During the hero’s journey it is obvious in the plot of their story, at least to the viewer, that one must lose something in order to gain something. Most notably, it is hardly ever recognized by the hero him/herself, that they must lose something in order to gain something. It is usually not until a long reflection is completed in review of the heroes long, tedious journey that they recognize their shortfalls gave them their mountain tops and that the interconnection of deep personal low’s are responsible for the preceding highs as well. In our personal lives we mask our potential in the form of comfort and use an array of mental gymnastics to make us feel as though we are doing our best, but we know deep down that we aren’t.
By default, our brains are designed to keep us from breaking out of our comfort zone in order to protect us from the world and just get by with survival and modern comfort instead. The expansion of ones consciousness to include the ability to take blind leaps of faith and push ourselves beyond our self-limiting ideology is what I believe to be, life’s greatest challenge. We most often take our modern amenities and use them to create a bubble for ourselves which shields us from the true brute force of the “real” world. Of course, your world is very much so real, but it lacks self-realization and trades it for personal comfort. The real world then in this case, is a world where you are taking vast risk and challenging yourself to see what you are actually capable of doing.
Our current reality is a direct manifestation of the thoughts we hold of ourselves, it is very easy for someone who refuses to leave their comfort zone to believe they are “ahead” of someone who has in fact taken the blind leap of faith and left their comfort zone. Many of the people (not all) who haven’t reached self-realization, do in-fact have wonderful middle class, or higher, lives which they created for themselves. Their thoughts allowed them to apply themselves at work and gain all they have around them. The illusion of a successful life by measuring comfort is a dangerous fallacy which can lead to a sense of narcissism when confronted with the fact that the individual hasn’t actually done anything close to what they are actually capable of doing, we hate being told that we are actually wasting away until we die and most usually we double down on our insisting that we are doing all we can in this life.
When confronted with opportunity, an individual consumed by consumerism and comfort will autonomously weigh their current situation against the sacrifice needed to complete the opportunity in front of them. Most often, these individuals have no ability to see the rewards or fruits of their labor in taking risk & opportunity, they can only see which comforts they will have to remove themselves from, comforts they worked hard to gain, in order to apply themselves to the opportunity presented. When matched up together, most will choose their current comfort that they earned through what I call “hard-work complacency” because it is safe. Hard work complacency is an autonomous state of complacency where you are doing your very best to stay within your comfort zone and earn a life for yourself in it.
Ironically, most will fail to recognize that not taking risk is risk in and of itself. If the individual were able to see the rewards they’d be capable of achieving had they taken the risk, they would likely find out that not taking the risk is actually the bigger risk, far greater risk than the individual otherwise would have faced if they had just taken the presented opportunity. The rewards which individuals will acquire by remaining on the beaten path of “hard work complacency” based comfort, most often pale in comparison to the available riches in self-realization, spirituality as well as physically manifested riches, if the individual had only recognized they they are most certainly capable of completing the goals set for them. Just because you cannot see what is in store for you behind an opportunity when it presents its self, is not a good enough reason to shoot it down.
Most people are so far removed from their divine center that they are only capable of seeing what is directly in front of them and cannot process a greater vision for themselves which includes their highest self. When we were children we had the ability to dream in this manner, but over time and vast social conditioning we lost that ability or exchanged it for someone else’s vision. A great man once told me that you either work for your own goals and dreams or you do so for another, there really isn’t any in-between. Even worse, other individuals self-limiting beliefs have had such a profound impact on us that it spreads like an infectious disease to every corner of our souls aspirations, we compare ourselves to others so heavily that their failure becomes ours as well.
Interestingly enough, when we make the unfortunate mistake of announcing a goal or aspiration before we have taken the necessary steps to secure it (something we are all guilty of), it is other peoples reactions which are most responsible for our lack of physical action in completing the goal we laid out for ourselves. Other peoples emotionally centered self-limiting beliefs are so powerful that we tend to question the feasibility of our own aspirations, and yet someone still walked on the moon, there is a computer in nearly every house and the “under dog” story continues to be the dominant fairy tale of American culture.
