The Myth of Limitations — The Myths Series

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The Myth of Limitations — outside of physical limitations, most limitations are self imposed. So, ask yourself why that’s a good plan!

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Much like the rest of the myths, lim­i­ta­tions are self-imposed… and usu­al­ly for no good reason. 

I’m not talk­ing about jump­ing off a ten sto­ry build­ing and think­ing I’m going to land safely. 

I’m talk­ing about what we tell our­selves about our rela­tion­ships, our skills and tal­ents, our bod­ies and our minds.

It’s so weird… we’re often crit­i­cized if we don’t lead with our limitations

Cana­di­an cul­ture for sure equates express­ing pos­i­tive state­ments about one’s strengths and abil­i­ties as brag­ging, or being “too wrapped up in your­self.” I sus­pect this is some­thing that hap­pens world-wide.

Many get ner­vous or judge‑y around suc­cess­ful peo­ple — like suc­cess is in lim­it­ed quan­ti­ties, and anoth­er’s suc­cess could mean less for me.

Oth­ers lim­it them­selves so that oth­ers low­er their expec­ta­tions about them. After all, if we admit to how much tal­ent and abil­i­ty we have, some­one might expect us to fol­low through. 

So we shy away.

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Years ago, as a kid, I learned from a very wise per­son that I should deter­mine for myself who I was and who I want­ed to be.

If I sat around lis­ten­ing to peo­ple tell me who to be and what to do, at best I’d be run­ning from one thing to the next, try­ing to be every­thing to every­one. I learned that les­son well.

I’ve also learned that not everyone likes me, my opinion, talents, drive.

Lim­i­ta­tions are arti­fi­cial con­structs. By believ­ing in them, you get to whine along with oth­ers about how hard done by you are. 

Hey! Gath­er up enough whin­ers, and you can even elect a Ford or a Trump. I guess it’s true: mis­ery real­ly does love company.

To believe that we are free; that we can create, achieve, and really make a difference — this is the mark of wholeness — and of life truly lived.

I would sug­gest that you take a moment from your read­ing, and note down any­thing that has occurred to you regard­ing your own lim­it­ing behav­iours. Have I touched any nerves in the last few arti­cles? What myths do you believe in?

Strange Behaviours to Notice

We are very close to talking about solutions — but first, I like to frame what doesn’t work — it’s the way my mind works, you see.

Here are sev­er­al behav­iours that many engage in and which lead pre­cise­ly nowhere:

Blam­ing –

Scott Peck, in The Road Less Trav­eled, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed between neu­ro­sis and psy­chosis this way:
neu­rotics blame them­selves, and psy­chotics blame every­one else.

He wrote that he’d rather work with a room full of neu­rotics than one psy­chot­ic. Why?

The neu­rot­ic is right! The stuff we have to deal with is our respon­si­bil­i­ty. We’re not to blame, but we are responsible.

Until we’ve done the same dumb thing over and over. Then, I am not above ask­ing how many times a per­son has to bash into the wall before notic­ing it’s there.

Blam­ing oth­ers is a linch­pin in our soci­ety. If you still lis­ten to the news, you will dai­ly be bom­bard­ed with the “blame flavour” of the month. Used to be the Rus­sians. Then Iran. Of course, all the jobs are going to immi­grants. On and on.

Grown up kids blame their par­ents for every­thing. “It’s not my fault. I can’t do any­thing about it,” is the preva­lent theme.

We hear it so much that it actu­al­ly sinks in. When some­thing goes wrong, rather than turn­ing inside and won­der­ing how we set life up to go the way it is going, we look around for some­one to point a fin­ger at.

The prob­lem with this is that it means that noth­ing will change. It won’t change because the per­son doing the blam­ing is look­ing for a solu­tion out­side of him or herself.

Iner­tia –

Iner­tia is choos­ing to stay stuck. It hap­pens when we decide there is noth­ing we can do about our lives, our prob­lems, and the world. It is a cousin to giv­ing up (see below), but not quite so pas­sive — you go through the motions, but nev­er do things differently.

Cocoon­ing is the mod­ern equiv­a­lent of iner­tia. You build your home into a fortress designed to pro­tect you from the out­side world. You take up knitting. 

You fill it with com­fort­able things, and make your con­nec­tions to the out­side world through media — the Net, com­put­er e‑mail, tele­vi­sion. You sur­round your­self with sound — noise. You sit in the mid­dle of it all and tell your­self you deserve it — you work so hard.

Bore­dom –

Bore­dom is intel­lec­tu­al cocoon­ing. Your brain shuts off. Life seems monot­o­nous and dull. Which seems to be a good thing, as, again, the blame can be placed on the world for not being stim­u­lat­ing enough. Or, we assume that the peo­ple around us are bor­ing. A key expres­sion is, “We just don’t talk any more.”

Peo­ple are reduced to objects. Peo­ple are judged on their abil­i­ty to amuse us. Peo­ple become dis­pos­able, as we look for a charge. Yet, at our depth, we know we’ll not find it. Bore­dom excludes the pos­si­bil­i­ty of change.

Giv­ing Up –

This is the end of the trail, just short of clin­i­cal depres­sion. At this point, one assumes not only that noth­ing will change, but also that noth­ing can change.

