This year has been quite a struggle in several areas. Whether its the corporate me or the entrepreneurial me. However through the trial and errors and the continuous drive for improvement I have learnt a lot about myself. The biggest thing being that I can not change the fact that everything I ultimately have is finite.
I have been limited in motion and have been doing a lot of biking and this week I started hitting the gym lightly however yesterday evening my back and shoulder hit me again pushing me into my knees. This got me thinking that if I want to achieve my goal this year of completing the Barcelona triathlon than I need to come up with a new plan that would enable me to pursue my goal for the next seven months. Part of this plan hinges on the fact that I need to accept my own limitations at this point and work within the framework that it naturally creates.
Lets be honest. Limitations absolutely suck, especially if your a go-getter and somewhat of a rebel spirit. Looking back upon the years on my belt, I have been able to motivate myself purely by challenging any status quo and the limits that normally surround it. Changing my mindset and thinking to the point where I am actually willing to accept limitations without any questions and to remain and work within those boundaries is a big change for me. I think this is important to do because as humans we are flawed and a constant exclusive pursuit of going beyond limitations will result in a crash at some point. Why? Because we tend to fail more often than we succeed. We are not meant to try to change or control everything. Some limits are actually good and accepting them has certain benefits.
1. It forces you to ask for help and learn
If we all had the capability and ability to do anything and everything, we would never need to ask for help or Google an answer to something. We would be perfect. We would have all the knowledge and abilities to execute on anything. Accepting your limitations though means you need to ask for help, which presents you with a great opportunity to learn something new. And believe me, it has nothing to do with “looking stupid.” Who gives a s*** what others think. In the end it’s about you!
2. Constraint breeds creativity
Being forced to do something because otherwise it seems undo-able is a principle I absolutely love and it’s something which I’ve always applied to bootstrapping the startups I’ve worked on. There’s a magic in accepting limitations and figuring out a way around them and not through them.
This approach involves working towards your strengths and mostly ignoring your weaknesses. What this does is it forces you to be creative about how you can craft the outcome you are after regardless of the inherent limits or trying to defy those limits.
3. Nurture Smart Collaboration
Implicit in the acceptance of limitations is the acceptance that whilst you can probably learn to do anything, it’s probably not always efficient to do so. What this means is that we are required to collaborate with people that are both smarter and better than ourselves and people that compliment and/or cover our weaknesses.
For me, this means working smarter and not harder. I enjoy challenging myself and learning to do something new, but I also know that it sometimes simply doesn’t make sense for me to do so and that the better answer is to pay someone else to help.
[pullquote align=”left”]The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe[/pullquote]I’ve not changed my mindset about life: I’m incredibly passionate about self-improvement, learning and making new mistakes.
But by accepting at least some limits in my life, I will get better at picking the right battles and not mindlessly walking into pointless defeats.