When we are confronted with situations where others complacency begins to burden us it is our responsibility to remove ourselves from that person or situation. This, however, is not usually the case because comfort and complacency are addicting and safe. In addressing your own goals and aspirations you must learn to release the language, both physical and body language, that people will give you when you begin to explain a dream which surpasses the other persons position in life and the other persons image of themselves.
As with all competitions, of which life can be categorized at times, friends and family will lead you to a safe existence where you will make it to the end of your life unscathed by lessons and risk, because it is not in their interest to lose you to higher attainment. Friends and family do not mean to hold you back on purpose, rather, they want the very best for you, just within their own lives and in their own set parameters of understanding which push a plethora of self-limiting beliefs onto you unknowingly. The blind leap of faith you must take includes removing yourself from more than just your work, town, city or state, it takes more than grit and grind and a tenacious mindset, it takes the courage to love your friends and family from a distance if need be.
I personally have been blessed with incredibly supportive friends and family, for the most part, who encouraged me to get the hell out of dodge and chase opportunities bigger than myself. Despite a supportive nucleus, I recognize most people are not as fortunate and I’ve learned a great deal from those people who have tried to get me to doubt myself in my own pursuit of happiness through their own self-limiting projections. The truth of the matter is that I've honestly never met a person who decided to take the leap of faith to reach their fullest potential, who was ever disappointed in the end, I have yet to find that person. I’m not saying that some people do not fail, instead I’m arguing that the failure they may have faced if in-fact they did actually fail, led to a significantly better quality of life from lessons learned than if they had remained on the beaten path. There is a chance, as with all risk, that you bottom out and totally fail, but I argue that these failures can only add to your character and have the ability to position themselves in such a way that the same failure faced can put you in different opportunity where you succeed, opportunity not available had you not taken the original risk to fail.
In order to put ones self in the position to attain ones highest potential, the individual must begin to define their aspirations clearly and with a passionate and emotionally connected vision of what that success looks like. Your subconscious know this, and individuals teetering on the edge of taking the leap or remaining on the beaten path, hear it calling them clearly. Like a lighthouse trying to bring the ships into the harbor, your subconscious and divine center is hyper-aware of your capabilities and begs you, all the time, to take your potential and harness it, develop it and accept it. It is only a combination of self-limiting beliefs which keep you chained to complacency like a prisoner in your own body. Most limitations are not inherent at all and besides basic instincts of fundamental survival needs discussed earlier, they are not wired into you. These limitations are conditioned over an extensive period of time and derived from the individuals unknowingly teaching them to us. Because limitations are not inherent, the most considerate way to begin retraining your conscious to listen to your subconscious is to recognize what a self-limiting belief sounds like and begin to dismantle the logic and rationale behind it. Doing so will set you free.
Self limiting beliefs can sound like a multitude of things, they can sounds like “man, I don’t know, are you sure that’s a good idea? you got it pretty good where you’re at”. They can sound like “sounds like you need to calm down and take a break before you go and do something stupid like leave to chase something that isn’t even guaranteed”. They can sound like dozens, even hundreds of other things; it is your job to recognize all of them and once you do, try writing them down. You don’t always need to address it with the individual expressing their limitations on you, I don’t, I just simply listen to them, thank them for their consideration, reflect on the situation and remove my emotional response to it before carrying on with my original intended goal, which is deeply connected to me emotionally. Ignoring self-limiting ideals does not mean you have to ignore the advice of everyone you come in contact with, and with such, you will need to know when you are being mentored and when you are being denied by others based on their perception of themselves.
Addressing years of conditioning to begin the arduous process of reaching your truest potential is not something which will take place over night, it will take months and years and it will hurt at times. The never ending saga of recognizing your thoughts as a product of your reality will lead you to a life which threatens others comfort zones, and the further you move forward, the more resistance you will face. Eventually you will reach a point where the uncomfortable resistance is no longer uncomfortable, but expected, and in contrast to where you started, you will be able to see just how far you’ve truly come, the reflection point in the heroes journey. Despite vast pain, personal sacrifice and the inevitable loss you will face, the preceding joy’s, personal gain and inevitable doors which will open for you, far outweigh the risk of remaining a product of someone else’s self-limiting doubts and behavior.
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