Good Limits

We all live with limits. And yet, we love words and phrases like 'Limitless' and 'No Limits!' and 'Without Limits!' There are movies, T shirts and businesses that choose such phrases as names. It can seem like a great ideal, and a liberating thought. But let's think a little more deeply.

We need to make a distinction between artificial limits, or false limits, and real ones. We wrongly think we have many limits that we don't have at all. And we impose on ourselves artificial limits all the time that hinder and hold back what could be our genuine excellence, and a more expansive experience of life.

I've been having some related thoughts come to me this week. Let me lay out a few here, together, aphoristically, for your consideration.

Artificial limits are weaknesses. Natural limits are strengths. They give us structures to build on, and a form to build within. Some can be extended, and expand the borders of our strength. Some can't, but form the often hidden foundations for who we are and can be.

All limits give form and structure. To live without them would be impossible - it would be to live without any form or structure. But to live with too many limits, or the wrong ones, restricts you, constrains you, and holds you back needlessly. It shrinks your life.

You have to free yourself from artificial limits to find your natural and empowering structures.

The right limits liberate and give you a place to stand.

The limits that are freeing and empowering are those that arise from the shape of your distinctive talents, your best choices, and your highest commitments.

My dogs have a big fenced in backyard. They often go to the fence and poke their noses through the uprights to bark at another dog, or a jogger, or almost anything. The fence limits them. But it protects them as well. And it gives them the power to move and play vigorously without fear. It provides them an expansive area in where they can't be harmed by cars, or other dangers.

That's almost a trivial example. But it shows in one small way that not all limits are bad.

The best limits come from your wisest decisions, the ones that chart your proper path forward in life. You can't do everything. You shouldn't even want to. Some things are just not right. Others aren't right for you, at least, not now.

When we shed the wrong limits and embrace the right ones, we flourish. If that's a new thought, I hope you can use it well.

Limits

We typically talk about limits as if they're always a bad thing. Because of this, I've seen lots of organizations and even corporate and association meetings given names like "Without Limits" or "Limitless" or "No Limits!" It's the ultimate cheerleading motto. Abundance. Infinity. Ultimate Expansiveness. The World is Yours. No, the Entire Universe - And Infinitely Beyond!

The problem is that we all have limits. And if we don't know them and respect them, we get into deep trouble. The great Anglo Saxon epic Beowulf, one of my favorite books, is about a guy who bought the "no limits" hype in his own time, and thought he was immune to failure. And that, ironically, set him up for his ultimate demise.

In Mary Shelley's classic cautionary tale of success and failure, the novel Frankenstein, Dr. Victor Frankenstein doesn't know his limits, either, and a world-class mess ensues.

Consider the oldest human epic story, from 2,700 BC, Gilgamesh. It's only when King Gilgamesh - handsome, powerful, narcissistic, and insatiably hedonistic - discovers the most basic of his limits that he's transformed into a good leader and king.

The wise thing to do is to live creatively within your limits, and at other times, at your limits, or even on them, in something like a high wire existential balancing act. But to pretend they don't exist is both wrong and dangerous. Our limits give us form, and without form, there is no substance, no distinctive, individual existence. We can rhetorically dismiss limits or deny them, but we're impoverished and even imperilled if we don't know and navigate by them.

How about you? What are your limits? How can you recognize them, respect them, even embrace them, and act with them in mind while you, nonetheless, dream big, aim high, and accomplish the seemingly impossible?

I'm a fan of outrageous greatness. I believe in the extraordinary. We should reject and blast through any unhelpful and artificial limits. But I think that knowing our real limits and wisely working within them can alone get us to where we most need to be.

And any philosophy that doesn't see with this is far too ... limited.

Self Knowledge and Goal Setting

I was giving a presentation recently on success, and we were talking about the importance of basing our goal setting in self knowledge. I explained that one philosopher had parsed self knowledge in an interesting way. He said, "Know your strengths. Know your weaknesses. Know your opportunities." And that's interesting, isn't it? Strengths and weaknesses are inner things. Opportunities are outer things. So how can knowing them, as external circumstances, be a part of self knowledge?

A situation that creates a great opportunity for one person will not provide the exact same thing for a different individual. Knowing what external situations are opportunities for you is a matter of self knowledge. But, how so?

Maybe we need to dig a little deeper. Maybe the imperative "Know Yourself" has a few more elements:

Know your strengths. Know your weaknesses. Know your limits.

Know your passions. Know your ideals.

Weaknesses are certainly limits, at least for now. But not all limits are weaknesses. Some limits are a result of our prior choices and commitments, and some are actually among our strengths. A robust and proper structure of commitments is a great thing to have. It empowers and it limits. And such limits will be very relevant to the goals we decide to set or adopt.

Knowing your passions is equally important. Some are strengths. Others are weaknesses. Some may be neither, in themselves, but developed can go either way. Passion is a source of drive and motivation. Setting goals outside of any concern for our passions is never a recipe for greatness.

And perhaps most important of all is knowing our ideals. We all have fantasies, desires, or passions that would not be right to pursue in a certain way or at a certain time. Our ideals are those values that should guide us in choosing. And they will help to determine what external situations do indeed provide opportunities for new goals and new successes.

All goal setting should be an ongoing exercise in self knowledge. And all these factors matter.