Soci­ety seems to be slid­ing down a slip­pery slope to obliv­ion. Caus­es that seemed impor­tant now seem to be irrel­e­vant. Rela­tion­ships seem mean­ing­less. Con­ver­sa­tion is stilt­ed, with no affect. There is no purpose.

The Way Out

Well, enough of the rant about what does­n’t work. 

Remember, no matter how “bad” things are, the only way your life will change is if you do.

Despite all the whin­ing about “It’s dif­fi­cult — it’s chal­leng­ing.” Of course it is! Wait­ing for “things to change” for exter­nals to coop­er­ate, for oth­ers to get their act togeth­er is a mon­u­men­tal waste of time. Things are as they are, oth­ers are as they are, and none of that is under your control.

What is under your control is how you live your life.

So, let’s look at some things you can do, right now, to begin to shift your­self off of dead centre.

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1. It begins with language

OK, lan­guage is key. And that’s not just seman­tics, he says with a grin.

Exam­ples of sil­ly language:

1. “How can I get ahead? This sit­u­a­tion is putting so much pres­sure on me, and the dead­line is stress­ing me out. I’m in pain, and that’s shut­ting me down and depriv­ing me of enjoyment.”
2. “My hus­band is an idiot! All he ever does is mis­be­have, and that makes me angry. And when he makes me angry, I have no choice but to yell at him, cut him off, and demand that he change.”
3. “My kid mis­be­haved, so I yelled at her. What else could I do? I have to teach her right and wrong.”

Now, I hear vari­a­tions of these all the time. In each case, such lan­guage comes from “ego,” which is invest­ed in 2 things:

1. blam­ing exter­nals, and
2. keep­ing you stuck (and there­fore pre­dictable, as your ego hates change.)

The begin­ning of exit­ing this dra­ma is to change your lan­guage so as to dis-empow­er your ego.

Zen, by the way, is not about elim­i­nat­ing the ego. It’s about learn­ing how it works, so that you can stop doing its bid­ding. The ego no longer is able to pull the wool over your eyes, and you stop liv­ing under its illusions.

So,

1. “I am choos­ing to see my life as I always do when I feel stuck. I am putting intense pres­sure on myself, and blam­ing the sit­u­a­tion. I am spend­ing so much time blam­ing the sit­u­a­tion that I’m behind on a dead­line, and I’m stress­ing myself over this. I’m dredg­ing up painful mem­o­ries that sup­port my belief that some­thing is hap­pen­ing to me, shut­ting myself down, and doing every­thing I can to deprive myself of enjoy­ment.“
   Then, “So, I’ll have a big breath, let go of the sto­ries for a minute, and do a bit of work on the project.”
2. “My hus­band is not behav­ing accord­ing to my fan­ta­sy, and I am mak­ing myself quite angry that he won’t live his life the way I want him to. I use anger to try to manip­u­late him into doing what I want, and if anger does­n’t work, I up the ante by refus­ing to have sex with him. Rather than work on my own life and issues, I make it “all about him,” and con­tin­u­al­ly demand that he spend his life mak­ing things bet­ter for me. I nev­er, how­ev­er, con­sid­er doing the same for him.“
   Then, “So, I’ll have a deep breath and tell my hus­band how I am upset­ting myself, and then let him know what I will choose to do next.”
3. My kid is a kid, and kids say and do ‘kid-things.’ Some­times she does­n’t pay close atten­tion, and stuff hap­pens. My ego gets involved, and I lash out and yell.“
   Then, “So, I’ll have a breath, and rather than yell at her, I choose to invite her to notice what she’s doing, and to come up with an alternative.”

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2. Drop the “but… it’s hard!”

This real­ly is a fol­low-on for the above point.

The norm with behav­iour­al shift­ing is for the ego to clev­er­ly list off all the rea­sons why the shift will be either

a) hard,
b) take a long time, or
c) require some­one else to do some­thing first.

So, lis­ten to that ego voice with com­pas­sion, have a breath, and shift something.

Remem­ber, you learned every­thing you’ve learned by actu­al­ly doing some­thing. Now, we’re work­ing on learn­ing and enact­ing new behav­iours to coun­ter­act what you’ve learned that does not work. This means, quite sim­ply, that per­sis­tence, with­out whin­ing, is the only way through the silliness.

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3. Stop making excuses

Sim­i­lar­ly, you’ll need to notice how quick­ly you excuse con­tin­u­ing to enact ways of doing your life that you say you want to shift. Again, notice how quick­ly you blame either the behav­iour of oth­ers or “genet­ics.”

This is your crafty little ego, setting you up to stay stuck.

After all, if some­one else has to do some­thing first, then you excuse your­self, and sit back and wait.

Same with genet­ics, only “more so.” If you think you can’t con­trol your tem­per or your com­plain­ing, or what­ev­er, because that’s what mom or dad did, again, you’re stuck, only this time, per­ma­nent­ly. It’s con­ve­nient to try this, and with it comes the explic­it or implied, “That’s just the way I am — you’ll just have to put up with it” gam­bit. When I try this, Dar­bel­la just laughs at me.

Stop making excuses, make another choice, and do it.

Right now. Pret­ty soon, all that “genet­ic block­age” baloney will be a dis­tant memory.

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