In this issue: Limited or Limitless… Choosing Your Pain

+ Having the Right Tools and Key Takeaways

In this issue: Limited or Limitless… Choosing Your Pain / Stutz / Change your mind with these gateway drugs to intellectual humility / The Lighter Side of Being Limitless

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I'm Andrea J. Miller and this is my “On Leading Well” Newsletter. I send this to people in my networks, people I’ve met recently, and friends I want to keep in touch with. You can unsubscribe (SEE THE VERY BOTTOM OF THE EMAIL) anytime, I won’t be offended

Limited or Limitless… Choosing Your Pain + Having the Right Tools and Key Takeaways

From the moment we’re born, we begin to learn our “limits”.

Some are necessary and for the better, and others, well not so much.

Parents, teachers, and society, in general, tell us who we are, what we’re good at, and what we should avoid.

We learn…

She’s the smart one, he’s the creative one, and that one, well that one is the troublemaker (personally I prefer future entrepreneurs :).

It starts simply and well-intentioned.

Pretty quickly, these messages become ingrained.

Your mother tells you not to climb so high or else you might fall.

Eventually, you listen (or not) and you learn to not go quite so far.

It becomes a habit.

Your norm.

In everything you do.

And whether you recognize it or not we all have areas in our lives where perhaps a few poorly placed words early in life turned into lasting limitations that now hold you back.

I see it all the time with my clients,

Ironically, most often those with the greatest potential.

In the Land Without Limitations

If you read my recent piece, you know I’ve started testing some of my limits by joining a strength training program.

It’s been an interesting choice for someone who normally lives with varying degrees of chronic pain to self-inflict even more pain on myself.

It would’ve been easier and more comfortable to just accept my limits.

But one day, I received a text about a Challenge, and after some (read a lot) of deliberation, I decided I had more to gain than to lose.

The painful choice was doing nothing.

Though the hardest step was walking in the door, I wasn’t prepared for how far I’d be pushed out of my comfort zone, and past my usual limitations.

It would’ve been easy for me to do the minimum.  After all, I signed up and went, so I received my dopamine hit (yay me!)

But I soon found out that that wasn’t possible in the Land without Limitations aka @SweatDC.

The team never asked me what my limitations were, all they asked was that I try and then, try a bit harder.

In fairness, they asked nicely :).

And if I really couldn’t do something (because of my surgeries, etc) they helped me (and the rest of the packed class) find ways to still do the exercises and exceed my goals.

In other words, by creating of an environment of encouragement and an attitude of not yet, but soon, I was able to do (far) more than I had believed possible.

We (I) tend to think that when we can’t do something at the moment that we can’t do it at all.

This can be particularly problematic at work because things tend to be needed yesterday, and people often lack the time, tools, and support they need to do the heavier lift and feel the joy in having surpassed their limitations.

Companies and the individuals who make them successful lose out because of this.

It diminishes everyone’s potential. 

While the disco lights and music at my gym probably wouldn’t be great for overall productivity the attitude of limitlessness could potentially change hearts, minds, and the bottom line.

It’s the difference between coaching and just managing people.

The environment created and how we approach others and ourselves can make all the difference between working small and achieving your limitless potential.

The Reversal of Desire and Key Takeaways

There’s a great book by Phil Stutz (See the link below to the documentary by Jonah Hill about him in my Recommended List) called The Tools.

The book goes through five tools that Stutz and his co-author, Barry Michaels put together after years of working with patients and finding that therapy just wasn’t achieving the desired results.

In Tool #1, The Reversal of Desire, they state, “Life provides endless possibilities, but along with them comes pain. If you can’t tolerate pain, you can’t be fully alive.”

Not surprisingly most of us tend to avoid the pain, like the kind that comes from pushing past our limits and possibly feeling a bit embarrassed or failing.

However, this limits us, creating a different type of pain....the pain of regret and living small.

As Stutz and Michaels discuss, if we want to live our best lives, we need to “reverse our desire” to play small and get out of our comfort zones and go for the heavier weight.

Sometimes that requires outside help, like going to a supportive gym, but as you build that muscle and get stronger, it starts to become easier…until, of course, you move on to the next challenge.

So, I ask you, what challenges are you ready to take on?

Five Key Takeaways for Creating Stronger People & Teams

1.    Say Yes and Show Up: Often the hardest part is just saying yes and walking through the door. Congratulate yourself and your team when you/they do.

2.    Set Yourself/Your Team Up for Success: You’ve made it through the door, the question then becomes how you ensure you/they will come back again. Create norms or a personal understanding that it’s not necessarily about nailing it on the first attempt, but about the willingness to try, give your all, and continue to progress. Create a level of safety so that if you don’t immediately achieve your goal you know it’s possible and want to come back again and again until you do.

3.    Limitless Thinking: Don’t ask yourself or your team what you can’t do, ask what you can and keep building on that. It’s easy to get stuck with where you’ve been, the old stories you told, etc. You can’t expect to be an expert in anything when you’re just getting started.

4.    Stronger Together: Loneliness is at an all-time high, yet the research shows that people with friends stay longer and are more productive. Make learning/doing a team effort, where people support, learn, and grow together.

5.    Have Fun: Maybe you won’t install the disco lights and blast loud music, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create and make it fun.

When people are having fun, it can boost the happiness hormones of dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin. Whatever you do becomes more enjoyable. It can also become somewhat addictive, in the most positive sense, because people just associate what they’re doing with feeling good and want to do more.

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RECOMMENDED LISTENS, READS And other interesting things

Stutz

In his new documentary, Jonah Hill focuses on the therapist he says changed his life. Unlike many therapists whose primary approach is to sit back and listen, Stutz prefers to take a more active role in the process: He says his goal is to find out what his patients truly want and give them tangible steps to get there.

Change your mind with these gateway drugs to intellectual humility

If you want to change your mind about all the things you are wrong about, you must first consider what might be motivating you to remain blissfully unaware of your wrongness.

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The Lighter Side of Limits

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Andrea J. Miller

+1 (646) 556-5401 (Whatsapp)