I’m fine with not knowing how to do something before I start doing it. In fact, that’s one of my strengths. For as long as I can remember, I have been very comfortable with ambiguity, and happy to set sail towards something, without knowing how I am going to get there.
Initially, I didn’t know this approach wasn’t normal. As I get older and wiser, I realise that this type of strength is very rare – and comes with its own set of weaknesses.
It is hard to live in a dual space – handling practical day-to-day life as well as designing your long-term travel towards a limitless future. For a long time, it would be fair to say that I struggled to live with the practicalities of the day-to-day; instead, spending all my time in the infinite possibilities of the future.
This might well be the source of much of my frustration with the world when I was growing up, I realise. Now, I have become much more compassionate to individuals’ need for certainty. Consequently, I spend a lot of time coaching people and organisations to explore limitlessness, in order to challenge their thinking and their mindset.
In this context, limitlessness is about the exploration of possibilities, and the belief that a way will be found: there is always a way.
Through spending deep time in the infinite with so many people, I have learnt more about the nuances and practicalities of doing limitless exploration whilst maintaining daily reality and life. I have by no means become limitless; nor am I grounded in the day-to-day reality that many face. However, I have learnt a lot by holding onto the possibility that there are ways to live in both worlds at the same.
Culturally, we have this incredible drive for certainty and order – which influences the daily choices we make, and how most of our society is structured. But in a fast-changing, complex world, certainty is getting harder and harder to find. It also takes increasing amounts of individual and collective energy to hold onto it and maintain the status quo.
The trouble is, it isn’t going to get any easier. The platforms of reality we stand on are burning, things becoming ever more uncertain. Our jobs, our industries, our governments, are all under pressure, in different ways, from this explosion of change. And that can be terrifying for many people. At some level, the need for certainty in an uncertain world is also contributing to an explosion in anxiety.
And yet, as an accompaniment to this change, on the flipside of that uncertainty, this era also offers us an explosion of possibilities. With enough ingenuity, time, resources and effort, anything is becoming possible.
Rather than spending our lives desperately seeking certainty, the super-skill to be learnt in our times is how to be comfortable with uncertainty. We need to become grounded in the practical day-to-day, whilst being comfortable that it might soon change – or need to be changed. Taking regular time for limitless exploration is a way of bridging these worlds. Even if it’s just for an hour a month, spending some time in boundaryless contemplation and consideration helps to unlock some of the challenges of the day-to-day.
There are some challenges in doing this well. To explore limitlessness, consider accepting that whatever you are doing is only a tiny fraction of your potential. This is not so easy when we live in a culture of perfectionism, based on showing the world that we know it all and have everything together. You will find it much easier if you are comfortable in your own skin, and content with the fact that you might never achieve a fraction of what you are capable of. To achieve a happy life in limitlessness, one has to learn to enjoy the journey – since the destination is unreachable.
To explore limitlessness, it helps to learn to navigate in uncharted territory. Again, this is not so easy in an evidence-based world, where satisfactory answers are demanded before you proceed. Move away from navigating solely by what others think, or from the lessons in the world around you. Learn to trust more the wisdom of your own inner compass.
To explore limitlessness, try to identify barriers you can’t see. Ask questions like, “Is my goal or desire what I really want, deep down?” To gain what you want to happen in the world, do you really need to be the one to do it, yourself? Something as simple as repeatedly asking ourselves, “Why?” also reveals the hidden barriers we have in our own mindsets, or the self-imposed ‘rules’ we live under.
It is easier to explore limitlessness when you are thriving. Consider your own human needs and meet them first, before you explore the world around you in a limitless way. Your mind will kick back at the very thought of limitless thinking if your basic human needs are not met, beforehand. To carve out even an hour for yourself to be boundaryless, it helps to feel well-supported and healthy.
The exploration of limitlessness is not just about the big goals. It’s also about not struggling with the small things. In my own life, the limits have not been in the expansiveness of my thinking; but in how I constricted my own joy in relation to the constraints around me. I am becoming more limitless, now, because I have less desire for things to be a certain way. I am becoming more limitless because I have less desire altogether. It’s through cultivating shifts in perception that I sense the limitless wonder of any given moment.
Take the time to experiment with limitlessness: exploring your current life with the limitations removed. My experience is that regular time spent on this practice creates regular breakthrough.
- How well do you juggle practical daily life with limitless possibility?
- What limits or boundaries do you place on yourself? Why? (And for every answer you give, keep asking, ‘why?’)
- What time will you commit to exploring your world without the boundaries you currently have in place? How will you make sure that you do this?
- Imagine how creating regular time for limitless exploration will open up more opportunities for you, over time. What great things might happen?
To exploring limitlessness.
Marc
Buy Me a Coffee
Did you love this article? If so please consider buying me a coffee.
Take The 50 Coffee Adventure
A Fun, Light and Easy Way to Build Connections
Or search your local Amazon store for "The 50 Coffee Adventure".
I love this post, so true and deep! That’s a bestie 🙂 Wow, thank you!
I am glad is resonated for you. 🙂
Thanks Mark. I was practicing this exact principle tonight as I put my two daughters to bed. My limited mind that loves certainty wanted them to be quiet, lie still and go to sleep, while my limitless mind was reminding me how they will only be this young and cute and wanting me to cuddle them to sleep for a short time longer, and how precious these moments are. Living without limits is possible and powerful and beautiful. Thanks so much for sharing this wisdom with us all.
Our little ones are such powerful teachers. Thank you for sharing Sarah.
speak my limitless mind , ..haha , thanks Marc, do you remember 43 things, One of mine was living out my limitlessness…I just now thought of posing a statement, rather than question, ,and thus your article came up…as well as…haha…here’s the statement first…”I am living out my limitlessness therefore I …… ” ….preach to a church….so you can be my church today brother, hope your mother is well, and loving life, vegan life, shameless plug for vegans. …nice to read your article, and thank you for sharing…obviously one must resolve that practical daily life is totally impractical, and that radical transformation, or subtle re-membering is a far greater substance to realising potential unlimited. That which transforms us…is us. So just what is practical…simply a practice of beliefs that give results as expected, so in essence , enslavement to the mind ..haha, …yet if your Mind is free, unlimited, your beliefs may not transpose you..but be one with you,,,U, …love in essence