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Lose your Limitations
How limited are you? Are you living the very best life that you can? Or are you making do? How do the people around you treat you? Is that any different to the way you wanted your life to be, because if it is, you are limiting yourself from being the very best you can be. If you are limiting yourself, what can you do to stop that?
When we are children we don’t limit ourselves. When we told a story we embellished it with every fascinating detail we could, our voices told each part as if we were living it to the full, because we were. We got right into it, totally
unlimited by anyone and thoroughly enjoyed the tale. Ask any child from four to seven years what they want to be when they grow up and they will tell you all the amazing careers they see for themselves. How many of your childhood friends have actually achieved the career they wanted? Are they happy with it? I know at sixteen years old one of my teachers asked our class (all girls) where we saw ourselves in ten years time and many of my class mates saw themselves as married women and stay at home mothers, a few saw a career for themselves but very few combined the two, because when we were in school it was normal for women once they became mothers, to stay at home and mind their children, unless they had certain types of careers that exempted that. I know my own mother would have liked to go back to work, but once she had my older brother she had no job to return to, and that was the just way it was. When she voiced the wish to work outside the home she was often treated with disdain, and she learnt very quickly not to say anything. My mother, like a lot of women of her time, limited herself to the view of society. There was no actual law preventing her from working and one of my aunts worked all of her adult life until her retirement in her late fifties or early sixties, and she had three children. Nowadays, many women feel they have to work despite having children, simply to help meet the bills and maintain the standards they want. But it is a
vicious circle, maintaining standards. So often, we are limited by what society says we must do, have and be and the pressure of it all leads to the type of life we don’t want.
And how do you stop living within the limits you impose on yourself, or let society impose on you, whether knowingly or not? The first step is to “see” the ideal you. When you close your eyes and see yourself as the “ideal you” what is different? What way do you stand? How do you sound, what do you feel? What are you doing in your ideal life that you are not doing now? What are you not doing in your ideal life that you are doing now. How can you make the change from now to that? Do you have any idea what is different? What is stopping you making the changes? What will you lose if you get your ideal life? What will you gain if you get your ideal life? How differently will those around you treat you, and how differently will you treat those around you?
Nelson Mandella, in his his Inauguration Speech, in 1994 used a quote from the poem: A Return To Love: Reflections On The Principles Of A Course In Miracles, by Marianne Williamson:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
It is so very true, that often in life we are afraid of being our very, very best because we fear the possibilities that life has to offer and we don’t want to be on the receiving end of the ridicule that comes with being more than average. So we settle for less and are dis-contented with our lives and we moan and complain or as we do in Ireland when someone asks us how we are, we reply: “Ah sure, grand. No point complaining, sure no-one would listen” Why won’t anyone listen? Because they are in the same boat and are too busy living their limited life to hear about
someone else’s! I spent years being limited. I hated it! I was living a life other people wanted for me, and I was so afraid of offending or upsetting them in case they rejected me, so little wonder I wasn’t happy. I’ve always thought differently to most of my peers and it has caused many, many unsettling times for me. I never saw the benefits of marriage and didn’t marry. At one stage I couldn’t see how anyone would want to have children, never mind rear them – that has since changed and I am a single mother to three children. I became a single mother at a time when they were still vilified for being single. I’ve raised my children to question everything and that has caused many an eyebrow to raise. I am very tolerant of many of the things society is not; I am outspoken about what I disagree with and I am intelligent. I have been told by many of my peers that I don’t belong; that I am strange, weird, and to fit in I should: dumb myself down – my intelligence is threatening, mostly to men who might want to date me, should stop being so out-spoken, it’s just not done, should make my children conform, or they will never be accepted and won’t be employable. These are just a few ways that others have tried to “limit” me. For a while as I said, I went along with it, but the one thing everyone else was not doing was living my life. So I stopped limiting myself. I live my life, my way, without limits. I don’t apologise for it, there is no need to. I love my life. It’s exciting, different and the possibilities are endless!!! When will you lose your limitations?