Conquer Your Impossibilities

First of all, a quick update on my goals:

 

1. I have joined the Live Your Legend course and am in the second week. It is going pretty well, as per my expectations

2. I have resumed the work on my book, but am yet to pick up steam. Will have to focus and invest more time on this goal

3. The exercise routine has begun, and has gone well so far. Have not missed a day in the last two weeks (Yay!)

 

Now, among other things, I am currently reading the book “Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert. I like it so far, and feel eager to get back to the book whenever possible. One thing that really caught my attention in the book was an example of experimenting with oneself, a topic that has popped up again and again in my readings lately, and which seems to have the potential to change one's life.

 

So Elizabeth Gilbert, or Liz (as she calls herself in the book,) who is looking for peace and God in an ashram in India, is facing immense difficulty in trying to concentrate during meditation. She finds it impossible to still her mind, and gets extremely frustrated. Which is when someone tells her about Vipassana – an ancient meditation technique which requires  serious work and discipline from its students. An introductory Vipassana meditation class lasts for ten days, and the students are expected to sit still in silence for ten hours a day, in stretches of two to three hours at a time. It is gruelling, of course, but the point of this meditation is that if you can still yourself for long enough, you will realize that all discomfort – an inevitable part of life – eventually goes away.

 

This motivates Liz, to try and sit still for just "one hour of her long life," and meditate. However, she sits down to do this only to realize that she has chosen dusk to meditate in a garden in India, which means that mosquitoes are going to eat her alive. The thought of putting this off for a better time enters her mind, to be immediately quelled by another thought – that there never seems to be a good time to meditate for her. There are constant distractions in everyday life, so this time is as good as any other. Therefore, as an experiment, she decides to sit through the pain and itch of mosquito bites for an hour. She wants to see if she can endure this. Eventually, she ends up sitting there for about two hours, absolutely thrilled with this newly acquired self-knowledge – that she could do something she had not imagined possible in thirty two years of her life. It is a small feat, but it brings about a whole new understanding of who she is...who she can be. "What will I be able to do tomorrow that I can not do today?" - she wonders.

 

Which brings me to Scott Dinsmore of Live Your Legend, who asserts that everything was impossible till somebody did it. We tend to limit ourselves by our thoughts. We are perhaps constrained by ideas that have been drilled into our minds since childhood. Many-a-time these ideas – which did not even originate from us – stop us from realizing our full potential. Scott believes, that through experiments, we can break this chain. Through experiments, we can test the limits we live with, and push them away. Through experiments, we can get to know ourselves better. Through experiments, we can generate possibilities.

 

For those of you who are excited by this idea, here is a suggestion: think of something that you consider to be your own impossibility today. It could be anything – getting up early in the morning (big one for me), losing a few kilograms of weight, running for one kilometre – anything that you think is impossible for you to do. Now imagine, what if you proved yourself wrong? What if you could beat this impossibility to pulp, and stand on top of it, exhilarated. Would it inspire you to do something else that you consider impossible? Would you be amazed at your own capabilities? Try it, if your want. Experiment.

 

I have been experimenting with becoming an early riser. I have improved, but haven't reached where I want to be. Anyone who knows me personally, knows that it used to be IMPOSSIBLE for me to get up early in the morning. Here is a photo defining me in my college days, just to give you an idea.

And here I am, talking about, and trying to overcome this impossibility, through my experiments with myself. As my husband says, for me to even talk about voluntarily waking up at 5 AM, is to have overcome a psychological impossibility. Well, one thing I know for sure. If I can do this...there is little else I can't do.