Topic: Newsletters
Your Limitations Are All in Your Head
An excerpt from
Count Your Blessings: The Healing Power of Gratitude and Love
by John F. Demartini
Do the thing, and you will have the power.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dear Friends and Students,
Are you in your own way?
Many people have a long list of reasons to explain why they’re not doing what they love, but few of them objectively examine their reasons and look for underlying fears. The reality is that there’s a hidden fear behind every imagined limitation, including sickness. As much as we may be tempted to blame other people or outside circumstances for our current condition in life, sooner or later we realize that we attract and create our own limitations. And while that may be a humbling reality, it’s also an inspiring one.
Since we attract or create our own limitations, we can also break through them. Not by repressing, ignoring, or denying them, but by learning to love them. Yes! Love them. Because anything we don’t love runs us and inhibits our inspired actions with fear. Our limitations represent all the aspects of ourselves and others that we haven’t learned to love and appreciate yet. So each time we take an honest look at a limit or a block, we give ourselves an opportunity to love and to reach a higher level of awareness.
Every one of us has the creativity and ability necessary to rise above our own limitations. But sometimes the limitations feel comfortable and the idea of achieving our dreams frightens us, and that’s when we’re most tempted to sabotage our own efforts. That’s the frame of mind in which I found a young man named Jeremy when we met on an airplane. I was working on my laptop computer when Jeremy sat down beside me and introduced himself. When he asked what I was working on, I told him I was writing a book about the mind, body, heart, and soul connection, and the healing properties of inspiration and unconditional love. He nodded his head, but his eyes glazed over, and for the next half hour he was silent. It wasn’t until the flight attendant brought our meals that he said, “You know, I can’t believe I’m sitting here next to someone who’s writing a book. Do you know how long I’ve been wanting to write a book? How can I get from wanting to write a book, and talking about writing a book, to writing one actually?” he asked.
I explained to Jeremy that the only difference between wanting to write a book and actually writing one required taking action steps. “When I begin a book,” I said, “I know that it’s a process, and I know that the book will change as the process continues.”
Jeremy’s eyes widened. “So you just do it. You just write one page at a time and you like some stuff and you don’t like other stuff and you change things, but you just keep writing until you have the book that you want!”
“Yes,” I said, “that about sums it up.”
Jeremy shook his head, smiling. “You have no idea how much what you just said means to me! For years I’ve been afraid to type a single word on my computer as if it’s somehow getting chipped into stone or something. Writing a book is like doing anything else! It doesn’t have to be perfect from the start, nothing is. Everything I do is a process ... Wow.”
I haven’t run into Jeremy again since that conversation, but I’m sure that he’s much closer to writing his book than he was before he realized that he was creating his own limitations.
Feel the fear, but don’t let it stop you.
-Anonymous
Whatever you feel uncomfortable about – and don’t love – is stopping you.
Gratitude and Wisdom,
Dr. John F. Demartini.
DeMartini Newsletters
