Defining Our Limitations

The last couple of days have been fun… living in “la la” land… imagining a different reality, listing all of our awesome qualities, detailing what we’d like our lives to be. A dream… or dreams… that we wish would come true. And yet they don’t. At least, they haven’t yet…. so what’s up with that?

And this is where today’s exercise comes in. We’re going to “get real” and make a list of all the reasons why we can’t have that alternate reality. Kind of a downer, I know… but here goes.

Take a look back at your personal visions of prosperity. The ones you wrote down in your notebook yesterday. And make a note of all the reasons why they can’t come true. Fill in and finish the following sentence (I can’t … because …) as many times as you can. Be detailed. Be ruthless. Be real.

Here are some examples:

• I can’t lose weight because I like to eat too much.
• I can’t get fit because I hate to exercise.
• I can’t fix the plumbing because I don’t know how.
• I can’t go on a trip because I don’t have any money.
• I can’t have a bunch of money because I don’t have a great job.
• I can’t have a great job because I don’t know how to do anything useful.

Be sure to actually write these down, because tomorrow we’re going to work on our “I can’t” statements some more. We’re going to rework and rewrite them, and maybe even learn something useful in the process.

VERY IMPORTANT  – do not take any of these “I can’t” statements seriously… and don’t dwell on them… or let them take you down… We are listing them because we need to look at the stories we tell ourselves. We need to find the stories that stop us from doing what we love, that stop us from being who we want to be, that stop us from enjoying ourselves and our lives. We are simply exploring the words we use to define our experiences… we are NOT going on a downward spiral of self hatred and defeatism.