Border Patrol: How to Expand Your Capacity

Put yourself in a box. I know it sounds terrible, but let’s just do this as an experiment. Humor me. I most literally want you to build a fence around who you are and what you can do. In this experiment, the borders that define what is and what isn’t the great State of [Insert Your Name Here] are the limits of what defines you.

The things inside the borders are the things that you can do. Everything from the activities in your current job to your vocabulary and the weights you can move in the gym reside inside the jurisdiction of these borders. What’s beyond your “state” limits? These are the things you can’t do and the things you don’t yet know. For example, it’s everything from the technical demands of the jobs you don’t do, the depth of vocabulary you don’t have, and the weight you can’t lift. 

Unlike the fixed nature of the borders that divide the ‘Four Corners‘ separating Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, your limits are much easier to move. To be honest, I can’t imagine the hassle of expanding Arizona’s border or shrinking the limits of traditional Utah. I mean, while we’re at it, the bureaucratic nightmare seems overwhelming. Would someone need to gather signatures outside a local grocery store to support their Smaller Utah Initiative? There would be so many meetings, votes, appeals processes, and, hell, they’d have to dig up the beautiful monument where everyone takes their photo straddling four states just to move a state border a few feet it seems.

Anyway, let’s get back to you. It’s much easier to move your borders, in part, because humans are beautifully malleable creatures. We adapt extremely well to stressors. We mold to our environment in extremely beneficial ways. That’s how we survive.

When I rudely asked you earlier to “build a fence around who you are” you drew specific lines that denote the places where being you stopped and you being someone else began. If you’re interested in expanding your borders, all you need to do is play bumper cars with the edges. Walk the line that defines you. Hell, tip your toe over the line. Do so even if it comes with a few slaps on the wrist or some flat out failure. Humans find growth at the margins. If you want a taste of Vegas, you should leave the beach behind and, at least, head to Barstow. By definition, there’s no chance of becoming a different version of yourself by staying inside the lines.

This is how strength training works, this is how building confidence works, and this is how evolving yourself as an adult works. Work the edges, people.

 

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach