In this morning’s yoga class, our instructor talked about how we all face limitations. and working up to, and accepting those limitations can be very freeing, sometimes allowing you to push further than you thought you could go. I took that thought very literally during the class, to mean physical limitations, like the pain in my knee making it difficult or painful to be in squat pose. Before this class I would “breath through the pain” not accepting it, ignoring it. But today I took a different approach.  I used a block, and a folded blanket to add support, and that allowed me to recognize the limitation, then go a little further beyond it.

Later, as I thought about this concept, I realized that limitations can also mean things like resources, time, skills, credentials, opportunity – the list goes on and on.  I’ve committed to write a blog post every day for the month of November! That can really make you realize your limitations, like lack of time, and lack of ideas, and time… and ideas.  But if you’re serious, you can look at things differently, and creatively overcome perceived limitations.

I don’t like limitations, or the thought of not being able to do something. It feels harsh like opression, like rules, and right away my first instinct is impatience, I want to break those limiting rules. But now I’ve realized that I can also look at limitations a little more gently, more like borders or boundaries. (or as Captain Jack Sparrow says, “more like guidelines”) and those borders can be accepted, and then pushed rather than broken. Sometimes an obstacle, or boundary can help you look at things in a different way, like little opportunities to creatively solve the problem. Sometimes limitations can help you transform a routine task by taking a different approach.

Stephen Covey said “we are all limited, but we can push back the borders of our limitations.”  I pushed the borders of my ability to attain a yoga pose, and looked at things a little differently in order to create a blog post.  What are you doing today to push the borders of your limitations?