Your limitlessness is a finite resource. Yes, in itself, your desires and dreams, and what you can reach for and achieve, are limitless -- but the decisions, beliefs, and drive you have to use are finite within any 24-hour day. That’s why it’s so important to protect your limitlessness, vigilantly.
Protect it with the magical word No.
Protect it from toxic people - and while you’re at it, inventory your people landscape.
Protect it by giving it priority during your project or growth period.
Protect it with privacy.
Protect it from your own defeating words and beliefs.
1. Protect it with the magical word, No.
Consider No one of the most magical protective words available to you. If you come to the idea of saying No with discomfort or a kind of inner squirming about how “not nice” it is or how “mean, rude, and selfish” you are, think again. There is nothing wrong with saying No, and there is everything right with protecting your boundaries, projects, and limited energy so it can be focused on the things you wish to achieve.
Practice saying No to people in a gentle and non-reactive way. Teach the people around you that your No means just that, that they shouldn’t keep angling at you or trying to guilt you into doing whatever they want you to be doing. Use your No as a protective shield, turning away the many things that would divert you from your prize.
No is powerful even with yourself. Contemplating sliding into a round of Netflix binging rather than the studying you’re supposed to be doing? Say No. Feel like you have some all-important filing to do rather than wrestle with your key presentation? Say No. (Remember to give yourself deliberate relaxation and downtime finally too - don’t use your No to override all your restoration needs!) Learn to use your No for all those times when you’re about to slip into misbehavior when you know it’s time to be doing something productive toward your goal.
“No” can preserve your valuable, finite resources of:
Time
Energy
Focus
Decision-Making Power
Number of projects you can take on at one time
Use it with a gentle firmness to protect your project as it grows.
2. Protect it from toxic people - and while you’re at it, inventory your People Landscape.
Protect your limitlessness project or adventure from toxic people at all costs. Even if you feel enthused to share or eager to show your new growth with someone, evaluate carefully before doing so. Is this individual definitely supportive? Or will they use it to make jokes, poke at you, laughingly tell you you can’t do that, “helpfully” tell you all the reasons why you’re just not qualified? Close family members who are in fact, hiddenly or not-so-hiddenly toxic can be a real struggle - you really want to share your life with them, then you get the pie in the face when you do.
It is easier to support your project by keeping it under wraps than it is to undo the damage that resonates from one well-placed caustic jibe or someone’s jeers of disbelief. Once their messy, dirty fingers get into your pie (or your thoughts) it can be hard to keep the creeping doubt out of your endeavor.
While you’re at it, inventory your people landscape! What are the people in your life really like? Are there any you feel uncomfortable around, yet feel obligated to keep interacting with, such as a friend who always leaves you feeling doubting and ashamed, yet you still feel you have to be friends so you “don’t hurt their feelings”? Or someone who guilts you until you do what they want, leaving you hating yourself for giving in yet again?
YOU get to choose who you let into your life and who not. As you reach for limitlessness, choose the people who help you go farther, and consider carefully whether you wish to continue relations with the ones who doubt and decry your efforts.
Protecting from toxic people can preserve your:
Motivation
Belief that you can do it
Level of struggle against doubt as you build your new confidence in it
Likelihood that you will take action
Likelihood that you will stay true to your project rather than giving up
Keep it safe, like a plant just beginning to sprout.
3. Protect it by giving it priority during your project or growth period.
To achieve something, you need to stop doing something else. Protect your limitless endeavor by giving it the highest priority during your project period or growth period. If your goal is to practice public speaking for a month so you feel more confident at presentations, PRIORITIZE that over everything else in your time schedule.
This is especially important when you’re installing new behaviors. If you have a reluctance to speak, you may find so many other urgent, pressing tasks calling to you that you somehow “just don’t have the time” to get to your speaking. It’s extremely easy to let this be the case, and then a month has gone by and you end up with the calendar in your hands, staring at the 31st of the month and wondering crazily why you didn’t get anywhere near your goal.
