I’m on an endless quest, and this quest is about improving myself, transcending, learning, growing, developing. My blessed obsession. Here I have four things to share with you to learn how to go further, how to go beyond your limits:
1. Ask yourself, do you live to the max?
If you want to learn how to go further and transcend, you need to know why you’ll do it. What is it that excites you never like before? And now, what agitates you the most to such an extent that you enter a state of free flow? I wonder if you’re able to point out three events or stories from your childhood where you felt you were not good enough.
If right now nobody was looking at you. Would the work you are doing make sense? If nobody saw your photos on Instagram, would it make sense to upload them? If no one cheers you up or keeps an eye on you, will you go ahead with your project, adventure or challenge? Why? Who are you trying to prove your worth to? Why? Who is the person you love the most? Why?
What would it be like to do something with you if there was nothing to achieve?
Rethink. Reduce yourself. Question yourself. Create a better version of you, the one you carry inside. We are waiting for you.
2. Feel unstoppable
How to go beyond is something reserved for people who feel unstoppable, not for those who believe they are unstoppable. Being unstoppable is perhaps something very complicated, which rarely occurs, and in most cases, it is useless. Why? Because being unstoppable depends on the perception of other people, in 95% of cases. And that will be unattainable unless you’re a pop star, an idolised athlete, a motivator with millions of subscribers or a legendary author. On the other hand, feeling unstoppable is something else entirely, feeling unstoppable has to do with your reality, with your perception.
You have to do with everything you do and can do to feel unstoppable. Part of some principles that you are developing and implementing, values that help you live on your terms. This, little by little, improved, can lead to feeling unstoppable. Here is a list of all the principles that help me. Do you already have yours?
Stop trying to be unstoppable and start working to feel unstoppable. It is part of the reason why you’re reading this.
3. Fight “your” battle without an end
Do you want to know how to go beyond your limits? You have to go further, and that requires knowing not only why, but to find what … What is your struggle?
The real battle, I believe, is against ourselves:
You fight against the bitter taste of not being enough.
You fight against your ego.
You fight against reaffirmation, against permission, against proving that you are valid.
You fight against the fear of being rejected.
You fight against the terror of appearing invisible.
You fight against the hidden need to love and be loved.
You fight against the feeling of being an impostor.
How would you handle your battle if you had the autonomy or security that nothing could go wrong?
This is what it means how to go beyond your limits.
4. Do it yourself and how to go beyond your limits
Do you want to go further? Exploring margins requires what many people don’t dare to employ. Knowing how to go also is something personal.
It’s easy to excel when you have a platform ready to launch, not when you don’t have it, and you have to build it yourself. If you’re receiving this spark, you may be creating that shuttle, you have just started, you are about to finish, or that you haven’t even started yet because you don’t know how or where to start. What is clear is that if you’re reading this, nobody has built that platform for you, just as it happened to me. It’s nothing alarming.
On the other hand, when you’re aware that nobody will do it for you, that you don’t have that extra boost, or that you can’t have a renowned mentor or teacher or high impact, you only have one thing left. To do it yourself. Build it yourself. Devise it yourself. Develop it yourself. Launch it yourself. Test it yourself.
I never had that option, like you, but I had determination, willpower, insight and daring. Look, just like you. This is how you will transcend; this is how to go beyond your limits.
5. Go far away – where nobody else reaches
Some so many people go through life, leaving things to chance. So many people prefer to wait for something to happen. And so many professionals who decide to react to their results… Many of us do just the right amount to pass the filter, leaving the rest to someone who comes and finishes it.
That mentality is what leads us to consider ourselves unsuccessful. If you think that just doing the job is good enough, you were still living in 2005.
You must know how important it is to empty yourself. Give everything. Go beyond, exceed the limit.
Doing things that way is what forces the world to pay attention to you.
When you look into someone’s eyes, you can know if they are giving 30, 50, 60 or 75%. I rarely meet people who provide 150%; it’s something that shines in their eyes. When I find them, I realise that they have an attitude that is willing to go far, above and beyond what is expected of them.
How to go beyond your limits happen when you decide to leap no matter what.
6. You will have to exceed the limit
When you travel that extra kilometre (excellence), you are forcing that unprecedented result. Do you know what separates you from reaching this point? Your inability to recognise that you have control of that last and final push that leads you to exceed the limit. Then you are in control of depositing great effort in something that others will recognise.
Yes. You have to go that far. You have to stretch your effort capacity. If you extend it beyond the average, without you looking for it, you will have eyes on you. You will make people say “Fascinating, this man/woman is the ideal candidate for the job, look at him/her, he/she is much better than anyone, much more prepared, willing and determined.”
