Question your limitations; it weakens them. So, let me start by asking you, “what are the things you’d love to do if you had no boundaries, especially financial limitations stopping you”? Make a list of them. And then try an exercise after this article.
So, after this article, make a list of your aspiration and go on a test drive on it. For example, Google that dream you have. Visit that expensive car lot, that land/property you want to buy but can’t raise the capital. Check out that grad school’s website, that bridal store to check out that engagement ring or gown, or that apartment you can’t afford yet. This week, tell the housing agent to take you on an inspection. He won’t say no, would he?
The truth is that to dream and dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. But to not dream or dare is to lose oneself. There seems to be a mental boundary we have set for ourselves because of where we are and what we don’t have. Whereas that limitation is just a mental mirage for its not what you don’t have that stops you. It’s the little we have but don’t know how to use. And even for what you don’t have, imagine you have it, then attempt to do them.
To buttress this, let me tell us a story. There was a business executive who was deep in debt and could see no way out plus he had loads of things he would have loved to do. Creditors were closing in on him. Suppliers were demanding payment. He sat on the park bench, head in hands, wondering if anything could save his company from bankruptcy.
Suddenly an old man appeared before him. “I can see that something is troubling you,” he said. After listening to the executive’s woes, the old man said, “I believe I can help you.” He asked the man his name, wrote out a cheque, and pushed it into his hand saying, “Take this money. Meet me here exactly one year from today, and you can pay me back at that time.”
Then he turned and disappeared as quickly as he had come. The business executive saw in his hand a cheque for $500,000, signed by John D. Rockefeller, then one of the richest men in the world!
“I can erase my money worries in an instant!” he realized. But instead, the executive decided to put the uncashed cheque in his safe. Just knowing it was there might give him the strength to work out a way to save his business, he thought.
With renewed optimism, he negotiated better deals and extended terms of payment. He closed several big sales. Within a few months, he was out of debt and making money once again.
Exactly one year later, he returned to the park with the uncashed cheque. At the agreed-upon time, the old man appeared. But just as the executive was about to hand back the cheque and share his success story, a nurse came running up and grabbed the old man.
“I’m so glad I caught him!” she cried. “I hope he hasn’t been bothering you. He’s always escaping from the rest home and telling people he’s John D. Rockefeller.”
And she led the old man away by the arm.
The astonished executive just stood there, stunned. All year long he’d been wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, convinced he had half a million dollars behind him.
Suddenly, he realized that it wasn’t the money, real or imagined, that had turned his life around. It was his newfound self-confidence of doing no financial limit that gave him the power to achieve anything he went after.
There was something that believing he had no limitation had done to him. It had made him chase opportunities and even leverage on it to go up. Your limitations are just imaginary, same as the concept of the value of currency money too.
My dear, you must have heard me say, that “Everything in life, whether projects or success is created twice, first mentally, then physically”. Nothing changes permanently except you change your dispositions, your thought process and perhaps something you used to do every day. That break in thought pattern, confidence level and habit change your life and mind’s neural pathway it is used to. To have something, you have to first practically rewrite the visuals of what you see. Rewriting the genetic codes of your life always starts with a thought and a follow through of that thought till it breaks the chain of action, till it brings forth the breakthrough.
When you dream, share them and get yourself some cheerleaders. Personally, I am very intentional about telling a lot of people (family, friends, and colleagues) the big things I plan to do and what I was doing and where I was headed. This resulted in no more than a few days going by without someone asking me how it’s going and what I was working on, their interest not only encouraged and motivated me, it also served as a means of accountability for me, pushing me to lean in to my goals even more. Day dream, imagine, and reflect. It’s the source of infinite creativity. It’s valid, it’s from mere dreams we can have a vision and the energy and will to act. But then, a vision without action is called a daydream; but then again, action without a vision is called a nightmare.
Be closer to your aspirations. Be ambitious. Create a bigger vision and attempt to step into that imagination even if you can’t afford it now. In the words of Christopher Reeves, “so many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable”. If you always put limits on everything you do, physically or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus and you must go beyond them.
Don’t cut your coat according to your size, else you’ll soon find yourself cutting your size according to your coat. Feel free to dream. It’s free. Always remember that One man’s daydreaming is another man’s day.
Trust me, having started early and unafraid to take bold steps, from experience, we know that you never can tell how far you can go, till you begin the first steps. So, colour outside the lines, let yourself daydream, agree with your imagination and laugh at the rules. In the words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.”
