Don't give yourself an out

The bridge will carry you across if you watch your step. (Image credit)

A friend of mine was struggling with a new skill.

She confessed that she was “not really cut out for it.”

Regardless of her actual ability, this statement limited her results. It was a convenient place to hide.

The saying, “believe in yourself” has reached platitude status for sure. We dismiss it as meaningless because it’s too far away from our reality to grab ahold of. I’m not going to go from thinking I’m a piece of crap to believing in myself, right? It’s abstract and doesn’t have a practical, tangible action associated with it. “Don’t give up,” “don’t let go,” “hold on,” “hang in there” — there are so many little bits of guidance that don’t seem to close the gap between where we are and where we are trying to go.

So what do we do?

If we want to achieve something, we have to resist the temptation to dismiss our potential.

Once you allow for the possibility that you can’t do something, you will jump to to that explanation when things get painful or uncomfortable. You can easily explain your failure by suggesting that it was predestined.

This is not some woo-woo thing where you make your reality come true based on some mysterious force in the universe. This is purely practical: Why would you keep going when you believe that what you’re trying to do is impossible? That would make no sense. It’s logical to quit.

Therefore, in order to stick with something, you can’t give yourself an out. You cannot allow yourself to consider the possibility that you don’t have what it takes — that you just don’t have the talent.

These thoughts are highway exits you don’t have to take. You can just ignore them and stay on the road.

When you see these ideas for what they are — tempting distractions and potential diversions — you realize that you can continue right on past them. There may be many billboards advertising the charms of stopping and a road leading you away, but the highway is still beckoning you toward your true destination.

You may have a destination, but destiny is not in play. The only person who decides whether you will get there is you. If there is a judge who will say that you aren’t good enough and that you were never good enough in the first place, that judge is you.

These big ideas about our potential are attractive because they let us off the hook. When things get difficult, we can just decide it wasn’t meant to be. It’s a lot harder to keep going, wading through all the ickiness and discomfort in the knowledge that we do have what it takes.

It can be painful to realize that we’re responsible for the results we get, whatever they are. On the other hand, it can also be empowering and liberating. When you know that you can make something happen if you’ll just stick with it, such an idea is no longer a platitude. It becomes part of a plan.