What are you capable of? How to live it

Do you know what you are capable of? I can honestly tell you that no, you don’t. There’s two very good reasons for this. Firstly, you’ve not pushed yourself to your ultimate limit, and secondly, you are restricted by your past.

Confusing, yes?

In this article it’s all about:

what you are capable of
your limits, who defines them and how
being future-focused
who are you becoming and how to live it

Your personal ultimate limits

If you’ve had a baby or run a marathon or other such enduring feat, then you have an idea that you are capable of great things. At points in history, both have been suggested as a reason for your uterus to fall out. In the case for running, it’s still less than 50 years ago that it was thought women were not suitable for marathon running. Having spent many years working in gynae I know that a uterus will fall out because the pelvic floor muscles and ligaments have stretched and weakened, and I also know that many of our ladies with such a predicament were childless sofa-surfers. Moral of that story –

Don’t let someone else tell you your limits

Since diagnosis of my illness I have had years with people, including doctors, telling me what I’m capable of and that I shouldn’t be running, especially not marathons, and if I try then I won’t be able to finish. If I had listened to them I would not have New York and Berlin marathon medals hanging on my wall, would I? I may not be speedy, but 26.2 miles is 26.2 miles.

How many times have you set a goal or had a dream, been so excited about it, shared it with your nearest and dearest only to be told “you can’t do that”, “you shouldn’t be doing that” “Why would you want to do that?” etc. Who are they to tell you that they can’t?

When we’re listening to someone, our brain has an internal dialogue along with what it’s hearing. Classic example, on one of my coach training days, we were having a practice session and my coach partner said that she has had enough of her job and wants to quit without having another job to go to. Even though I have done this very same thing myself, I almost stopped listening to her as I felt MY fear in MY chest and nearly blurted out “you can’t do that!”.

In most circumstances people respond not to what they have heard you say about you, but what they heard you say about them. When someone tells you that you can’t, what they are really saying is that they can’t.

You are restricted by your past

We are programmed to create our lives based on our own past and the past of those around us. Most of the time, it’s all fear-based. The past is not able to even answer the question of what are you capable of. If we can’t see the future, then how does it know?

When I’m working with a client and we get to the action part of the session, either setting new ones or discussing those previously set, I sometimes come up against “I don’t know, I’ve not done it before”.

Hello fear…

What about when you were little and you hadn’t walked before, or fed yourself, hadn’t gone to school before, learned to drive before. All those things, and more, had two things in common – you were capable, and practice.

Right? Did you give up learning to walk the first time you fell down? Or stopped trying to pronounce words properly after the first attempt? No, you kept practicing. Thank goodness or I’d be crawling a marathon and still saying lellow. Yet, as adults, we say “I don’t know” all the time.

Be future-focused

A big clue as to whether you are in past or future mindset is how you answer the “how are you?” type questions. If you answer with something like “I’ve had a hard day” “I didn’t sleep well” then you are past-focused. If you answer with “it’s going to be a tough week” it’s still a negative response, but it’s future-focused.

You will never live up to your potential. Sounds harsh, yes? Not at all. At this point in time, you are standing at point A, and your potential is B. But, by the time you get to B, you have it mastered, so now your potential is over at C. Make sense? You can’t live up to it because it’s fluid. You are fluid and always changing.

Define you on your own terms

I want you to take a look at your life and what you want on your own terms. This is exactly how I coach my clients. One of our greatest gifts is our imagination, and I want you to use yours to light up your life and choose what you want it to be.

Your future is whatever YOU want it to be. Not what someone else says. Yes you have kids to raise, you have family and loved ones to think about, and you need to earn an income, but it’s up to you how, what, where, when and why you do that (within the confines of law and morality).

If you want a future that is better than your past, define yourself now by your better future self. When making decisions, what would your bigger, better, brighter, future self thank you for? Would they thank you for those three bars of chocolate you just ate? Or thank you for ditching on your workout? Would they thank you for you telling yourself that you are letting yourself down?

Who are you?

The answer to this is past-focused. It’s about what you have done up until this point. Mother. Wife. Daughter. Employee. Business owner. Runner. Although, there’s a strong argument there that says you just answered WHAT you are, not WHO.

So if who are you is past-focused, then who are you becoming is future-focused.

Remember that your thoughts (imagination) create your feelings. When you think about what has happened in your past, and the feelings that come up, be it happy or sad, the exact same happens for the future. So if you are imagining a bigger, better, brighter future for yourself that is exciting, then that excitement will come forward to the present and you begin to become that person now.

Who are you becoming?

This can be quite difficult to define. Grab a piece of paper and ask yourself:

I am becoming someone who is…
I am becoming a…

Put whatever you want there. Do you want to be nicer, more successful, more organised, happier, more confident, meet the partner of your dreams, land the job of your dreams, have children. Whatever you want, write it down.

Download this worksheet for some more clarity on what you want.

Be authentic. Answer with your own truth. List all actions needed along the way to get to the end result. If you want to sew your own clothes you may start with simpler designs, read the instructions carefully, and have a couple of practice attempts. If you want to run a 5k, you might follow the Couch to 5k programme of 9 weeks slowly building up to running for a solid 30 minutes (don’t be disheartened if you don’t cover 5k in 30 minutes, not many people do when they first start out.)

Memorise it, live it

You’ve heard an actor say that to play a character they had to become the character. Well, this is exactly what you need to do. You have to sit in the front row of your life and start being the person who already has it, and think, feel and act as if you do.

You have control over your brain and you can tell it what to do.

Write the movie. Add scenes and directions. What are you thinking, feeling, doing, responding? Rehearse, over and over of being the person you are becoming. Live in that space of who you want to be.

You don’t need to justify what you want, to anyone. No need to explain it. If it matters to you, then it matters. If it serves your life, get on with being and feeling. The more extraordinary you choose your life to be, the more extraordinary your life will be.

This is what goals are – your future self. If you’d like help with developing the actions to get you there, drop me a line.