Why Do We Limit Ourselves?

Just a journalist? Why limit yourself?

“I’m just a journalist.” I can’t tell you how mad that statement made me. Because it puts a cap on someone. It gives them a limit of what they can and can’t learn or do. I was watching Esther Honig’s TED talk, “What does it mean to be beautiful?” and thoroughly enjoying it too when right in the middle she drops a question.

” What does this all mean?”

And she gives the absolute worst answer ever! She says something along the lines of, “Well, I don’t know I’m just a journalist.”

Don’t limit yourself

Why do we do that to ourselves? It’s like we’ve decided we’re too incompetent to ever expand the horizons of our thinking. Or that because we don’t work in a certain field we’re automatically unable to form a hypothesis.

Don’t get me wrong; if you need stitches please go to a doctor. A trained nurse and your kid needs a haircut please go to someone who actually cuts hair. If you’re a contractor who is horrible at grammar and your kid asks for help with an English paper find someone who can help you both improve.

I’m not saying to pretend you know everything. I’m saying don’t limit yourself.

Don’t put a cap on what you can and can’t learn. Because I know from experience we are more cable than we know.

Who’d a thought a kid described by his teacher as “lazy” and “never going to amount to anything.”,would grow up to be the incredible scientist that he was? That’s right, I’m talking about Albert Einstein.

Or that a troublesome tinker would invent the Model T car and forever change the industry?

What if they had limited their selves? What if they had let others’ opinions define them?

Where do you think we’d be?

Yet we let others define us all the time. We let them tell us what we can and can’t understand. That needs to stop.

We are limitless

So next time don’t tell yourself or the person asking that you don’t know.

Take some time and try to figure it out. Or just ponder the question for a little while and form a hypothesis.

Use your brain to the fullest of its capabilities. I know there are times when that doesn’t seem like much. And it’s hard. We’re so used to easily and convenience now. We have so so much untapped potential, so many opportunities, so many talented and gifted people, and lots are going to waste!

Because we think the path is too hard.

Or because we’re a fish trying to climb a tree and instead of focusing on the fact that despite being ill-equipped to even be in tree we’re actually making progress albeit slow and awkward, we listen to the other fishes in the water who are telling us to get out of the tree because we’re a fish and swimming is all we’re capable of. (That’s a metaphor people. Please don’t take it literally.)

I challenge you to learn, create, or move up another branch on that tree, once a day. Stop limiting yourself.

-Kay