There are no limitations except for the ones we place on ourselves. Limits are man-made control mechanisms that have been hardwired into our systems for far too long and with damaging effects. The good news is that history is filled with great examples of those that have stood firm in the belief and principle that there are no limits but those that we make up.
At one time, no one ever thought man could fly until the Wright brothers built the first flying machine. There was a time when no one thought man could climb Mount Everest until Sir Edmund Hillary proved the world wrong. There are all sorts of limits that have been placed, or rather, misplaced on us; and yet great individuals like Barak Obama continue to shatter those limitations day after day.
Why do we place limits on ourselves? Why do we hinder our personal growth and development by putting up invisible and seemingly immovable walls? Why do we live in a free society and yet live the lives of confined creatures?
The purpose of this article is to help you remove these
barriers; to rid yourself of doubt and to quell all the excuses of why you are
unable to grow beyond a certain point. The goal is to raise your level of
awareness about your ultimate
power so that you can quickly abandon the whining, bitching and complaining
and start living the incredible life your were meant to live.
Recognize and
Understand Personal Growth Limiters
Personal growth limiters, like all limiters, are the stories we make up in our minds as to why we can’t do or achieve something. The problem arises when you are not aware that they are present in your life. Most of us walk around in complete ignorance, or what one of my mentors calls “unconscious incompetence” with regard to our self-limiting behaviors and attitudes.
When you are unconsciously incompetent, you are unable to even recognize what you are doing let alone why. The key is to be aware of how these personal growth limiters show up in your life. Following are a few examples of the forms in which they may appear.
- Justification – we can do this without even thinking; it’s the classic defense mode we go into when our position, performance or values are challenged. The posture is reactive and we begin to rationalize (tell rational lies) our words, actions and perspectives. Justification limits your growth because it closes you off from learning anything new.
- Excuses – this is also a popular mode of self-limiting behavior. Instead of owning and learning from our mistakes, we make excuses for them. If you cannot admit your mistakes, you will never be able to truly learn from them. If you can’t learn from your mistakes, you cannot change and grow. Your personal growth will stifle.
- Cynicism – this is how we fill ourselves with and spread doubt to those around us. Cynicism causes you to believe everything is just too good to be true; that if someone achieves some level of success, it must be shear luck. All of this is just to make you feel better about living under a rock or in a cave like a hibernating bear.
- Baggage – all of us have skeletons in our closets; I have tons. The key is to remember that your past is just that, the past. It does not determine your future. What often happens is that individuals refuse to put down or let go of past baggage. In some cases, people actually feel guilty if they let go of it believing that somehow it’s supposed to remain a part of them due to some twisted sense of sentiment. Nothing that limits your growth deserves a place in your life – NOTHING!
There are certainly other personal growth limiters that I
can list here or that you can come up with yourself. The point is that the
ultimate limiter is YOU. No matter what you think the limitation is, you
control how it acts in your life. You place it and you can remove it.
Own your mistakes
Don’t make excuses for your mistakes – own them. If you can admit when you’ve made an error, you will be able to learn from it and adapt much more quickly. When you continuously dodge the responsibility, you remain in ignorance – in unconscious incompetence.
If you don’t even know what you don’t know, how can you learn and grow from where you are? It will be impossible for you to achieve any level of success in your personal growth if you simply hide from your mistakes and make excuses.
Instead of making excuses, ask questions like, what went wrong? What can I do differently or better next time? Do I need more resources or information? All of these questions will help you grow because if you are seeking answers, you are seeking growth.
Consider this…
There are no truly successful individuals without the
foundation of failures on which their success is built. A major difference between
winners and losers is that winners own and learn from their mistakes.
Let go of the past
Your past, no matter how horrible, does not determine your future. It doesn’t matter what you’ve been taught or conditioned to believe, you can choose to rewrite the script for your future.
Let me put it this way…
Sometimes when I conduct workshops or deliver presentations, I ask the audience the following 4 questions as taught to me by the incomparable Zig Ziglar.
- Is there something specific that you can do in the next 2 weeks that can make your personal and professional life worse?
- Is there something specific that you can do in the next 2 weeks that can make your personal and professional life better?
- Do you believe that the choice is yours?
- Do you believe that every choice has an end result?
Usually when I ask these questions, 99.99% of the people in the room will answer yes to all four. Read the questions again; if you can answer yes to all four, here’s what you’ve basically said whether you realize it or not.
I don’t really care what has happened in my past; I don’t even care what my circumstances are right now. I know that there is something specific that I can do in the next 2 weeks that can make my personal and professional life better or worse and the choice is mine.
What an incredible realization? When you break it down this way, it is crystal clear that your past does not determine your future. The choices you make today are what will determine your tomorrow.
