Arguing for your limits lets you keep them

We tell ourselves stories in an effort to make sense of our lives. In so many ways, the stories we tell ourselves become the beliefs we carry.

We collect false evidence—one rejection, one mistake, one ‘you’re not good at this’—and build entire belief systems around these untruths. These flawed narratives aren’t just told in our heads, they live in our bodies and they shape our lives.

We have a habit of creating a perimeter of possibility around the future based on the limitations of our past. We create and latch onto our own version of normal and only pursue options within the parameters we’ve already accepted as possible.

There are so many ways we short change ourselves, ways we play small. We find a tunnel and instead of going around, we shrink ourselves to fit it.

“In my life, I’ve discovered that if I cling to the notion that something’s not possible, I’m arguing in favor of limitation. And if I argue for my limitations, I get to keep them. Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves, “What’s the payoff for arguing forcefully for our limitations?” - [[LN 📘 The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks]] (page 11) by Gay Hendricks

This becomes clearest when we’re on the verge of change. Moments when we are deciding to step into the arena of life, to take risks, to change our lives for the better.

The question isn’t whether you have limitations. The question is: Which ones are you arguing to keep?

Related Notes:

• Don’t reject yourself first - We limit future outcomes by ensuring failure isn’t a possibility but an inevitability
• Truth is a matter of perception - The limits we argue for feel like absolute truths, but the truth is it’s just the edge of what we’ve grown comfortable of.
• [[The Work]] by Byron Katie - The Work provides a systematic process for dismantling the limit we’ve accepted as true.

[[Keywords]]: #keyword/why-are-we-resistant-to-change Reference: The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks (page 11) - the quote about arguing for limitation