Relative Something

I’m guessing there wouldn’t be much argument to the idea that people perceive they have limitations even when no actual limitation exists. Some versions may even present as common phobias. We often hear people admit to a fear of something that is not necessarily a threat that deserves such focus. It is my belief that we each have the ability to make a decision that alters these limitations we allow to exist.

When I was young, I drank milk with pretty much anything I ate. Some foods, I felt it essential to have milk. Toast with peanut butter comes to mind. Then I suffered an episode of a kidney stone. Seems I wasn’t practicing advisable levels of hydration, especially given the high level of dairy products I consumed. I must say, pain is one heck of a motivator for change. I was advised to reduce my intake of all things calcium, and to drink more water. At the time, I literally believed it not possible to eat peanut butter toast without milk. I was wrong. In the end, I found the adjustment to be rather easy.

For much of my life, I wore a wrist watch. After I returned from a week of vacation one year, where I had been without my watch the whole wonderful time, I decided to try going without it when I resumed my regular routine. I found this change to be a little more difficult than not drinking milk with certain foods, but not by much. I used to believe that I could not get along without my wrist watch. Now I realize I can, and I do just fine sans wrist watch.

I used to be a pretty regular viewer of television news broadcasts. I grew up in a house where we watched the news to get a sense of things. I recall the dramatic feeling of being lost when I first moved out of the house where I grew up, to a place with no television. We solved that within days, and I maintained my fixation with television news for decades. Then, in similar fashion to my changing the habit of having worn a wrist watch, I came home from a vacation where I had not seen news for over a week and realized I was doing just fine without it. As a matter of fact, I felt a little bit better without it. The newscasters used to feel like part of my family. We watched their hairstyles change and listened to their chit-chat between stories, as if they were people we knew. I really like not knowing about them any more, and I don’t feel lost at all.

I seriously felt the possibility of changing these things was not only unlikely, but even ill-advised. But these were artificial boundaries I allowed myself to claim. And as such, I have all the power to choose to move and change them at any time. Next time you notice yourself clinging to something a little tighter than makes logical sense, consider the possibility it is a product of your own construct. You have the power to change those arbitrary lines to move yourself to a different place. Shoot, you could even obliterate them altogether.

When people talk about coloring outside the lines, the first thought is of the lines that are presented to us. But we also can choose to color outside the lines we create for ourselves. What would it take for you to become aware of the limits you are choosing to live within? They might not be as limiting as they seem, after all.