What’s your excuse for not achieving your goals? Not smart enough? Not rich enough? We all have internal dialogues that limit ourselves. We are afraid of failure. Afraid of what people may think of us. So we don’t try as hard as we should.
I have had my own self limiting beliefs in the past and I’m still working through them. I’m happy to say I have made a great deal of progress in quashing them. The more experiences I accumulate, combined with regular deep introspection, the more I realize it’s not the world or my lack of _____ quality that is limiting me. It’s just my own beliefs of myself and how I fit into the greater picture. There’s a fascinating podcast episode I recently heard on Invisibilia that demonstrated the importance of expectations – specifically how others’ expectations can shape our behaviors and abilities. To change everyone else’s expectations is not feasible, so rather we must cultivate our own to stand independent from others’.
So challenge yourself. Ask yourself the actual concrete reason why you cannot accomplish goal x or why you think person y is smarter than you. Is it innate ability, or are you able to improve your study habits, increase efficiency, or change for the better in another way? As the philosopher Kanye West said, “reach for the stars so if you fall you land on a cloud”. Don’t limit yourself. The only thing holding you back is you.
