All your limitations are in your mind. The edge of innovation can be found inside your limitations. You can focus on limitations and conclude you can go no further. Or you can focus on limitations and conclude you have to do something to grow beyond them.
Your success or failure in any area of your life can be found in your beliefs, your values, and the unconscious strategies that you've somehow installed in your brain.
No matter the area of success that you wish to attain, your success will be found or lost based in the beliefs you hold about yourself and how you fit in the world at large. As technology opens up new capabilities and new possibilities, we may find that the biggest limit we face is our own imagination.
If you want to expand your imagination about your limits, I think you’ll find inspiration in Amy Purdy. She is a snowboarder who lost both of her legs to an illness. Yet using her imagination as a tool, she visualized new possibilities for her life, and decided to create a new reality for herself. She has since gone on to win two gold medals and is dedicated to using her experience to make a difference in other people’s lives. Watch her story in this TED video.
I especially love these quotes of hers:
“It’s believing in those dreams and facing our fears head on that allows us to live our lives beyond our limits.”
“Our borders and our obstacles can only do two things: (1) stop us in our tracks, or (2) force us to get creative.”
“If my life were a book, and I were the author, how would I want this story to go?”
“Instead of looking at our challenges and limitations as something negative or bad, we can begin to look at them as blessings, magnificent gifts that can be used to ignite our imaginations and help us go further than we ever knew we could go.”
Today, the USA is celebrating the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He dreamed well beyond the limits of his time. As a result, helped a whole generation take action and shatter those confining limits. A great example of what happens when we expand our minds and develop innovative thinking.
Remember. . .
To live and lead beyond limits requires facing your fears and looking for ways to spark your creativity and imagination in order to not only dream, but bring those dreams to reality and go even further than you could have imagined.
Photos by: André Felipe de Medeiros and Mike Licht