Embrace Your Limits
July 6, 2005 by Stephen Shapiro
A little more than a week ago, I was giving a friend a piggy-back ride. I lost my balance and fell forward on the sidewalk – with the weight of my friend falling on my head. Rather than my hands breaking my fall, my nose broke my fall…and my nose broke in the process. I have a huge gash on my nose and upper lip. A dozen stitches later, I look like Frankenstein’s ugly brother. While waiting 6 hours in the emergency room for the plastic surgeon, I contemplated the coming days and weeks. A time which would be a real test of my ability to “Embrace my limits.”
My looks were my shadow side – one of my limits. We may not want to admit it, but in our society, looks do matter. And I always had a deeply rooted belief that my looks contributed to and were critical to my successes in life. So, throughout my life, I lived in fear of the day when my looks — and hence my success — would vanish. That day is now here. When I look in the mirror I don’t see me anymore. Only bruises, gashes, stitches, dried blood, and open wounds.
A few days after the accident, I decided that I was well enough to venture out into the real world. I wandered down to a local nightclub. Rather than trying to hide my face, I walked in proud and confident. When people asked what happened, I would share with them the story. I definitely was not looking for sympathy. I wanted to be treated just the way I had always been treated. And I was. What I realized is that these bumps and bruises have not changed me in any substantial way. In fact they have freed me. Freed me from a hidden (and unhealthy) vanity that used to drive me at a subconscious level. This doesn’t mean I will no longer care about my looks. It only means that I am freed from the pressure of having to look good.
By recognizing and embracing your limits – the things that have a stranglehold on you – you can free yourself to be who you really are. When you do this, you realize that no matter what happens, no one can take away the real you.
Update September 15. My face is healing quickly and I am almost back to my “original” looks. In case you don’t know what I look like, click here
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Comments
3 Responses to “Embrace Your Limits”
Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
Additional comments powered by BackType
Do you have a question about making your company more innovative, leaner and competitive?
Contact Stephen directly at email:
Wow, what an experience! And you are taking it and running with it. Good for you. I have been enjoying reading your thoughts on goal free living and it’s really been on my mind recently.
I stumbled across your web site today and sucumbed to my curious state. Goal free living, how contrary to the stuff forced down me since childhood. I have seldom successfully done the goal thing. It some how runs against my nature to live life with some spontananity. The word flow appeals to lovers of freedom and originality. The setting of goals according to someone elses suggestion immediately puts you on there path to some degree, changes the flow if you will. Whoa says I. Do not take me off my path. It may be a bad path or it may be a good path but it is my path. If I devert my attention to this goal preparation at someones beheast, I will probably, to some degree, put down those goals the goal pusher wants, which leads me away from my inner path, brought to me by all my natural faculties. Now it may be that my faculties are not so good, or perhaps the goal pushers faculties are not so good. Should I trust him or me. There-in lies the rub. It reminds me of a line in an old country and western song, “I can make my own mistakes just fine”.
I was a handsome lad of 5’11″, good athelete and of reasonable sharp wit and confidence. I am now 50 and have a bald spot on top since I was 20. After I had losts the upper most part of my hair, I was rejected by some women (or so I preceived it) for much the same reason (while in my glorious full head of hair youth) I used to reject other women whom were deemed less that perfect, and therefore not worthy, only just months before. What goes around… etc.. Oh, the pain to a formerly blond haired, confident, teststostrone infused young man. It was a lesson.
After I concluded that I had to eat my spinach, whether I liked it or not, many other wonderful things became available to me. The spinach (yuk) porvided me with some strengths which may have evaded for many years. perhaps forever. It has helped aliviate (not eliminate) the judging of people by their looks, bringing many pleasant acquintances which is a bounty most cases.
So the goal free living idea struck some harmonious chord. A song not often sung in recent years in western thinking. At first blush I was skeptical and still reserve a healthy dose to be applied as needed. The feel of it all is a little to close to the whole self improvement mish-mash, but lets not throw out the baby with the bath water. It is just so many people spend their time and hard earned money instead of just their time in honest thought, not just 60 seconds but deep consideration of our lives and directions.dive. The long and short of it is bravo for striking out and taking the
Congratulations for reinventing yourself from the inside out through this challenge. You might enjoy to have a look to storyteller David Roche’s web site, someone to further enlighten your reinterpretation of beauty and worth from his own alchemist experience of mastering the transmutation of his shadow into soulful and fun art:
http://www.davidroche.com/programs_love2ndsight.htm
I would love to have the opportunity sometime to attend to one of his performances or workshops.