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Secret #7

• Posted by Theresa on May 9th, 2006 filed in Excellence, Book Review, Goals, Goal-Free Living

Secret #7 Embrace Your Limits

(from Stephen Shapiro’s Goal-Free Living)

Goal-Free Living: How to Have the Life You Want NOW!

Only one secret left after this one…Here are the six other secrets I’ve read about so far (to refresh my memory):

…and now number 7: Embrace your limits.

I have a personal policy: I embrace my weakness, I accept my humanness. And another one that goes hand in hand with that one: I hang around people who love me for who I am, who accept me as I am.

This secret focuses on being authentic. Rather than fighting, hiding, avoiding or denying our inadequacies, take hold of them, use them as a potential source of power.

Think about how much time you waste trying to hide the real you.

Instead of fighting against the “inadequate” parts of the real you, learn to embrace and acknowledge those parts. When you can do this, your “inadequacies” no longer control you; they connect you to the real world.

Back in the olden days when I was a pastor’s wife I was consumed by trying to be perfect. Very few people knew the real me, including me most of the time.

Trying to be perfect is hard work and mentally debilitating. A huge part of my growth as a person came when I allowed myself to let down my guard and take on the world in my own way, on my own terms.

I learned that there is no such thing as failure…only feedback. I began to have the confidence to let the real me show through.

“Before you can let the world know who you really are, you need to know who you really are.”

Back in those days my journal was the only place I allowed some of those parts of me out. Gradually I became more honest with myself and then eventually with my friends and therapist.

“We all have something to hide. In the process of hiding, we play life small. We avoid and deny who we really are (mostly to ourselves). Embrace your humanness.”

Embracing your humanness, embracing who you are, will make you more endearing, more genuine, and ultimately more successful. When you stop trying to control your weaknesses and just accept them, you will begin to better connect with those around you.

“Hiding the truth from ourselves and others - and living our lives through the eyes of others - can be debilitating. Uncover your underlying beliefs, and then analyze whether these beliefs are actually true. Very often, they are not. When we try to hide things we perceive as shortcomings about ourselves from other people, we lose our power. Often, we are so busy trying to hide our inadequacies that we end up not seeming real or authentic. Take time to acknowledge your own humanness and to turn it into a source of power.”

I like my life so much better now, just being me. I know I still have work to do in some areas, but I am learning.

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