“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people who are no smarter than you” – Steve Jobs
I have written before about the importance of teaching yourself and I’ve been reading and thinking about this concept a lot lately. I have been a student my whole life; when I have spent a couple of years learning something well, I move on to the next thing. I love variety and this is probably why I don’t have a career – I’m too interested in a lot of things to get really good at any – lol! Well, I can laugh at this but it has caused me quite a bit of mental grief as well.
Growing up and going to University, I had very definite ideas of who I was and what my limits were. I put myself in a proverbial box. Probably most of us do this. ”I am sporty” or “I am intelligent” or “I am an artist” are all types of self definitions that seem true but actually limit ourselves in our minds and activities. The negative also applies. ”I am not sporty” or “I am not creative” are more obvious limitations that we use to justify not trying certain things. What can be even worse to our life experience and self definition is that these limits and labels are often given to us by others. It then becomes a vicious cycle that we internalize and become our own enslavers. Like the Elephant who is restrained by a meager tether and peg. He could easily pull it out and walk away but from being slowly conditioned that he cannot break his chain (first tied to a tree then progressively smaller holds) his mind limits itself.
As I mentioned, I have been affected by this kind of thinking for as long as I can remember as are probably 95% of mankind. You have to do well in school, get a good career, own your house so you can retire when you are 60. If you haven’t done X by the time you are 30 years old it is too late. Without benefits and a pension it’s all over. You can’t make a living as an artist. I have more goats than you do. Etc, etc. There is so much guck in our minds it’s nearly impossible to see the truth. You don’t have to lead a conventional life.
So when I tried the “say yes to everything” concept in Hawaii, I basically bypassed this thinking. I suspended my judgements of everything and my self imposed limits. What a different world I experienced! Being open to anything brought in new things I couldn’t have imagined and most of them were amazing. Better than I could have created for myself under the definition of who I am and who I am not. The concept has really excited me because now I can say, “what would happen if I question my judgement and first reaction to everything I encounter in my daily life?” This, as I said, is where I am and it is pretty exciting. Working on erasing my self limitations has been a surprising part of this journey of The Year of Elimination.
As an update, I am moving my album project materials to my sister’s house who is a great scrapbooker and has more tools to complete this project than I do. It will be much more fun to do with company and a great project to work on over weekends. Also, I am going to donate my camera to the Salvation Army as none of you readers wants it! That’s okay, I always enjoy a trip there – bargain finding bliss.
Hope you are all having a great weekend.
