A key question to reflect on for your LIMITLESSNESS is this:
What is hard?
What is easy?
Do you realize that your ideas of hard and easy are merely that? They're merely ideas. What you hold as true about “hard” and “easy” is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think math is hard for you, it IS hard for you, because all your thoughts are framed consciously and subconsciously about its difficulty.
You can change that at any time.
When I trained as an ultra-distance cyclist, I learned through experience how this re-framed my ideas of what was hard and easy. In terms of cycling, that meant what level of miles and effort I considered hard or easy. Do you think 100 miles of cycling is “hard”? In the end I didn't, because I made 100 miles my normal, and I rode it every week -- not just once, but week over week throughout the entire summer and fall. While I still deeply respect the effort involved in a 100-mile ride, I also know what it's like to be well-trained to the 100-mile distance, and do not find it difficult or impossible. It took time and effort to train to that level, but at all times the challenge was within doing. I reached a point where I found 100 miles an easy distance in the sense that I knew I can hop on the bike, head out, and master it without undue effort.
What’s happening when you say something is hard? Think about the feeling that generates. Too hard, too difficult, too much effort, more than you want to do, more training than you'd ever put into whatever-it-is you're calling hard. If it’s something you never want to do, then that’s fine. If you never want to rock climb, or run a marathon, or broker a huge business deal, or write a doctoral thesis, you can say, “Wow, yeah, that’s too hard…” In part, what you’re saying is, “That sounds amazingly difficult, involved, and is not really on my bucket list.” In that case it doesn't matter.
But when something is hard and you need to get it done as part of your limitlessness, what then? You can build the HABIT of turning hard into easy. You can make hard efforts joyful ones. You can do all this and more.
It is not hard. It’s in your mindset, and in your level of development.
Limitlessness Mindset
To turn hard into easy, be aware that there are parts that will feel hard - really hard - and that to get through these, you need to have a strategy to flip the switch on your mindset. For me, there were many multi-hour indoor training rides at my cycling center, where to keep on keeping on for another two hours of riding felt hard, mentally and physically. During those I had to just hold on and keep it going and turn hard into easy (or at least, turn hard into keep-on-going-not-stop).
When it would feel really impossible to get that last 40 miles in, I’d bear down with my interval timer and just do 5 minutes more, 5 minutes more. I also built a library of power sayings that would help me dial in to my persistence, and I learned to fine-tune whether my fatigue was real depletion, or just mid-ride slump.
You can too. Hold in your mindset that you WILL do this. If you need to keep pushing through, depending on your endeavor:
Use a timer and set small increments, and keep chipping away at them. 5 more minutes, 5 more minutes…
Set shorter tasks and try to just get one more done, and then one after that.
Build a set of key phrases that get you through the tough times - “This is where heroes are made”, “The team needs me to lead them”, “I’m the only one who can do this”.
Use music when you can - if your task or endeavor allows you to listen to music, have an awe-inspiring playlist you pull out to get you through when the effort seems impossible.
Turn hard efforts into joyful efforts. Say "I am REALLY enjoying this!" when you are suffering the most. Realize that you really are. You're putting fire, suffering, intensity and persistence into the alchemy of realizing your limitlessness, of going farther than you have before. That is a joy those who never test themselves with a hard effort will ever know.
The more you use these strategies to go beyond your limits, the more you see how limitless you really are.
Be sure to temper this with wisdom. There are times when it really is too much for your body or mind, and to go farther will delay or destroy tomorrow's task or training and the sessions after. Learn to distinguish those true stop signs from the false ones you can push through.
This is a key aspect of building the performance you need to be limitless in any field. Remember that your physical and mental resources need recharging. They diminish throughout the day, and require rest to replenish at night. The more you learn your true signals, which are only learned through experience, the better you fine tune when to blaze through, and when to throw in the towel wisely, and get back to it in the next session - whether it's athletic training, your term paper, or limitlessness in any field.
Growing Your Limitlessness
There are real mental and physical limits to you as you work through your endeavor. You are becoming limitlessness, but that does NOT mean you have what I call “the Genius Explosion”, the idea that you can "own" a huge, hard effort easily by just cramming super-intensely right before. Respect that you need to develop incrementally. When you respect this, you can be consistent in creating ongoing limitlessness in every aspect of your life.
Respect that it is a journey - a journey that in itself holds endless wonders, learning, insights, surprises, and new horizons. If you could just jump into your new level without effort, you'd miss out on the journey! If your limitless project is highly physical, respect the time it takes to build that level of endurance - you do not cycle 100 miles overnight. If it is highly mental, respect the time it takes to build that level of mental competence that comes automatically to your fingertips across a variety of situations. Don’t ever consider either of those “hard” - it is just the necessary path to your limitless goal.
Realize that hard and easy are just mental constructs. Certainly, there may be a development aspect that takes time to build. But that’s not “hard” - that’s just building the skill.
Take a piece of paper and write an inventory of the skills that fuel your limitlessness desires. What do you find hard? What do you find easy?
Now, how will you work on making what’s hard, “easy” to you? Repetition, good attitude, power phrases, study, skill-building, keeping at it as you build layer upon layer of mastery?
What is hard?
What is easy?
What will you begin to change from hard to easy today?
Engage with your life-time-energy today with your most LIMITLESS identity.
Be well,
Katherine
Katherine Lieber coaches and trains on self-leadership, limitlessness, energy health, inner power, and healing the wounded professional to recover core vision, joy, and high-powered performance in the workplace. She is the founder of TitaniumBlue Leadership. Be limitless - be the hero in a world that needs you.
© 2023 Katherine R. Lieber & TitaniumBlue LLC
