No Limits

1

Do You Know What's Limiting You?

All of my life I've been intrigued by capacity, though when I was young I would not have known to call it that. My favorite childhood story was The Little Engine That Could. When I was little, my mother read it to me often. When I could read on my own, I pulled it from the shelf again and again. I'd act it out for my family. I loved that the little engine believed in herself and was successful in getting over the hill because of that belief. Her capacity increased because she pushed herself to her limits.

I remember an illustration my dad used when speaking. An old-timer saw a boy fishing and went over to see how he was doing. The boy had already caught two small fish, but as the old man was walking over, the boy landed a huge bass.

"That's a beauty," the old man said as the boy unhooked the fish. But then the boy tossed the fish back into the water.

"What are you doing?" the old man cried out. "That was a whopper."

"Yeah," replied the boy, "but my frying pan is only nine inches wide." That one always made me laugh, and it made me aware of how a person's thinking can limit him.

I also vividly remember one of my teachers telling the story of three young boys whose route to school went alongside a high wall. Every day as the boys walked to school, they wondered what was on the other side of the wall. Finally one day, their curiosity grew so strong that one of the boys said, "Let's find out," and threw his cap over the wall. "Now I have to climb the wall to see what's on the other side," he declared.

The other two boys gawked at him in disbelief. But then as they watched him begin to climb, they threw their caps over the wall and joined him. They didn't want to be left behind. They wanted to experience the discovery themselves, not just hear about it secondhand.

I still remember thinking, I would have thrown my cap over the wall, too. I wanted to go new places, make new discoveries, push myself to do more than I thought I could do. I still do. Sometimes achieving those desires requires bold commitment. Many times since the day I first heard that story, I've mentally thrown my cap over the wall to commit myself to growth discoveries.

Today, I'm asking you to throw your cap over the wall.

Awareness Assets

My goal in writing this book is to help you be the little engine who could. I want to inspire you to blow off the caps that hold you down and limit your potential. I want to help you get outside of the nine-inch–frying pan mentality and expand your thinking and your ability. I want you to throw your cap over the wall. I want you to accept the capacity challenge and change your life. Are you willing to do that? If so, the process begins with awareness, with learning…

1. Your Capacity Isn't Set

If you're like most people, I bet you'd like more out of life than you are currently experiencing. Maybe you're not succeeding in all the ways you desire to in life. Perhaps you're less than fully satisfied with your progress. Are you getting done all that you want to do? Or do you want to see more, do more, be more? If you're like me, you want to achieve more. Even at nearly age seventy, I'm not satisfied. I want to keep growing and making a difference.

What's getting in your way? What's limiting you? Do you know? If you don't know what's limiting you, how will you remove it?

You've probably heard the saying "If you want something done, give it to a busy person." It may sound counterintuitive, yet it's true. People who can get a lot done seem to be able to take on even more and remain productive. Why is that? Do some people simply have high capacity while others don't?

Have you given much thought to your capacity? Most people think theirs is set. You hear one person identified as "high capacity" and another as "low capacity," and you just accept it. What's your capacity? Have you defined it as high, low, or average? Do you think it's set? Maybe you haven't put a label on it, but you've probably settled into a level of achievement that you believe is what's possible for you.

That's a problem.

Too many people hear the word capacity and assume it's a limitation. They assume their capacity is set—especially if they're beyond a certain age. People give up on the idea that their capacity or their potential can grow. All they do is try to manage whatever they think they've got.

A lot of people think this way. Activist Roberto Verzola observed that economists are notorious for this kind of mind-set of limitations. Worse yet, they try to convince others to adopt it too. Verzola says,

In other words, they define the world in terms of its limitations. They also define people in terms of their limitations. That's too confining. Instead, we need to define our world and ourselves in terms of our possibilities.

While I believe 100 percent that people can grow, change their capacity, and increase their potential, I also acknowledge that all of us have caps on our capacity. Some caps are fixed. But most are not. We can't allow these unfixed caps to keep our lives from expanding. We can't let caps define our potential. We need to see beyond the caps and see our true capacity before we can blow off our caps and expand our capacity.

Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, wrote, "Life is like a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use." What he's saying is that most of us have capacity that is untapped. We have capacity that we're not even aware of. But we can change that.

2. You Can Become Aware of the Possibilities That Can Make You Better

This is where I want us to spend the majority of our time in this chapter. I want us to focus on awareness. All lasting growth requires awareness. Unfortunately, if you lack awareness, then you don't know that you are unaware. It's a blind spot. You don't know what you don't know, and you can't see that you are unable to see. That's a catch-22.

My journey to self-awareness was simple, but it did take time. It began with others helping me become aware. It took someone who did know to help me see it. This experience created a hunger in me to further develop my self-awareness. I began to wonder what else I was missing. What else didn't I know? I started wondering if there was something else out there for me.

This chapter communicates the process I developed. I don't assume that I've arrived. I still keep asking myself, What am I missing? But hopefully what I share with you will help you to become more self-aware, because that is essential to your reaching your capacity.

Self-awareness is a powerful skill. It enables you to see yourself clearly. It informs your decisions and helps you to weigh opportunities. It allows you to test your limits. It empowers you to understand other people. It makes partnership with others stronger. It allows you to maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. It opens the door to greater capacity.

