Because knowing what you want makes it easier to say “Nah, I’m good”
In my post Recognising You’re Enough in a World Telling You to Want More we looked at the problem of being unable to identify a point where you know when to stop.
Being carpet bombed on a daily basis with inspirational platitudes, hustle mindset gurus, articles telling you how to cultivate success, and videos telling you about a million and one things you never knew you had missing in your life has inevitably created a sickness in this world – a symptom of feeling insignificant and always the need to want more.
Keeping up with the Joneses
Back in the day before the world was accessible at our finger tips, the comparison measure was those within our limited circle.
If you grew up in a relatively unassuming neighbourhood, your ideas might have matched that standard.
Your biggest influences might have been what you saw on TV, or the local heroes on the sports field, but as you grew up and reality kicked your idealistic views down a peg or two, the best you could hope for reflected the average of the community you were brought into.
If you’d been born a hundred years earlier, your choice would have been much easier. Where I’m from I’d have either had a choice of the mines or the mills, with the only route for the overly ambitious to progress into some sort of supervisor role.
The Joneses were once you’re neighbours, who you might have felt envy because they could afford a brand new car.
Today you’re measurement of self worth is against the rest of the world.
With this pressure, we’re always told to be more, and never told to think
“Nah, I’m good.”
In a world telling you to want more I concluded with some solutions – the ability to set your limits might just preserve your sanity.
Do you know your limits?
- Do you often let others dictate how you live your life?
- Do people manipulate you for their own gain?
- Do you lack self-awareness of your limits and commit to things that make you stressed, struggle, or unhappy?
- Do you lack purpose or direction in your life?
- Do you often chase the next big thing, telling yourself it will make you happy – but it never does?
If you’re answering yes to any of the above, then you might be failing to set limits in your life.
Why do we all need to set limits?
I began thinking about the importance of setting limits when reading an article on setting healthy boundaries in a relationship.
Limits aren’t just something exclusive for a romantic relationship, but in all aspects of your life.
A life without limits means everything you have can spiral out of control into a physical, mental and spiritual decline.
Limits are about taking a healthy and sustainable approach to diet and exercise.
There about recognising how far you want to go in your career.
Limits avoid you getting into £10,000 credit card debt because you only wanted to keep up with your neighbour.
There about knowing your worth, when someone tries to sell you short.
There about having self-esteem in who you are as a person because your favourite social media influencer told you you’re not a real man because you don’t have your own business/able to do 500 press-ups/bang loads of women/whatever…
Limits are about knowing what you want!
The difference between limiting beliefs and limits
I shouldn’t have to say this, but I often find anything pushing back against hustle culture gets gaslit as being “negative” or a “hater”.
This because it’s someone calling a fake out on their fake behaviour.
As I write I imagine the most obnoxious hack guru you can think of saying that this post is loser thinking, and telling people my words are telling you to limit your beliefs.
That’s not it at all.
It’s about knowing when to stop for your own wellbeing and happiness.
There is a big difference between setting limits and having limited beliefs – if you’re a person who has a limiting belief, it’s a mindset you have that is holding back your true potential.
If you see a job you want, and don’t apply for it because you don’t think you’re good enough, that is classed as a limited belief because you’re deliberately holding yourself back from an opportunity that could create a long term benefit, and is something you sincerely want to do.
Now on the flipside a person who has limits is different – because they have self-belief in their abilities and themselves, so will often pursue things that interest them, but also have the confidence to say
“Nah I’m good.”
Even if it to the average person on the outside it does seem like a big opportunity to gain (wealth, status, networks, etc…)
So in that same scenario, the person who sets those boundaries sees the job, but doesn’t apply because they know it’s not for them, and are content with what they have at that moment in time.
Even if they feel a real or imagined amount of peer pressure to apply for the job, they won’t do it, because that is not part of their bigger plan.
So now we understand the differences between having a limited mindset and being good at setting limits. Let’s have a look further at how you go about setting them.
Know yourself
The first step to setting limits is knowing more about yourself.
What are your goals and ambitions?
What do you want from life?
If you haven’t thought about this, then you should take some time to reflect on this – write them down.
It doesn’t need to be perfect, and you can always change your mind if you see the benefit in pursuing something you never thought of doing before, but it’s always good to have a baseline of knowing what you want.
When we talk about “knowing yourself” it’s worth mentioning this doesn’t mean you have to have a full understanding of your life’s meaning and/or purpose, because most of us truly don’t know what that is without putting in the work.
It’s just about outlining questions like:
- What does my relationship/family situation look like?
- What vocation would I like to pursue?
- What is my work/life balance like?
- What things do I not want to do?
- How/where do I spend my free time?
- What hobbies and interests do I have? Is there anything else I want to do?
- What type of things/people would I like to occupy my life with?
Ask yourself these questions and if you want help setting your first goals have a read of How to set your first goals.
Setting plans
A common story I’ve told on this blog is how self-improvement and setting goals changed my life.
It’s around 10 years ago I realised my life wasn’t going how I wanted it to, so I followed something similar to the above exercise to know more about myself and wrote down everything I ever wanted.
Through the process of setting plans I soon learnt what the priorities were, what I didn’t want as much as I thought I did, and learnt more about myself to pursue new challenges as I carried out this process.
By having this self-discipline to plan what I wanted I was able to use my time more wisely, and spend less time doing things I didn’t want to do, and avoid those things I only did because I was trying to make other people happy.
I’m not going to lie it wasn’t always easy – I upset people when they realised they couldn’t push me around anymore, or that I had greater ambition than what they could offer, but by knowing my limits and putting it in to action I knew the direction I needed to go to get to my destination.
If you’re struggling to prioritise your time, have a read of my post How splitting tasks into quadrants helps to manage your time – this will help you understand what matters to you, and what matters to others.
When things don’t go as planned
When setting boundaries you can only go as far as what you know now, and how you perceive what your future could look like.
Setting my own limits was in a time before I had children, and so didn’t understand a life where I was functioning not just for my own needs, but those of others.
For example, in my career I knew how far I wanted to go, but for different reasons – if I was going to live the single life, I didn’t want my reason for being here to just work. I wanted enough responsibility to feel what I was doing was important, and make enough money, but not be so consumed by a job to have no leisure time to pursue other interests like writing, working out and seeing the world.
So the day I held my first born daughter in my arms, life changed forever in a good way, and I had to rethink how to retain that balance.
Although I’d never ruled out having kids, the state my life was in when I started my growth journey was so different to what it is today that I accepted that having a family might not be a choice I got to make – until I met the lady who would change my life.
Priorities changed, my perspective of the world became different, and although I retained my limits, enforcing them was down to ensuring I had time to be a dad and husband.My goals changed, and I had to fit my ambitions around fatherhood.
If things don’t go how your planned them – you meet someone, the career path your pursuing wasn’t what you imagined, you lose someone, whatever… congratulations you’re living life.
The one important thing to remember
Stop living your life how others think you should.
I call it setting limits, but fundamentally it’s all down to having assertiveness to pursue your own path.
It’s the most empowering feeling when you know what you want, to brush off, laugh even when people tell you your screwing up your life because what you want isn’t the same as what they think they want.
Don’t feel you need to compete with the rest of the world.
Stop comparing what you have, or don’t have to others.
Ignore the judgement and opinion of others – if it’s working for you, you’re not burdening others and you’re not hurting anyone – keep going.
This is your life.
Know your limits, and where you want to take it and when to say “nah, I’m good”.
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Wishing you the best in your success
James @Perfect Manifesto
Perfect Manifesto 