‘The Rubber Band Broke’ - (Strength Vs Stretch)
August 12, 2008
Firstly people wonder what can I do and what I am capable of doing and then they think about what one should achieve and one should not. Will this lead you anywhere? In my previous post “How to Build the Muscle of Life” I had written about how should one identify the strengths and play life like a game? Do you always do that or do you seem to curtail yourself from the best?
Imagine you play a game (I love this metaphor and hence use it more often), however strong you are you still want to defeat the audience and by the biggest margin possible. You never think and say “let me score only 2 goals and stop the opponent from scoring 1 goal” and so on. You want the best, the highest ever. You do not think of the fact whether you are capable or not. If you have the right mindset of winning, you don’t look at the strengths of the team or the weakness of the team and still want to beat the rest!
Now can this same happen for your life too? If you wish to and want to. If you desire you reach great heights, by stretching yourself far behind your expectations and your capabilities. What do you mean by capabilities? There is one concrete definition of Capability that I give “Its about what you think you are capable of”. That’s a paradox right! We never know our capabilities until we test out whether something is possible or not. A Olympic sprinter does not know whether he is going to better this record or in what time he is going to complete and he just rushes and pushes himself to the best possible extent. As the athlete he does not bother about what his muscles are capable of. If every time you think this is my strength you can never achieve. Remember Roger Bannister, when the entire world were pronouncing that running 1 mile of distance in less than 4 minutes was not possible, and would risk the heart to burst, he was one who did not bother much about the strength and capabilities, but believed more on his instincts and achieved the feat. This made him to understand what truly he was capable of and made others also believe that they are capable.
Say you want achieve something in life and then plan with same and carry out certain action steps, half way through you begin to analyze and think that this is what is possible for you and hence you are not capable. You don’t necessarily say the same words, but definitely pass on this message to your subconscious mind and then you take a step backward. When this is not really true, you waste your energy of your brain by passing these negative commands. This will automatically drive you negatively and never take action towards achieving Success in life.
“What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.” – Anthony Robbins
Your goals are not defined by your strength. Its your belief that will want to you take past your goals. You do not go by the blind belief which might not be useful for you. Having an engineering degree cannot make you a doctor. You must have certain amount of practicality in what you do. But when you practical you have make sure that its also a stretch. You must do more than what you can.
When you make a choice of your Goals and your targets, they must be like “Yes I can achieve it, but it’s not so easy”. This in itself will drive you to greater heights. Fear sometimes is useful because that’s when you work hard to achieve. Just that you must be in complete control of the fear and not fear control you. When you confront fear then you stretch and achieve more than what you think are your strengths. What is the difference between an person who has a small restaurant at the corner of the road and the giant Colonel Sanders of KFC? Is it about their strengths? Its is about Colonel Sanders willingness to stretch. While he must had the fear, how will I do it, he never would had the thought of Can I do it?
“Capability means imagination” – Napoleon Hill
Let me tell you as to why I can relate myself to this so much. Recently I had a mind blowing experience, the biggest test of my skills on NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). I decided to carry out an exercise of a Live Phobia Cure. I have done this before, but in a close group after people attend my Born To Win training program and so are framed up about my skills of NLP. Was indeed easier. But this was new and different, where I had to chose a person from the audience who I am meeting for the first time and then cure the Phobia. Guess what did I use for curing the Phobia? A Live snake! This was a great experience for me and I did achieve it. When first I was deciding to do it, its not about my strengths, but I also believed that I could do it. It was a stretch, and I did have a concern but never allowed that overtake me and achieve it! This is working against your strengths and stretching to achieve more.
This experience of mine, I shared not to impress you but to impress upon that anything is possible with the right strategy. If you were to work with your strengths and limitations, as the word itself goes, it limits your Success. Spread beyond boundaries to achieve more. Only when you do and take action do you really understand what you are truly capable and what you can achieve. When you know that you can run a kilometer in X minutes, you know that you can do it even lesser than X. Only after you lift 50 kgs of weight and do some bench press do you know that you can even do 70 or even 100. Your muscles begin to build more and you become stronger to take a chance of carrying more weight on your shoulder. Achieve the best in Life!
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2 Responses to “‘The Rubber Band Broke’ - (Strength Vs Stretch)”
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“Spread beyond boundaries” is Amazing
Thanks.
Decided to make it a daily habit for improvisation even if it is only little more.
Little things are going to make a big difference tomorrow.
As a former runner who used to love to compete (with self and others) I especially enjoyed the Roger Bannister example.
That applies to human potential in general. We are capable of more than people can even imagine. The only barrier is our belief that we already know and have defined our limits and strengths. The truth is that we haven’t even begun the process.
John