The Park Bench – Argue for Your Limitations and They Will be Yours

The story goes that in front of the town sat a man on a park bench ready to greet newcomers to the small village. The first person to come sat by the greeter and asked to about the type of community that he was entering, are they friendly, can I trust them, is it safe, will I feel at home here? The kindly man listened carefully and before responding asked his guest to tell him about what his prior community would be like. Upon hearing how it had been filled with people who could not be trusted and were motivated only be their own greed and self-interest, the man sadly acknowledged that his new guest would likely find a similar sort in this new community as well.

Time passed and another visitor came and sat beside the greeter and asked a similar set of questions however also shared that their prior community had felt more like family than she had ever experienced before, something that she deeply missed having had to make this move. The greeter acknowledged her loss and provided encouragement in that they were very likely to find a new and similar sense of community over time in this new home.

Richard Bach, in Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah presents one of my favorite lines, ” Argue for your limitations and they will be yours".

It has been said that our minds conserve energy and on some levels may even be “lazy” in an effort to triage and manage competing demands. Carlone Webb in, “How to Have a Good Day” provides a tremendous wealth of resources to more effectively manage our minds and avert going on “automatic pilot” recreating patterns and experiences despite being within new environments full of new opportunities and possibilities.

I challenge you to consider if you have been “arguing for your limitations”, consider learning more about “cognitive bias” and experiment with strategies to expand your understanding of what is possible and how your default thought process may be arguing more for your limitations than your possibilities.

I further challenge you to look for contrasting evidence especially if you find yourself saying “it always...” or “it never….”  A powerful coaching tool is to ask yourself and perhaps journal, “what if….” An additional powerful tool is to “look backwards” , visualize yourself in a situation that you desire and allow yourself time to deeply explore and integrate what this experience would look and feel like while setting aside your “automatic thoughts” that it could “never” be. When you feel a flicker or more of “maybe” you have spent the minimum about of time visualizing, now take time to identify one or more steps you could take here and now to move closer to this desired experience.

“A Choice Made Creates Its Own Path”, author unknown…. I encourage you to choose again and choose in the direction of your dreams, it is possible.

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