Live Limitless

Everyday we awaken to choices. You likely choose to start your day by making your bed and brushing your teeth, then move on to whatever tasks prepare you for the day. If you aren’t doing those very basic things, start over, then finish reading this. 

We all have our routines that we walk through, but which part of that routine is stopping you from living limitless? 

Living limitless isn’t about doing everything that you want or desire. Let’s be honest—often what you want isn’t what you need. I have wanted and gotten many things in life that were not the best for me, and surely didn’t create the results on my sphere of influence and world as expected. 

To live limitless is about understanding that your limits are always set by you, and the drive that you have to achieve more for yourself comes from deeply within your heart and mind. It truly is all up to you. You will always be your only roadblock in this adventure we call life. 

A great film in 2011 called Limitless starred Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. Cooper plays Eddie Morra, a struggling writer looking for motivation. Early in the film he meets with his ex-wife’s brother Vernon who passes along a nootropic drug known as NZT-48. The drug turns his life around and increases his mental acuity creating a “Limitless” opportunity at life. 

Newsflash: there is no secret pill to take that will get you to be limitless—it’s changes in patterns and choices in your daily activity that will get you there. 

We all get sore from the workout or that long run. The question is do you wake up and go back the next day, or sit by the edge of the bed in the morning and convince yourself that today it isn’t in the cards. I haven’t met a single person that won’t lack motivation at times—the difference is how you face that personal adversity, get your ass up and make moves towards success. Especially when it sucks. Truthfully that’s when it matters the most. 

As I traversed through Naval gunnery school at TSC Great Lakes in the early 2000’s our instructors would speak to “embracing the suck.” In their books on leadership and development The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win and Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win former Navy SEALs Jocko Willink and Leif Babin speak to this concept of thinking often. 

There is another book built entirely around the mantra, Embrace the Suck: The Navy SEAL Way to an Extraordinary Life by Brent Gleeson. 

Life is constantly going to throw roadblocks that are unexpected your way. Those are usually the easiest to overcome. They become present with an explosive discovery in your life that must be handled right then or there receiving all the focus and attention you have at that time. 

The hardest roadblocks to overcome are the ones you put before yourself—often purposefully whether you want to admit it or not. You will always be your worst enemy when it comes to progress and living limitlessly simply because the only person you have to convince to have a lack of motivation is you. That is often the easiest sale you will ever make. 

I have spoken to this example before and often, but it fits so well here again. Darren Hardy in The Compound Effect speaks of Beverly, a salesperson at an educational software company he was advising in the past. 

She opened up about how a friend was set to run a half-marathon and how she “could never do such a thing.” Beverly—who was overweight at the time—said that she “got winded going up a single flight of stairs” and there was no way she could ever join her friend in the half-marathon pursuit. 

Darren asked her what the motivation would be for a change to begin running and achieve that half-marathon status. Beverly shared that her twenty year high school reunion was looming and said “I want to look fabulous.” After having her second child she said it had been hard to hold off weight she had gained over the previous five years. 

The first step was finding motivation, the second was building a plan to get a functional change in her sights, then make daily moves towards her goal. After mapping a one-mile loop in her neighborhood Darren told Beverly to “walk the loop three times over a period of two weeks.” She then moved to a jog for as long as she could, walking the rest. At seven weeks she could jog the whole mile loop non-stop multiple times a week. 

She then began adding an eighth of a mile to each run—only roughly 300 more steps—and within six months was at the nine mile mark comfortably. Nine miles. That is a drastic shift in just six short months. Going from not being able to take a set of stairs to eventually hitting 13.5 miles in nine months time began with a focus, a basic plan, and then consistency in her daily activity to change it. Her winded stair climbs that limited her life became limitless for Beverly. 

When we go to the gym we all start with a base “max” but you keep lifting in small incremental gains to grow that max-out effort. No one hits the bench and says “I can hit 225 and I am totally fine with that.” So why are you doing that in your daily life beyond just your exercise routine? 

It is time to take action if you truly want to live limitless. I know that for me I often battle the brain game we play with ourselves and our motivation. So many things come naturally to me and afford me the ability to “get away” with being better than average—even if it is me at my mediocre. 

I can point to numerous times in my life that I could have done more, achieved more, and left a better lasting impact on my sphere of influence than I did because I simply could hit the expected target and then quit. That is far from living limitless. 

We all have choices to make. It is also easy to make choices and live in mediocrity making excuses along the way. Don’t be an excuse maker, embrace the suck, and make those little changes needed in activity to hit your “half-marathon” in life. 

The faster you win the battle within is the faster your life will change from settled to limitless.