Go beyond yourself, smash through all fears, limits and shrinking

 

Stimulating growth

This whole practice item is very much about the warrior’s mindset, but for me it is also something that greatly inspires me every day, every moment, and I remind myself of this mind training in several ways throughout the day.

 

Every time I try to extend myself, even a little bit, I keep reaffirming this basic principle that anything is possible, that the majority of limitations that exist in my life are ones that exist in my mind and emotions. They combine to allow my fears and beliefs to tell me what I can and can’t do, a constant presence in my psyche that is directing my actions down a very narrow conditioned path.

 

This practice is about challenging everything we are, everything we think and feel, from the tiniest flutter of fear to our deepest and most strongly held beliefs. It’s also about challenging our apathy, our lack of desire to excel, to improve ourselves, to do better, to be better than we were yesterday.

 

This isn’t about having to put ourselves under some sort of performance based stress all the time. It’s about a healthy activation of one’s energies and engagement, of challenging habitual apathy and laziness, of not settling for less or letting good enough be the enemy of the best.

 

Generally speaking, we are habitual creatures and follow the well worn grooves of our lives, rarely venturing outside of that, or if we do, it’s in a very limited sense. Going beyond ourselves is a call to action, to challenge our entire being and everything we do, our habits to stay small, to do just enough, to settle for mediocrity.

 

In this process, we get to identify our weak points, what our insecurities are and then transform them into strengths. Mostly our unconscious habit is to just avoid those life situations where our insecurities and fears get triggered. We may never be masters of every situation that arises, but what we can be is unafraid to engage, to be adept at utilising our inner resources to fearlessly face any situation with a sense of confidence and resolve, instead of shying away due to fear of failure or exposing our weaknesses to the world.

 

Failure, adversity and other life obstacles are our greatest teachers. This isn’t some cliche, it is dyed in the wool, one hundred percent true, and if you embrace it, you won’t know yourself! With a change of attitude we can start welcoming difficulties with open arms, even come to relish them. If we aren’t failing at something, we aren’t going outside of our back yard, and we definitely aren’t growing.

 

Mostly we unconsciously avoid the challenging aspects of life, trying to round off all the hard edges of reality so nothing ever bites. This means that our life is very much at the mercy of the conditions we come up against, avoiding them might be denying us very valuable and growthful experiences.

 

Not only that, but by avoiding these unpleasant conditions, we are defined by what we fear, by what we think we like or can handle, by what we believe our limitations to be. In this way, we aren’t able to fully explore the world and who we are in it, we aren’t truly free at all. 

 

Being excellent, cultivating strength

Going beyond ourselves isn’t just about challenging limitations and becoming aware of these imaginary barriers we have created in our minds. We aren’t breaking these barriers just for the sake of it, we move beyond them to continue our journey to fulfill our unlimited potential.

 

A fundamental part of that is excelling ourselves constantly, striving to improve ourselves, our chosen discipline, our professional lives, to be the best father, mother, lover, friend. We try to be the best we can possibly be, to give full account of ourselves no matter the situation.

There’s something intrinsically positive in that, because it not only refines who we are, but it refines the world, it makes us and the world a better place for everyone. In that, it is a highly ethical action and has very positive effects.

 

Making an effort to excel in everything you do builds strength, tenacity and other internal resources. It’s like strength training at the gym. You are constantly adding small amounts of weight to your exercises over time which stimulates muscle growth. After a relatively short period of time, you find you can lift considerably more weight. It’s exactly the same with extending ourselves, when we continually practice this, we become capable of achieving far more than we ever thought possible.

 

Just like the gym, we don’t try to double the weight we’re lifting in a short space of time, we’re just making small increases. This is why weight training is also known as resistance training, except in the case of the mind, the resistance we push against which creates the growth is the status quo, our ennui, the habitual self running on autopilot, our unconscious, unquestioning mind just flowing with our conditioning. Our limitations in all their forms.

 

In this way, it’s not hard to find many different ways in which we can extend ourselves throughout the day, small efforts that challenge us to excel, to improve or add something to the world. This practice makes us more aware of what we are doing, we start to notice how we do things, whether we are thorough or not, whether we really care about what we do, or the quality of our work. Do we have a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction in doing things well, correctly, or to the best of our ability.

 

Challenging all these things means we become more detail oriented, we can become more aware of aesthetics, we start to care about the state of the environment we live in, so cleanliness and tidiness become more important. This gives rise to a caring and thoughtful awareness of things, we’re more alive to where we are, what we’re doing, we engage more deeply in our day to day life.

 

Fear and shrinkage

I’d formulated this particular practice point to work with fear overall. It’s a topic very close to my heart and one I'll expand on in some depth in a dedicated article soon. It’s a bit of a paradox for me as I’ve generally lived in a way that hasn’t been dictated by fear, I’ve not really been limited by it and am overall a relatively confident person. Yet, I’m still acutely aware how much of a footprint it has in my life.

 

It’s more of an unconscious habit about trivialities, small worries and anxieties chiming in to create little moments of insecurity and indecision. Calling a friend, where to shop, where to park, booking a holiday and so on. 

 

Having become fascinated with fear in the quest for freedom, I became more aware of its ability to dictate my existence. I noted another wrinkle in its game that I recently termed as shrinkage. The ways in which it would manifest seemed fairly insignificant, but really they were tests of character, however small. It could be a moment where we didn’t speak up about something important, not volunteering for an opportunity out of fear of failure and the effort it would require, being open and honest with someone we admire.

 

When we fail to rise to these occasions, we can really feel it, like a powerful moment of growth and opportunity was lost. We felt the call to action, like an echo of the limitlessness of our heart, but ultimately, we retreated to safety and sameness, we shrank.

 

Since I’ve made working with fear a primary practice in my life, shrinkage is something I now avoid at all costs because it’s come to represent the opposite of all that I do and that I value, things like empowerment, affirmation, positive action, aliveness and so on. Rising to challenges every day is what inspires me, it’s the embodiment of invigoration, of the value of this precious life, of making every moment count, of never letting opportunities go begging.