Speak Your Limits

August 29, 2009

The hardest thing for women is setting our limits. No wonder we get trampled. We have no limits.

Actually the hardest thing is knowing what our limits are.

No, that’s still not it. The hardest thing is knowing what it is we want in the first place. After that, we can know our limits, and then make them public. It goes against our lifelong training of politeness and keeping the peace. It requires taking responsibility.

Forget what you don’t want

We know what we don’t want. We don’t want our husbands to do this. We don’t want our kids to do this. Knowing all that isn’t really moving us forward or covering new ground. What we need to be asking is what we DO want.

Pondering.

Then we have to say it out loud. Not inside our own heads and hoping others will hear.

But once we do declare where we stand, everyone else says “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

More important, the universe needs to hear you. It feels the vacuum your question set up. Puzzle pieces that are still far away are shape-shifting and moving your way. But YOU have to ASK.

Limit long-term goals

Don’t overdefine your goals. Long-term goals because limit possibility, especially if you’re changing tracks. You don’t know what the options really are. Saying “ I will be making $150,000 a year by the time I’m 50” is rigid, like wearing blinders against to the plasticity of opportunity out there. Besides, by the time you’re halfway to the goal you thought you wanted, the scenery has shifted anyhow. It serves to set the initial course, to give you a heading, but this type of goal always feels unimaginative and uncreative. And what if you’re broke at 50? Does that mean you failed?

I have however found that trying to write down your wants, or goals if you like that label better, a most interesting exercise ONLY for finding out how much I really believe in my want, how much true energy I’m willing to put behind it. It seems your body will have huge resistance to writing something that your subconscious does not believe to be true. Be suspicious of any goal you are having trouble writing down. You can write a goal that seems closer to where you want to be than where you are now. That is plenty good enough and it still works because it’s honest and it’s the best truth you have right now. It’s like those computer games where you have to reach a certain level for the next set of clues to be revealed.

Climbing.

I think it’s also more difficult for women because we place our decision-making weight on relationships. Most of us would not take jobs that compromised our children. We give up exotic holidays because we prefer to visit family. Men tend to focus on the goal, the one goal, apart from all other goals.

Getting your wants in 8 steps

Step 1. Have an answer for the question : “WHAT Do You Want?”

Step 2. Start. You don’t need all the answers, or any answers ahead of time.

One step at a time. Just one step. What do you WANT next?

Feel fear? Not sure of what? So do it nervous. It will go away.

Step 3. Practice. The first attempt will be bad. See it coming. Don’t think about it too much. It will go away.

Step 4. Recognize a limit as whatever is pulling you away from your wants. Block it out loud in the best way you can.

Step 5. Prepare for humiliation. It’s on the path to humility. The light and the shadow. You have to take them both.

Step 6. Take a look around. Still standing. Your Deeper Self and the Universe are locking on target now.

Puzzle time.

Step 7. Notice that it is in reaching that we arrive. It is not by getting there.

Step 8. Allow yourself to receive. My worst thing. Getting out of my own way.

So many places to fail. Easy to see how hard it is to get anywhere.

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Happiness 

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