Prioritize your practice, even if it’s a touch uncomfortable, which it probably will be if it’s a growth-oriented, limitless goal. Don’t let the siren song of familiar tasks that will “just take a minute, and then I’ll practice later” sweep you away from your vision.
Protecting by Priority can preserve your:
Consistency in action
Ability to stay focused on the project
Drive to get past initial reluctance and into any given session of action or work
Overall progress in the face of the currents of life
Energy as you set aside some other thing to definitely give this precedence
Use priority to make sure you get your daily focus done on your growth.
4. Protect it with privacy.
Protect your limitless goal by keeping it as private as it needs to be to motivate you and ensure its completion. So much advice tells you to “Make it public! That will keep you accountable! Share it with all your friends, you’ll then feel pressured to keep up with your promise!” Take that with a grain of salt. A high degree of public sharing can backfire on you if that’s not in tune with your personality type.
Privacy is also important if the goal is something that people normally do not associate with you. When you are reaching for change, it can make others uncomfortable rather than congratulatory. They can see your changes as making you less available to their needs, or as showing up their own lack of ambition and making them feel small. If your goal is something really cherished but very different from your normal range of being, keeping it private can help you reach a level of mastery without all the struggle against people telling you, “That’s not you!” or “I never thought of you as wanting that!”
Also, if your limitlessness goal is something VERY sensitive or VERY important to you, such as a cherished goal that requires such small steps they seem ridiculous to others, then sharing it publicly is likely to invite joking, joshing, or poking fun. Even if well-meant, this can set you back as you end up torn between progressing at a faster pace than you really want to go in order to please or appease them, or giving up because you aren’t ready for such big steps and therefore, do nothing.
Don’t share unless it motivates you. Share with supportive people if you do.
Protecting with Privacy can preserve your:
Motivation to continue on a project that may be difficult, sensitive, or important to you
Ongoing growth at its vulnerable time, when new behaviors are just being established
Ability to change directions flexibly, try something new, or experiment, without others’ censure
Ability to go in as small a step as you need to to progress, which may seem minimal or ridiculous to others
Ability to explore new limitlessness without others reacting to your wish for change
Use it to keep your project and growth safe, especially in initial stages.
5. Protect it from your own defeating words and beliefs.
Much as you want this goal, there is a large part of you for whom this is scary. Of course - because if it weren’t a challenge and part scary, it’d already be part of your everyday life. Protect your limitlessness goal from those parts of yourself that want to deny, defeat, or downplay your ability to reach it. That can be the inner self-talk that pops up without warning - “You know, you’re really too old/young/educated/uneducated to do this…” Or it can be taking a small step toward the goal, then beating yourself up for how small it is and telling yourself that if you were “really” committed, you would be doing “xyz (fill in huge, glamorous step here)”.
Protect your goal from yourself, especially when you are tired, or at the end of the day. Make note of times when your energy is lowest and when defeatist thoughts are most likely to occur. Then you can defuse those thoughts by stating it - “Oh, yeah. This is just the defeatist language that always comes around nighttime when I’m worn down by the day. No big deal.”
Your defeatist thoughts or beliefs will try to pass themselves off as the real truth, the reality of your endeavor. They’ll try to defeat you back into your limited self. Don’t let them! Stay calm in your own limitlessness. The more steps you take and the more skills you grow in your goal, the less those old thoughts will have meaning or power over you.
Protecting your project from your own internal doubts can preserve your:
Consistency and willingness to dive in and learn again and again
Belief in yourself as able to do this
Energy when you realize you have tired times of day that can be harder to believe in
Ability to continue taking action on your project - and complete it!
Constant progress, as you determine that nothing, even you own inner dialogue, will stop you.
To summarize: belief, energy, time, volition, struggling against censure or craving approval of others, all of these use up your finite resources within the framework of a day. Protect your limitlessness by being a good steward of the energies and connections around your growth. Aim for what preserves your ability to maintain ongoing, consistent action as you build your new skills and reach a new level.
Which of the five ways can you apply today?
Keep Growing,
