The development of your business and its overall commercial success will be greatly influenced, by what you believe is possible for you. This means it’s important to check that you have a clear handle on what you truly can and can not do.
There are 2 types of limitation, which determine what we believe to be possible:
- Real world limitations.
- Self imposed limitations.
If you are 80 years old, you’re not going to win the Olympic 100 meters final. This is a real world limitation.
However, if you find yourself saying you will never make a million or never become a best-selling author, this is a self-imposed limitation. Countless people have gone from being penniless to wealthy. Harry Potter author JK Rowling, went from nowhere to a string of international best selling books AND went from living on social security, to a personal fortune in the hundreds of millions.
From hard to impossible
There’s a huge difference between something that’s hard to do and something that’s impossible. The challenge here, is that if we erroneously believe something to be impossible for us, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We either don’t get started or we start off, believing we can’t do it – both of which lead to the prophecy becoming real.
Many things that are hard or difficult, are mistakenly filed in our minds as impossible. Each time we do this, we place a false limitation on that area and set a very low ceiling on our potential there too. This is why we need to ensure that we are clear, regarding those things we believe to be impossible and those which are challenging, but achievable. Otherwise, we risk doing work that pays, rather than work that matters, because it’s less challenging.
Reality check
It’s wise to take a look at the limitations we have placed on our business and determine how many of them are real world limitations and how many are self imposed limitations.
The biggest stumbling block to our success is usually the person staring at us in the mirror!