No matter your vocation, your vision or your lifestyle, the only business we’re ever in is limitlessness.
Think of an inspiring idea or vision you have had. It could be related to work or lifestyle. Hold it clearly in your mind as if you are seeing it for the first time. Imagine this becoming a reality. See yourself taking steps towards it.
Now notice how quickly you started to chip away at this vision. You scale back elements for it to be more realistic. You strategize how to get there without risking too much or upsetting too many people. Your mind starts to seek buy in – societal buy in, community buy in. You start to weigh in factors like how much, what’s normal, and why me.
Before you know it, your grand vision has become a caricature of itself edited into a digestible, inoffensive and reasonable package. To some degree, this happens to every inspired thought we have all day long. It’s learned behavior that we aren’t even aware of anymore.
Limitations have become habit. We are driven by what is probable, rather than what is possible. We believe we must sacrifice the magical for the practical when in fact they can coexist. We don’t value our own heart’s longings on their own – they must be justified by an external ideology.
So how do we access that cliché known as possibility?
Know Your SOP
Each one of us has a go-to standard operating procedure when it comes to stepping back from our biggest vision and deterring ourselves from even dreaming of something different.
- For some of us it’s money: I cannot get there if I don’t have money, so forget it.
- For others it’s self worth: Why should I have that? That’s too much for me.
- Or self doubt: I am not qualified, I don’t even know how.
- Often it’s a false set of values: The world will not respect, admire or understand this.
- Or endurance: That’s too far away from where I am today to even consider it.
Start to give your limits a voice. Know what that voice sounds like when it chimes in.
Question its reasoning.
Ask if its premise is true or learned.
Don’t buy into shame parading as your realistic nature.
Creativity Dwells in the Realm of Possibility
And paralysis dwells in the realm of limitation. When we relinquish the “how” and even the “why”, and instead just get moving, we start to live in the expansive state of possibility.
Have you ever noticed that when you get through something challenging, you look back and realize there’s no way you could have planned your way through it? That the sequence of events was not predictable?
When we lift our self-imposed limitations, when we say no to the rules and norms society has etched onto our identity, we unleash extraordinary creativity onto our path. We take turns and make decisions and find resources that our consciousness previously had no access to. We find relief; solutions flow with ease because we are in flow with our soul.
Create a process of possibility over a disciplined structure of goals. Obsessive planning hinders miraculous outcomes.
Possibility Extends to Outcome
Sure, you started with an idea or vision – maybe even a feeling. But even that needs to be surrendered to possibility. We must be fully willing to end up in Thailand instead of Tunisia. Learn to trust the essence of the vision rather than the explicit nature of your imagination. Like a scent-driven dog, your instinct is more important than your eyesight.