What is at stake here is to go that extra mile, to exceed the limit. The additional 10 kilometres of the race, the 15 extra rounds in the gym, the extra 30 minutes are satisfying the customer.
We’re talking about how clean your house is every day when you leave for work, how clean your work area is, and not only that, how clean and organised you make other people’s work areas. It’s about going beyond in life and doing it because you can, then you go beyond your limits.
7. Take control
All of this is to take control and not leave things in the air. It’s a skill, not something you are born with as a gift. It’s pure excellence, it’s something that you learn, that you practice, and over time, yes, it can become a tremendous super habit.
Exceeding the limit is not a core skill that you or I have naturally. You have to win it, guess how…
You have to go further.
To the bottom.
Don’t skimp.
Wear yourself out.
Run out of breath.
Leave.
If you want to win, you have to go for it and be able to risk everything. Do everything you can, even if it is not within your reach: every time, every day.
It is the only thing that will make you stand out.
8. Say “I am willing.”
Are you willing to create a digital place that has your voice? Where do you write with your heart? Where you defend your positions and expose yourself to the world? It can be a website, a vlog or a podcast.
Are you willing to hand in an outstanding project on time?
Are you willing to turn your restlessness into something valuable for you and other people?
Are you willing to use your free time to create the opportunities you dream of?
Are you going to be willing to learn a daily lesson? With the failures and errors that will come with it?
Are you still willing to use the Internet as a tool to connect with people?
Are you willing to create something with your hands? Something provocative.
9. I would like to hear you say something like this
I am eager to leave my current job if necessary. I don’t care as long as that makes me walk down the path that belongs to me.
I must be willing to fail, not to be accepted, to be rejected, to be ridiculed. If that’s not enough, to be minimised, to self-sabotage myself. Yes Isra, I am willing to swim against cynics and destructive criticism, even to fight daily with even myself. Yes, Isra, I am more than ready, I have no other choice if I want to make a difference and appropriate the place that my life has in store for me.
I am willing
If you had to do any of these things or be ready to leave everything you appreciate most if you had to make that decision, would you do it? Yes…
The answer is yes, great. Decide as if it was already happening.
The answer is no, start training right now because that could be the answer to your dissatisfaction.
If I work every day on these kinds of decisions and point of view for 20 minutes a day, in six months, you will not only be willing but prepared and have made more progress than most of your colleagues, bosses or referents.
I am willing is more decisive than I am capable of.
10. Stop self-sabotaging you
We are part of the dull generation. Consider the following:
Stop lamenting.
Stop abandoning what you have been rejected from for the first time.
Stop being late.
Stop rambling.
Stop kicking yourself for not passing the ___________ test.
Stop being a victim because your father or mother couldn’t go to college.
Stop telling the story in which you always fail.
Stop pretending you can’t go beyond your limits.
11. “I’ve never been good”
I’m not good at math, right. I never studied for it. I wasn’t very good at writing, now, every day, I am a little better at it. Because I train every day. My speech was quite average, it’s not anymore, and I earn a good part of my profession with it. In 2011 – 2012, I worked with professional speech therapists to improve my oral expression. In addition to training until today, every day. In 2005 I had no idea what marketing was. Today it is my main professional activity, and it is my speciality. The results and my instincts show me that.
When you know that you’re not good at something, you’re right. That, in most cases, means that you have not trained to be good at whatever the skill, professional speciality, habit, sport or hobby. You may not be good at excel, of course, because you are not used to excelling, no wonder why you don’t go beyond your limits.
12. A whole soft generation
We feel pain, discomfort, injustice, frustration or uncertainty, and we abandon whatever we’re doing. We are too weak. We are a soft generation. We leave almost immediately.
The Dip explains that there is a gap between getting it and not, the emptiness is at its peak when the failure becomes more pronounced. At that point, almost 90% leave, those who follow, get it.
Understand that you have to give everything you have. There is no other way but 120%. Not 70%, not 50%, no, 120% 365 days a year. This mentality, this way of conceiving things, your work, your studies, your family, will make you take off from an average stage until you reach greatness.
I already signed this commitment. I will work the necessary hours. I will fail in all the essential things. I will do as many hours of pedalling as necessary. I will say “no” as many times as required. I will live as intensely as needed. I will start again from scratch as many times as required.
You’re either here or there. Average or large. 30% or 120%. There is no intermediate term. Leave this soft and average generation and join the training culture at 120% a day.
We’ll be waiting for you.
How to go beyond your limits is beyond your reach (great)
You need to know that I can’t control it, you need to know that it’s bigger than me, you need to know that it will beat me. Only then you know that you will go further, then you will work on how to go beyond your limits.
Photo credit: Flickr.