have the right education, money, power, or do all the right things.

I have lived enough — and sat with enough pain, my own and others' — to know that wanting it badly enough is not how reality works. In some seasons of my life no amount of mindset work could have fixed my present reality. Some circumstances were simply bigger than my effort. If the perfection playbook were true, it would have worked for the people I've known who worked the hardest and suffered anyway. It didn't.

A self-inquiry practice

When a pain point, limitation or injury arises, notice all the thoughts and feelings that come with it. Explore this deeply.

Identify any recurring thought patterns associated with the pain, the limits, the injury. How does it arrive in your body and mind? Is it difficult to observe these patterns without being caught up in them?

What limitations exist for you? Are you able to really taste and see them? Is there a possibility that you could respond with change on the inside — to take a new vantage point, to thank the limitations as your teachers?

What ideas do you have of being unlimited in your own life? How has this served you or negatively impacted you? Is this something that could be strengthened in your life, or deconstructed in some productive way?

See the light

At the bottom of a dark hole, the light shines brightest.

One person, finally letting go of delusions, can find herself in the most brave and vulnerable state. And she can dynamically change her own internal world. (And yes, the external world changes too — it's just a byproduct of doing this work.)

What wisdom do you hold inside? What do you know? What light continues to carry you through?

The yoga teacher T.K.V. Desikachar taught that tranquility of mind comes from how we meet others — with gladness for the happy, compassion for the suffering, joy for the praiseworthy, and equanimity toward the errors of others.

May we hold our unlimited potential and our beautiful limits the same way — with open hands and hearts.