Argue for Your Limitations



I was an adult of middle age before I encountered the phrase argue for your limitations and they are yours. Until that point I had seen my limitations basically as those forced upon me by others. If you are female you are most likely familiar with most of those beginning with nice girls don't do that. And I usually responded with, Who wants to be a nice girl? And in my youth I wasn't even sure I wanted to be a girl.  Who wants to be labelled a second class citizen at birth.

I was raised in conflict on so many levels from a father who told me I could be anything I wanted to a mother who sent me away on my freshman year in college to earn my Mrs. degree. I was encouraged by society to go along to get along.

And it wasn't until and it wasn't until I was teaching adaptive skiing to adults and children with perceived limitations I encountered the concept of arguing against your perceived limitations. I learned to not see them in my students and in my role of teaching them to ski. And later in my recovery from my CBT I used it daily for my own survival and victory. There was nothing I could not surmount or work around.

So yesterday with the goal of seeing a dear friend in Taos for dinner it began to snow. And I shocked myself with my trepidation of driving over the mountain.  In retirement, with a home based business, I don't have to get out and go somewhere if it is not optimal conditions. And that permission to not do had been translated in my mind as do not.  I had argued for my limitations.

And those limitations were of my own making. I have a heavy duty four wheel drive pickup with huge tires. I have decades of experience driving in the snow. The weather report said light snow flurries. I had a purpose for making the drive. Actually two purposes. I had not grocery shopped in a week of failed weather warnings of two feet of snow which never happened.

So I jumped in the truck with the new battery (the failing one just replaced having been a limitation for a couple of weeks) and headed out. Five miles on my journey and the snow stopped. The roads all the way into Taos were totally dry. It was a great time seeing my friend again.

So why the orchid at the top of this post? Because Mother told me once I had a brown thumb. And others told me orchids were not easy to raise. This one of 13 is currently blooming for the third time. Another nine have buds.

Don't limit yourself. There are enough people willing to set limitations for you. They don't need your help.


Comments

Post a Comment

I write for me but I care what my readers think. Please be polite and no scamming.

Popular posts from this blog

Swimming

Image
For much of my college career my fitness workout was swimming on the B squad of the swim team. I remember it as the days before heated pools and women coaches. I also remember being so exhausted and cold I could only lean against the shower wall and throw up. Not exactly warm fuzzy images but I was in awesome shape. Needless to say it did not leave me with a overpowering desire to swim laps. Point of fact for years my swimming became really informal: Swimming to shore after the canoe tipped over, challenging my sister once a summer to across the lake and back, seeing how long I could back float without moving a muscle, and a scuba course. I also played around with other ways of staying fit: aerobics, bicycling, jogging, skiing and dance classes. All of which seem to be bad for the knees, back or feet. After my ski accident my physical therapist steered me back to the pool. Damn if I was going to swim laps! However, aqua fit was just getting rather seriously taken so I took it. It r
Read more

The Pruning the Crown of Thorns

Image
Crown of Thorns Before I am a lover of Euphorbias . They are from the deserts of Southern Africa and Madagascar. They have evolved physical characteristics and forms similar to cacti of North and South America and are often incorrectly referred to as cacti. My big Crown of Thorns was one of my first of a growing collection of these succulents from the spurge family of Euphorbiaceae. I picked it up as a 6 inch plant in a New Iberia nursery when my sister and I were touring the northern gulf coast. I believe that was 15 years ago. I made an attempt at limiting its height a few years back to allow it to devote more energy to the new branches and make it a denser plant. That failed. And the height of the plant continued to challenge the window space and soon the long branches were leaning over and leaning against the window. I googled and found the proper way to prune this treasured plant. Still it was very difficult to cut off the four longer branches. Even with a plan. The f
Read more

Eagle Nest Dam

Image
Tour of Eagle Nest Dam Eagle Nest Dam is the largest privately built dam in the United States. It was begun by the Springer family in 1917 and completed in 1920. It and the reservoir beyond it one was privately owned by the CS Ranch which recently sold it to the state of New Mexico. Eagle Nest Lake is now a state park, but the dam and the waters in the lake are another matter all together. Water is well regulated in New Mexico especially during a drought. The lake is now at 25% of its normal capacity, and the water in the lake are water right lease holds of Raton, Cimarron, and historic ranches in the area like the UU Bar and the CS Ranch. Game and Fish department also get involved because the Cimarron River is an active fishery of the state. Our guide was a state engineer and the Gateway Museum secured permission of the land owners below the dam for us to gain access to the area. Some 100 locals and tourists attended this rare event. I have lived here almost twenty years and th
Read more