Easy Answers
In a recent meeting with one of my mentors, I picked up two tidbits to share with you. First, he suggested: "forget everything you know about what you can't do." Right about that time, my brain melted. It took several days for this concept to sink in.
Whatever limitations I've placed on myself - beliefs about what I cannot do, are to be forgotten! Noticing my scrunched face, he gave a couple of examples, and I'll offer the simplest of them here.
Before the first person was recorded running a mile in under four minutes, the world believed it couldn't be done. After Roger Bannister confounded those beliefs by achieving this feat in 1954, many athletes followed suit; they knew it was possible! It became an attainable goal to strive for, as evidenced by the fact that someone had already done it. Bannister didn't hold the belief that a four-minute mile was impossible, he just ran. (read similar stories)
Bannister once said, "Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or a gazelle--when the sun comes up, you'd better be running." Playing out this proverb, the gazelle doesn't wake up in the morning and think, "I'll never outrun that lion...it can't be done." And the lion doesn't wake up thinking, "I'll never catch a gazelle, I should give up now." Each animal operates as though what they want and need will happen - not limited by beliefs.
This notion shifts a paradigm for me. And in case I wasn't paying attention, my husband pulled an old book off of the shelf the other day, "Illusions," by Richard Bach. I'd read this many years ago, and found myself reading through it again. Want to guess what it's about? The illusion that we can't do whatever we truly want to do - hmph! Okay, I'm listening!
How often do you hold yourself back because of what you believe cannot be done...or at the very least, cannot be done by you? I am excited about embracing this new way of being...the prospect of forgetting about the dam blocking the water and just flowing...who knows where that might lead!
The second tidbit resonated with me deeply, because I already have some experience with this concept...in moments, I live it fully. He said, "Easily doesn't mean that you have the answer - easily means that you don't care that you don't." For clarity, the "don't care" wasn't defensive. Not the child stomping his foot and saying "I don't care!" I believe he meant that safety doesn't come from having the answers. Safety comes from knowing that each of us is okay in the not knowing. We have the right to be unsure. The insecurity of that moment - when faced with a question to which the answer is not obvious - reveals the greatest sense of self. The sense of "I am" even when I don't know. I deserve to be, without having any answers.
So I don't have any answers about where my path may lead as I forget what I cannot do. I only know that stepping into this new place liberates me and allows me to expand with abundance. I invite you to give it a try.
Taking it easily,
Joanne Lutz