Accept No Limits – The Power of Making Your Own Rules

The power of dreams lies in that there are no limits to what is possible. You can do anything and go anywhere. You are limited only by the power of your imagination.

But then morning comes – and suddenly a stream of limitations comes in. Limits on your time, on your wealth and resources – on your ability to live the life you have envisioned for yourself.

A key difference for high achievers is that they won’t accept limits – not on their ambitions and not on their income. They don’t stop dreaming even when they awake – and they take deliberate actions toward making their dreams reality.

Unfortunately, when too many of us do wake up, we bring a worker’s mentality to the world. We think about our future gains in terms of promotions and raises – instead of thinking outside the box. Instead of devising new and powerful income streams that aren’t limited by salary restrictions. The power of entrepreneurship is recalibrating your thinking to consider opportunities and possibilities, where others only see barriers.

Here are some tips to help you in knocking down the walls that are putting limits on your dreams - and on your potential.

• Don’t let rules stand in the way of your dreams. Rules come in many forms – some are strictly written as laws, some are merely societal norms. Many have a good purpose – you’re probably glad that there’s a limit on how fast drivers are permitted to go on the freeway. But many others are in place that have simply grown out of date. They serve no useful purpose in driving society – or your goals – forward. So learn to look at the conventional wisdom with a skeptical and curious mind. Job hopping? Launching a side hustle in your spare time to generate extra income? Delegating and automating repetitive tasks to ensure that you can focus on your high-growth talents? You will find plenty of naysayers and critics to point out the risks in all of these approaches. All too many will be content to clock in and clock out each day, waiting their turn to slowly advance up the ladder. These are the voices you need to drown out to attain a lifestyle unencumbered by arbitrary rules and arbitrary limits.

• Do not settle. Moderation has its place in life – but don’t let it hold your life in place. How many of us have grown accustomed to accepting “good enough”? “Good enough” in our work, in our relationships, in our aspirations? The people who get on in this world are the ones who work long past the clock stopping, who soldier on even when nobody is looking, when the likelihood of a paycheck is anything but a sure thing. If you want to achieve financial independence, you need to banish the words “good enough” and “satisfied” from your vocabulary.

• Value money. Sure, greed is bad – that doesn’t mean that money is bad? Our society is continually affirming the message that money is the problem. It’s the theme of countless movies, in which a miserly and bitter millionaire is portrayed as the villain. We hear it all the time: “Money doesn’t matter, happiness is what is important.” Now it certainly is true that money is not the most important commodity in life. But we cannot overlook what money provides – time and freedom. And that time and freedom can help you to obtain the real goals of all of your hard work – time with loved ones, the ability to pursue your interests and hobbies, and the opportunity to focus on work that is meaningful to you personally. It’s true that money is just a means of getting to these goals – but it is money that helps you transcend the limits that keep you from getting there. Money provides options – options that the cash-strapped don’t have at their disposal. Remember that the Bible is often misquoted. It isn’t that money is the root of all evil – it’s that love of money is the root of all evil. That means losing the human side of what’s at stake in business. As long as you are doing right by your customers and those you work with, you have every right to maximize the money coming in and help all of you to live the fullest lives possible.

• Don’t let time be your master. The most successful people in the world understand that the most scarce and precious resource is the one that nobody can make more of – time. The web is replete with advice on how to “hack” your schedule and add more time to your day. The reality is that you can only cut corners at the margins – you can wake up earlier and stay up later. This is what most of the truly successful do, depending on whether their body cycles and inclination make them more of a morning person or a night owl. But at best, you are only adding a few extra hours to your day. Staying up all night might work once in a while when you are under a crushing deadline, but doing this consistently is a recipe for burnout and fatigue. So what are we left with? Taking a hard look at efficiency and how we are prioritizing our daily tasks. You simply cannot do everything on your plate yourself if you hope to get much done. You need to make tough choices about what is most important to you. That is where my Daily Efficiency Organizer comes in. You can get it free on my web site. As for the rest? Delegate it, minimize it – or toss it. That includes binge-watching television and inundating yourself with reading news each day. If it’s not contributing to your most important relationships or helping you get closer to your goals – it probably needs to go from your schedule.

• Don’t let yourself be defined. This is the most important step to truly living a life without limits. We often find ourselves conforming to a tiny box – an idea of what someone else thinks we are. These boxes can come in many forms. They can do with our personal background, like our gender or race. They often relate to our position or job or educational background. And you’ll find that it very often threatens others when you begin to break out of the box that they have constructed for you in their heads. That’s when you’ll hear things like, “But engineers don’t know how to start businesses.” Or, “Nobody over the age of thirty is going to get venture capital funding.” The truth is that history is made by people who refused to accept the box that others had built for them or for their field of expertise. Amelia Earhart refused to believe that a woman couldn’t fly across the Atlantic alone. Jackie Robinson refused to accept that a black man couldn’t be a great baseball player. Steve Jobs refused to believe that computers had to be complicated and ugly. If they can face down the odds, we all can find the courage to break out of the box in our personal lives – and in our careers.

We are all faced with limits of some kinds. There are some that we can’t do much about – namely that we are limited by how much time we have in life to make an impact. But beyond that, there is a great deal that we can do to smash the barriers and live the most abundant lives possible. What challenges are holding you back? Is it time? A lack of money or expertise? Or maybe just a nagging voice in your head doubting that you can reach the goal you’ve set out for yourself? Whatever is holding you back, I encourage you to explore these options – and determine which are most effective for you in conquering and overcoming the limits that exist in your mind.