Making your Max the Min

I recently went to a lecture series where I got some sound advice for personal development and growth in general.  I love lectures like this because I love to be motivated to do what no one else has ever done before.  I love having someone finally tell me that my dreams are within reach if I but go to work to achieve them and believe.  I live that type of belief system every day of my life.

For a reason I didn’t know when I was growing up, I always LOVED when somebody told me I couldn’t do something because it was too hard, nobody else had done it, or that I wouldn’t be good at it.  I especially loved it when I was playing basketball because it would make me play harder and better as I was out to “prove” something.  All throughout our lives, there are those who tell us we can’t do things because those things are too hard, nobody has done them before or that we just weren’t meant to do those things.  BALONEY!    That kind of talk just fuels my fire even more to succeed!

Back to this lecture series, one thing they mentioned really stood out to me and has stuck with me ever since.  This simple phrase, “Don’t make your minimums your maximums.”  In almost everything we do in our lives, there is a minimum bar, a standard, that we must meet.  How often do each of us set that minimum standard as our goal, even our limit.  For example, how often do we set our limit to succeed in our occupation as “enough to cover my basic, basic needs” and we are comfortable with that?  Making your minimum also your maximum negates all potential and drive to succeed in not only you, but those who are around you.

Many are good, but few are great.  I believe that the difference lies between where your personal limits are set.  Are they set at the minimums?  Or are they higher than you can reach at the moment…you must stretch yourselves?  Your only limit to your dreams in life, whether it’s financial freedom, more time with family, better at basketball, learning how to play the piano, or whatever else it may be, the only limit is yourself and your own belief system.  Everything within that is reachable — so why not expand that limit, and enlarge your belief system?

Joan of Arc once said,

“One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it.  But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.”

You only live once — what are you doing today to make the most of it?