Musings from the Ozone

We humans experience two kinds of limitations: physical and mental.

I had a remarkable conversation with a woman about physical
limitations. Nancy was a sufferer of M.S. She could no longer walk and spent her waking hours in a wheelchair.

"I'm not 'confined' to a wheelchair," she insisted one day. "It doesn't confine me. It sets me free."

She asked me, "Do you want to know my reason for living?"

"What is it?" I wondered.

"To liberate people. To set them free. Before I got my wheelchair,"
she explained, "I had trouble getting around. Now I can go places!
However I can free people, I want to do it."

"People speak of being 'shut in,'" she continued. "People who are
confined to a room or a house or a bed are not 'shut in.' They're
'shut out' - shut out of activities and shut out of people's lives. So
my mission is to liberate people, to set them free, however I can."

Because of her disease, Nancy now helps people find ways of gaining
more physical freedom. But we humans suffer from other kinds of
limitations, too. We need liberation from enslaving beliefs and
attitudes.

"Almost everybody walks around with a vast burden of imaginary
limitations inside his head," says J. H. Brennan. "While the burden
remains, personal success is as difficult to achieve as the conquest
of Everest with a sack of rocks tied to your back."

What burden of limiting beliefs and attitudes are you walking around
with? Do you ever say, "I can't do that" or "I can't change this or
that"? Do you ever think that you'll never be able to pursue your
passion or achieve a cherished dream? Do you believe that other people
can experience the good things of life, or simply be happy, but not
you? These patterns of thinking are as much of a burden as a sack of
rocks tied to your back.

Listen to these words from Darwin P. Kingsley: "You have powers you
never dreamed of. You can do things you never thought you could do.
There are no limitations in what you can do except the limitations of
your own mind."

Okay, certain limitations are a part of life. You may be more able to
see those that are physical. After all, "stinkin' thinkin'" can be
easily hidden. But, as Kingsley says, when you get rid of limiting
attitudes and beliefs, those rocks tied to your back, you'll discover
powers you never dreamed of. You'll do things you never thought you
could do! And you'll be truly free.

Besides an unhealthy mental outlook, what have you got to lose?

-- Steve Goodier