Learn Inspire Fight Excel

Our only limitation is that we don’t know our limits. ~Mikavelli~

People live with the attitude that the ONE life we have will last forever, but facts tell us that we can’t. Everything living comes to an end, right?

But LIVING is relative and subjective. The breathing and heart-beating (physical) aspect might come to an end, but legacies, thoughts, and ideas have its way of continuing to exist without necessarily taking a physical form. This is called “inspiration“.

Some people live many lives, and experience changes. The life that worked at 21 is not always the same life we want at 35 – in essence, we don’t just limit ourselves to one LIFE. LIVING is about exploring, experimenting, and experiencing. What we take from our experiences defines our character, and the more experiences we have, the more we know our limits.

However, until those experiences are had, everything is infinite. The importance of an experience is that it tells us what our limits are.

But what we take from the experience is how to accept those limits. As a kid, we are encouraged to go out there and make things happen. As a teenager, we try to make those things happen. As a young adult, you start to realise those limitations and why certain things might’ve been impossible as a kid.

Then comes enlightenment: to fight or to walk away. We reach that stage in life where we go beyond cognition, we go beyond the pros and cons lists we can logically make. We reach experience, and that is something which can’t be taught or transferred. Cognition is something that any logical person can comprehend by reading a book or an article. Experience is transformative, it’s something that you feel and then learn how to cope or grow.

We can never force someone to have an experience; force can only lead someone to understand a concept from a logical, formulation point of view. But to truly teach, educate, and inspire, we must allow others to have that experience for themselves, and allow them to experiment different strategies for themselves.

We can never tell someone what to think, only how to experience. And when the world reaches that mutual point where this can be experientially understood, then we’ll realise that every system ever created by man was simply to compensate for an insecurity that springs from lack of experience.

The more you read, the more you realise what it is you don’t know. The more you communicate, the more you see how others think. The more you travel, the bigger the world begins to seem – which means the more possibilities arise and you don’t feel like you only have one reality.

But the more you experience, the more transformed you become. And when you reach that point, you’ll discover what really matters – and none of these discoveries ever include lots of money or material items.

Everyone comes to that realisation in their own time, but step one is the same for everyone: get out of your comfort zone and make those experiences, because it’s your life and no one will live it for you. Those without experiences will, at best, understand you cognitively.

Yet those with experiences will guide you, because not know can they grasp your situation cognitively, but experientially. And people like that truly understand how to balance feelings and logic.

The reality of being rational: embrace both emotions as well as logic, and go with your instincts because your logic will fall into place naturally.

Stop falling into the 21st century trap where everything appears to happen immediately. Remember that the first humans were not created in the 21st century – we have never evolved. We still live in caves (little blocks of personal space called a bedroom) and we still eat dinosaurs (birds – including chickens – DNA has been scientifically proven to be evolved from dinosaurs).

Humans appear to have progressed, but evidently it just meant denying human nature. Embrace your human nature and apply it in the real world.

That’s balance. And that, is called accepting our limits. Go and find out which ones you can push, and don’t force the ones that can’t be done. We can never shut off our emotions, but that doesn’t mean all of our reactions have to be emotional. Our actions will be rational if we experience our emotions, not analyse them.

If you want emotional analysis, talk to a psychologist – but on a daily basis, embrace the emotion, know where it comes from, and understand why it makes you feel that way. Then go ahead and feel it, express it, and keep doing whatever you need to ensure long-term happiness. (Hint: keeping up with the latest trends is not long-term. It’s just unnecessary stress to distract you from your real stress).

So go forth and make things happen. Experience the feeling, and apply it in your situation. It really is that simple.

References
1. The Experiential Learning Cycle (Alberton, 2013)
2. T-Rex Protein Confirms Bird-Dinosaur Link (National Geographic)