How To Overcome Your Limitations And Set Yourself Up For Success!
"Our only limitations are those we set up in our own minds." - Napoleon Hill
I really believe that we should have periods in our life dedicated to pushing ourselves beyond our limitations. And I’m going to talk to you about why you should know your limitations and why it is crucial to your life to know them.
Why should you push beyond your limitations?
You should push yourself beyond your limits of tolerance. Why?
To figure out how much you can work and how disciplined you can become.
Push yourself past your limit, and then return to the point where you think it’s optimally sustainable. It’s good to think about that as a goal. Because you’re trying to find out where your limitations are so that you can sustain yourself throughout life.
There’s this instinct to just go out there and do more. But it’s not as self-conscious as you might think, because you don’t yet have your limitations figured out. You want to push yourself in every direction you can, because you are trying to make yourself into a better and more competent person.
When you contend and wrestle with life, maybe you will find your purpose, something that justifies you. You are going to find peace from going to war with yourself. You are stronger than you think, yet, most people never tap into that strenght. They tend to stay in their comfort zone rather than facing discomfort. And there is no growth in that!
Without pushing yourself beyond your limits you never know how far you can get. But beware, our mind tricks us into thinking we have hit our limits before we actually do. David Goggins once said: “When your mind is telling you you’re done, you’re really only 40% done.”
You must define what exacly is too much for you in order to know how much you can take without having a negative impact in your mental health. And knowing what is just right isn’t something you’re just born with. Nor is it evident through intuition. That knowledge can only be gained through experience. It is very easy to take ourselves to the point of overloading our system, disrespecting completely our limits. It is then crucial to learn when you’ve reached the point of extent of your capacity. It’s your own responsibility to determine what is just right.
We don’t better our lives by ignoring our limits. We do it by acknowledging them and learning from them.
Different People - Different Limitations
You will never know your true capacity until you know your limitations.
We all have our separate set of strenghts and weaknesses. Someone’s capacity to manage a lot of tasks is shaped by genetics and early experience. Some people inherit a tendency to be more reactive to stress and overload. Personality is also important. Altruism is a trait which gives meaning to one’s task, enabling one to do more without negative effects. Neuroticism is a trait which makes one more prone to experiencing negative emotion, such as anger or anxiety, so one tends to have more tension when managing multiple roles.
That’s why it is important for you to acknowledge your limitations and act according to your strenghts.
How Successful People View Limitations
Successful people always strive for more and push to points of discomfort. They know that’s where most growth happens. If you have the desire to be successful, and you can, you need to focus on these periods of pushing forward with your goals.
Don’t get comfortable and always aim higher. People who achieve excellence have the willingness to push themselves beyond their limitations, despite the discomfort. They delay their gratification and face the uncertainty of the rewards for their efforts.
The unavoidable truth is that to be willing to endure discomfort and delay instant gratification is the only way to be a better and more competent person. Although humans have two primal instincts: one to avoid pain, because we were vulnerable to predators, and the other one to move towards pleasure, which kept us searching for food, and guarantee we passed our genes through the generations; none of these instincts are related to delayed gratification for long-term gain. That’s why we use the more advanced, reflective part of our brain - the prefrontal cortex. So that we can resist our primitive cravings. It’s a mentality shift really. It’s changing your behavior to always try to push beyond your edge.
Pick Your Damn Sacrifice, NOW!
In relation to Carl Jung’s thoughts on the psychology of the man child, here I present to you what the consequences of not getting to know your limitations are on a deeper level.
In maturation, there is a sacrificial element. You must sacrifice the pluripotentiality of childhood for the actuality of a frame. Time will pass wether you’d like it or not. You can choose your limitation, or you can let it take you unaware in the following decades, which is worse.
People can now put off maturity without suffering immediate consequences. But all that happens is your suffering is postponed. For example, when you’re 20 years old, you get to be inexperienced. But now imagine you are 30 years old and the exact same. People are like: “What have you been doing for the past decade?” So you become a man child. You become the Puer Aeternus, which means “Eternal Child”. This was adapted by Carl Jung to describe an individual who, like Peter Pan, fails to grow up.
You choose your sacrifice because it is inevitable, but at least you get to choose it. You are sacrificial wether you want to be or not.
The problem with being a child is all you are is potential, you could be anything, but you’re not anything, so you go and follow a path. At least you become something. And when you are something, the world opens itself to you.
After you’ve adapted the actuality of a frame, Jung thought that the proper path of development in the last half of life is to rediscover the child that you left behind. Then you are something and also full of potential at the same time.
Upon getting to know your limitations, you will feel fear. Fear tells you that you are at your limit. Staying with the fear allows real transformation to occur. You can pull back or push further, but you should hold on to it and feel it. Own your fear and lean just beyond it. In every aspect of your life.
Starting NOW!