Your past becomes a personal growth limiter when you refuse to let it go. You have to purge past events that impede your growth in order to move forward. Now, I am not naïve; I know that it can be hard to shed the past sometimes – even excruciating. Here’s the deal though…
Whether you do it alone, seek help from a mentor or join a group, if you don’t purge past events that hamper your thoughts, behaviors and attitudes, your personal growth will suffer. Don’t let the fact that it might be hard to do stop you – in that too you certainly have the power to choose.
Your past does not determine your future; however, it can certainly limit your personal growth.
Value the present
Placing high value on the present is vital to your personal growth and development. This is because your future will be determined by the choices you make in the present. While tomorrow is not determined by what happened yesterday, it is most certainly determined by what happens today.
Here’s why you should place high value on the present – on what you do today.
Stephen Colbret, comedian and talk show host, once led a roast of then President George W. Bush. During that roast he sarcastically chided the president about the reasons for going to war with Iraq. Basically, he recounted that the main reasons were suspicion of harboring terrorists as well as hoarding weapons of mass destruction.
After numerous inspections, no evidence of either was found in Iraq; and yet we went to war anyway. Now here’s the punch line…
Stephen Colbret went on to say that he appreciated the
president’s determination and bullheadedness because he’s a man that believes
the same thing on Wednesday that he did on Monday, no matter what happened on
Tuesday.
This is no knock against former President George W. Bush; however, the analogy holds true. You can change your stars whenever you choose. You don’t have to believe that what happened in the past is going to direct your choices for your future.
In order to achieve success in your personal growth, you must be willing to believe something else; to believe in change. From this point forward, you must be willing to make different choices; ones that you truly believe will best help you achieve what you truly desire.
Your present choices are all that matter where your future
is concerned; they will determine where you are and what you have tomorrow –
guaranteed.
Have hope for the
future
There is simply no point in investing in your personal growth if you have no real hope for the future. Why bother?
Zig Ziglar puts it this way…
“The salesperson that has no hope of making the sale doesn’t
make the call. Why bother, he doesn’t believe he’s going to make the sale
anyway.”
Having hope for the future is crucial to your personal growth. It is the fuel for your drive to succeed because you wake up everyday with a deep and abiding belief that you are heading for something greater than yourself. It’s about knowing that you have something of value to offer others; the world.
There are no truly successful individuals whom do not have tons and tons of hope for the future. In fact, the future is what successful people think about when they plan; they don’t just think about the present, they think about future generations. This is how you make a difference – you must have hope for the future; a belief in a better world than the one you were born into.
If you don’t believe that you’re going to do anything great; be anything of value to others or that the world can be better off for you having been in it, why would you care about your personal growth? You would have no reason to – you’re apathetic.
You might as well be like the type of people John Mayer once sang about... you know the people who keep waiting on the world to change before they do all the while whining, bitching and complaining.
You know, there’s a word for people who behave this way – Hypocrite! If you whine, bitch and
complain about everything from your boss who doesn’t like you, to the co-worker
trying to destroy you, to the negative news on television and the sex, drugs
and violence on your DVD player – and yet you still do absolutely nothing to
change it… Now that is a Hypocrite.
The best way you can strengthen your hope for the future is
to model the wise words of Mahatma Gandhi,
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Believe in infinite
possibilities
If you have true hope for the future, then you can certainly believe in infinite possibilities. Sometimes the thing that hampers our personal growth the most is our lack of belief in the possibilities. We are so hardwired to use words like “Can’t” or say things like “I don’t have much of a choice.”
This type of thinking limits our personal growth tremendously. The fact is that whether you believe you can or you can’t, you are absolutely right. Belief is what produces results; actions are just the steps driven by the belief. To the degree that you believe in something, your actions will match in intensity and focus and the results you achieve will reflect the same.
Possibilities are in fact endless. If you can tap into your true gifts and talents, you can unleash unimaginable creativity and tenacity that can usher in changes the world has yet to dream up. If this sounds too far fetched for you, consider this…
We’ve put men on the moon, we’ve cloned animals; we created
the Internet, we have Facebook addicts; my Dad is on Facebook; Twitter lets us
tweet our life story to millions; we survived 9/11; Barak Obama is the first
black president of the United States; Joan Rivers is 102 and looks 70; we watch
movies is Imax theatres in 3D; Gene Rodenberry created Star Trek in the 1960s
and we now have the ability to beam people up (OK, not really – not yet but
it’s possible)
Do you get the idea though? Nothing is impossible. I am being a bit facetious with my examples; however, the point is that at some point in history, most of the things I mentioned weren’t even a remote possibility in most people’s minds. Oh, I forgot to mention that Rod Sterling created the Twilight Zone in the 1950s and these episodes and characters still have major relevance today – absolutely genius.
So, remove the limit from your personal growth; start
believing in possibilities and know that they are endless. This is how you
change you; this is how you change the world. Work on yourself, improve your
personal growth and the rest will fall into place.
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