Here are some things to think about as you work to become more aware of your possibilities:

Attention: Looking for What I Need to Know

In my book Winning with People, I wrote about the Lens Principle, which says who we are determines how we see others. In that book, my focus was on how our perspective colors our view of the world, other people, and life. But it's also true that who we are determines how we see ourselves. We naturally tend to see things as we have always seen them. If we want to increase our capacity, we must see differently. We need to be willing to look at ourselves and our world in new ways. We need to pay attention and look for what we need to know.

Awareness: Discovering What I Need to Know

What stops people from reaching their capacity often isn't lack of desire. It's usually lack of awareness. Unfortunately, people don't become self-aware accidentally. On top of that, there are factors that also work against us and prevent us from developing great self-awareness, such as

Most people who have developed self-awareness have had to battle one or more of these factors to get where they are. They've had to work very hard. It takes a desire to make self-awareness discoveries. It takes discipline to look at yourself and reflect on your experiences. It takes maturity to ask others to help you with your blind spots.

Becoming self-aware also requires help from other people who can see you more clearly than you can see yourself. In the past when I've worked with someone who wasn't self-aware, I've followed a process to help them discover what they need to know about themselves:

Using this pattern, you can help an unaware person begin to develop self-awareness. But what if you are that unaware person? You need to find someone—a trusted friend, colleague, mentor, or family member—who can help you, direct you, and provide you with repeated honest feedback.

Discernment: Focusing on What I Need to Do

As you discover things about yourself, you must try to discern where to focus your attention. You can't do everything. As the old proverb says, "Chase two rabbits and you will catch neither."

As you make discoveries, where should you focus your attention? On your strengths. Maybe you already know this. When we focus on our weaknesses, the best we can do is work our way up to average. Nobody pays for that. No successful person hires someone to do a merely adequate job. Successful people desire excellence. Excellence comes from focusing on your strengths. Whatever you do well, try to do better. That's your greatest pathway forward to increased capacity. Later we'll look at the core capacities that all people possess and how you can develop yours.

Intention: Acting on What I Need to Do

In my book Intentional Living, I discuss the major difference between good intentions and intentional living. The former may make a person feel good, but it doesn't actually do anything positive for him or others. The key is action. We get results only when we take what we've learned and put it into action.

When I was in my twenties I became aware that I would have to become highly intentional about my personal growth if I was going to be able to make a difference in the world. So I sat down and wrote out something that I called "The Mundane Man." Here's how it went:

I wrote that because I never wanted to become a mundane person. I believe none of us wants that, yet I think all of us could be in danger of becoming mundane. There is a natural downward pull that threatens to stop people from accepting the capacity challenge. We have to fight that inertia.

You need to become aware that you are currently living below your potential if you're going to do anything to improve. Even if you've been a highly productive and successful person, you can improve. You can increase your capacity. You have more in you that you have never tapped. And there is a path forward to greater potential if you are willing to take it.

3. You Can Remove the Caps from Your Capacity

The next step forward to increasing your capacity involves removing the caps that are holding you back. Have you ever heard or read about how elephants used to be trained? They could be made to stay in one place with only a small rope restricting them. That's incredible, considering that an adult male Asian elephant is ten feet tall at the shoulder and weighs about four tons. What was the secret?

When an elephant was very young and weighed only several hundred pounds, it was restricted by having a chain clasped to its leg and connected to a tree or deep stake. When the animal tried to move away and learned that it could not break the chain, it limited itself. It believed that whatever restriction was put on it—even a rope it could have easily broken—was more powerful than it was.

People are like those elephants. We often believe that some of the restrictions we may have experienced earlier in life are permanent. Or we've been told we have limitations that we actually don't possess, and these things are keeping us from taking the journey in life that we long for. These are the chains we need to break.

Awareness changes everything. As soon as we become aware that some of our "limitations" are artificial limitations, we can begin to overcome many of them. We can blow off these caps, which opens the way for growth. I'll talk more about this later.

In the book If It Ain't Broke… Break It! Robert Kriegel and Louis Patler write, "We don't have a clue as to what people's limits are. All the tests, stopwatches, and finish lines in the world can't measure human potential. When someone is pursuing their dream, they'll go far beyond what seem to be their limitations. The potential that exists within us is limitless and largely untapped."² That process begins with developing awareness of the caps that are restricting you.

4. You Can Develop the Capacities You Already Possess

Everyone has capacities that are based on their natural talents. Some of them require very specific abilities, such as those found in symphony musicians, professional athletes, and great artists. Others are more general in nature and rely on multiple skill sets. In this book, I identify and examine seven of these capacities:

I'll teach you how to maximize the level of talent you have so that you can increase your capacity in each of these areas.

5. You Can Make Choices That Maximize Your Possibilities

You also have other capacities that rely more on your choices. While it's true that talent is still a factor, it is less important in these areas. I want to help you identify the choices you can make to increase your capacity:

I'll teach you how to increase your capacity in these areas, too. And when you pair the development of your capacities with the maximization of your choices, you start to develop personal momentum toward your potential. Momentum is not the result of one push. It is the result of many continual pushes over time.

How Far Can You Go?

Recently I came across a story told by Jesse Itzler that illustrates the limitations many of us allow to be put on ourselves. Itzler is someone who started his career in the music business as a rapper, became an entrepreneur, cofounded Marquis Jet, and later became one of the owners of the Atlanta Hawks. A very accomplished person, Itzler also enjoys participating in endurance races.