“Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.”
Richard Bach, via MoveMe Quotes
Ridiculous to think we would ever do that, eh?
And yet, so many of us do exactly that every day.
We adopt limiting self-beliefs, cozy up to comfortable boundaries, enclose ourselves within sturdy walls, and install glass ceilings right over our own heads.
We literally are the architects of the very ‘box’ that we keep telling ourselves we want to think and break outside of. Why do we do this?
I remember telling my dad when I was a teen that I started a new workout routine: Westside for Skinny Bastards—a program designed to help ‘Hardgainers’ build muscle.
Without much thought, I added that I wasn’t going to try to become a body-builder or anything, that I would just use it as supplemental training for Martial Arts. And, without hesitation he replied, “Why not?”
I had to do a double-take to see if he was joking—he was serious. “Why not try to become a body builder?” He asked again.
My answer felt obvious: “I don’t have the body to be a body builder,” “I don’t have enough time to devote to lifting,” “I would never be able to beat some of the huge guys already in the scene.” I was, in effect, arguing my limitations.
When I look back at that moment now, I can see how one argument at a time, I was building myself into my own little ‘limitation box.’ How, one excuse at a time I was closing doors to rooms I hadn’t even peered into. How, one criticism at a time, I was shrinking my world to fit how I felt.
And I wonder how many other things I’ve walled myself up from?
Things that, for one reason or another, I decided I “couldn’t” do. Things that, as a result of something someone said to me or criticized me about, I never even ended up trying. Things that, because of how I saw myself in the mirror or, maybe better said, how I was taught to see myself in the mirror (by media and society)—I closed myself off to.
And I wonder the same for you?