Limitations

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Often limitations are self-imposed. In essence when we experience stimuli in our world that stimuli being either positive or negative causes us to react in certain ways - call it part of our flight or fight response (freeze, flight or fight if you will). When a negative high stress stimuli is experienced the adrenal stress-conditions hit and dependent on its severity we sometimes freeze, sometimes take flight or a few times we may have to stay and fight. It all depends on our instincts and our primal conditioned responses (PCR comes from what we learn as to coping skills as we grow in our environment, etc.). 

Once instincts and PCR are encoded we then tend to react in that way when exposed to negative stimuli. Here is where things get a bit convoluted, i.e., we humans don’t like negative stimuli and when it makes us uncomfortable, at the lower end of the spectrum of discomfort, we tend to have strong desires toward avoidance and how we avoid that does matter but in most instances we just tune it out in our minds as much as we can. 

Avoidance is a good thing and avoidance is a pretty good defense mechanism as long as it is properly applied in proper appropriate circumstances. This is where things get hairy, if we avoid through ignorance and refusal we tend to use tactics and strategies that are often inappropriate to the circumstances and the situations. Just take a look around you and in both the social and news media and you can see a lot of inappropriate responses due to ignorance and a refusal to accept the nature of things and humans. 

Lets take a look at a more physical view of limitations with a good dose of the mental since both are necessary to even exist. When some thing we participate in or do goes wrong we immediately imposes limitations such as, “Oh, my arm was hurting so I missed the target,” or “I lost that contest because my opponent cheated,” and so on. In truth we are either directly or indirectly imposing limitations on our abilities through such tactics as blaming, etc. on external faults, etc. when we should be removing our self-imposed limitations through our efforts to build coping skills and some such. 

One of the best things I encountered in my life and experiences is Marine Corps Boot Camp and the following experiences on active duty. Using a model that has worked for hundreds of years the Marine DI put raw recruits into a mind-state as such so when exposed to seemingly insurmountable obstacles and odds we would initially feel, “Oh crap, there is no way I can do that,” only to discover with the right incentives we can do such things and we can do them well. It was a form of training and practice that would assist the recruit/Marine in removing any self-imposed limitations of both the mind and body toward any obstacle. “A can-do Attitude - Ohrahhh!”

We often learn and encode conditioned responses due to some self-imposed limitation and those also come from others self-imposed limitations such as family environment, social environments and other such influences as we grow and learn. Even when the limitation seems appropriate in accordance with what we are taught in our environment as good coping skills are still self-imposed simply because as we grow, learn and experience our minds can still analyze and change and synthesize other things to get the job done removing those very limitations therefore the self-imposed limitations I speak of here are those we impose on ourselves by allowing our minds to remain static and dogmatic in believing that what we use to remain safe, secure and to survive are immutable immovable appropriate coping skills. 

Here is a rub too, these things are only now limitations on humans dues to our early adaptation of modern societies revolutions such as agricultural, industrial and now technological in nature while our humans instincts as such remain in the cave man days of fight-or-flight survival skills. In the prairie days of the Serengeti hunter gatherer days such complexities didn’t exist, we were either the “eaters or the eaten” and our hunting and gathering skills what they were, were the only considerations in our group survival endeavors. Since humans and species in general take about 25,000 years to evolve we are still trying to use the old coping skills of survival to address the modern obstacles that still trigger the fight-n-flight responses not exactly appropriate to modern times. Add in our emotional immaturity in conjunction to our inappropriate social expectations through ignorance we “Make UP” coping skills that just dig the hole deeper and deeper when what we should to is just “Stop DIGGING.” 

There are only limitations imposed by physics and the nature of the Universe. We will fall due to gravity; we will drown if we are under water; we cannot fly without modern ingenuity and modern mechanical assistance and so on because that is physics, etc. but as to other things within that limitation of physics and nature truthfully there are no limitations except those self-imposed. 

Finally, we humans give our selves excuses such as ‘he/she made me do it’ or ‘if it weren’t for that then I wouldn’t feel such and such’ where we blame ‘others’ for our limitations and negative stimuli with its emotionally driven monkey dancing reactions when it truth it is our self-imposed mental limitations that allow such influences to hold way over our very lives. 

Yes, there are socially driven survival oriented requirements, rules and laws that govern our actions as such but that is a survival tool and those limitations are about group/individual/family survival but most everything else is simply self-imposed. 

We as humans need to look inward a lot more; allow for the natural order of human existence; provide appropriate rules, laws and requirements on ourselves as well as toward the group and be patient in allowing for the natural evolution even in the face of such rapid cultural changes such as technology. There is a way and plenty of room when accepting revolutionary changes while maintaining a grasp and understanding on our very natures - a yin-yang state of existence. Only when we refuse, ignore and bury our heads does the balance shift and that shift causes a lot more trouble than is necessary. This is our self-imposed human limiting way of life today - too bad don’t you think?

Here is another self-imposed limitation we put on ourselves, the legal and social kind. We impose limitation on our actions due to social pressures as well as the legal kind. We are animals and as such would do things that today would seem or be perceived as ‘wrong’ yet if not for those very social and legal requirements we might just do them all the same. It is the social and legal limitations we allow ourselves to live by just to belong to a group/social entity for the very real reasons of survival. If not for those perceived acceptable self-imposed limitations then society and groups would not survive and survival is, symbolically, genetically imposed on every human - almost. We do have the free will to either impose or not impose such limitations on ourselves. If not, we would live in utopia and there would be no crime … no criminals … no violence … no conflict and we all would live happily ever after —— NOT!

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“In order for any life to matter, we all have to matter.” - Marcus Luttrell, Navy Seal (ret)