We all have limiting beliefs that keep us from reaching our goals and even dreaming our dreams. When I was twelve, I had a conversation with an adviser about my desire to be a professional piano player when I grew up. I was told if I wanted that I should have started years ago, I needed to seriously consider something else. Two common limiting beliefs were apparent in this advice. The first is that belief that we are either born gifted or not gifted. The second was that you can’t make a living as a musician.
No matter what you think about the viability of the music profession, we have all ran up against the “not gifted” road block. My husband, ironically a gifted musician trying to make a living as a guitar player, held the same limiting belief that you were either born with talent and you couldn’t learn it. Of course, he knew he was gifted but he believed he was just born that way. We had this argument all the time. I had the opportunity to watch his “giftedness” grow over the years. It didn’t just grow like a seed that falls into the soil grows into a tree. His playing got better over the years because he kept playing. He played every day. He listened to songs and imitated the guitar players he listened to. There was not a day that went by when he didn’t at least listen to a guitar lick but most days he picked up that guitar and played. And by the way, he was twelve when he got his first guitar and started learning to play. He was passionate about playing guitar, he thought about it all the time, he was focused, and he practiced every day. So yea, you could say he was born with the gift.
What limiting beliefs are holding you back? Any belief that puts constraints on what you can be or accomplish is a limiting belief. Look for words like, “I can’t…”, “I shouldn’t…”, “If only…”, or “I am too…” in your self-talk and exchange them for empowering thoughts. You have to believe you can at least try before you can ever reach your goals. You must give yourself permission to dream if you are ever going to see your dream come true.
All through school I was an acrobat. I was on the aerial troop, I was the Vice President of our High School Gymnastics club, I was a teacher assistant in gymnastics class, and I was a tumbling instructor at the community recreation center. One thing I never was able to do was the splits. I believed that I couldn’t do the splits because I was born with long legs. Most of my youth, I was the tallest girl in our tumbling classes and I was told that I didn’t have the body of a gymnast. This usually came to me indirectly when I heard grown-ups telling each other who had a body of gymnast.
It wasn’t until I was in my fifties that I heard a ballet instructor tell us, “It is not how far you can move but the intent of the movement that counts.” We learned to relax into the stretch and most of all to stretch every day and every day we will stretch just a little bit further even if we didn’t notice it. I wish I would have been told that in tumbling class as a child. There were so many messages going around that you are either born with the right body and talents of a tumbler or you weren’t. No one said, “Kim, if you want to do the splits you need to stretch every day. Only trying to do the splits once a week in class is not going to be enough.”
Over the last year, I have been avoiding certain poses that some of my younger classmates were attempting in class. I didn’t make them part of my practice because I was in my fifties, a limiting belief based on my age. I even read a yoga book that said between the ages of 50-65 one should stop practicing asanas (yoga poses) and begin concentrating their practice on meditation. Well, I am too old to stop something I hadn’t started yet. So I am going to keep on going. I am going to keep stretching and one day I am going to do the splits.
Relax into the stretch. It is the intent of the movement that counts. Setting your intention to move toward your goal is the journey towards your dreams. Stretch your limits until you break free of them!