What Do You Do with The Barriers in Your Life?
Today, Kamala Harris became the Vice President-Elect of the United States. I keep thinking that some little girls in the caste-system of India likely had their concepts of limitation shaken up today. Thoughts of little girls everywhere that they can ‘only’ be so much or succeed so far were cracked open. Because a woman of Indian and Jamaican descent just rose to hold the second highest office in the Executive Branch of the U.S. government.
Conceptual limitations are sometimes thrust upon us. Everyone has been told, at some point in their lives, that they didn’t have what it took to do something or be something. How are you going to get a wife if you can’t get a girlfriend? How are you going to achieve success if you can’t pass math? You need to start at the bottom of your career even if you have the natural ability to begin at an advanced level.
Sometimes people say things to us while underestimating the power of their words. When I was in high school, I was taught to type using a manual typewriter. There was so much depth from one row of keys to the next that I felt like I was the Addams Family’s Lurch playing the harpsicord. Pounding on the keys to accommodate the distance and looking at the ‘home row’ for reference to the other rows, I typed slowly. One day, my teacher, Mrs. Schwartz, told me that I’d “…never amount to anything because (I) couldn’t type.” She was frustrated by my lack of performance and actually said that to me. That was decades ago and I still recall how she looked when she said it, staring directly into my eyes, as if she was placing a curse on me.
Guess what, Mrs. Schwartz? I’ve been typing for years and have enjoyed several successes. And I never look at the keyboard. What you didn’t consider was that manual typewriters would be retired within a year or two of our conversation. And that technology would advance so nearly everyone can type with their thumbs and all fingers, on a variety of keyboards!
Some people say things borne of their fears and not true opinion. For example, my husband’s family told him that he could never drive a stick shift car because he is partially deaf and wouldn’t be able to hear the change in gears. They told him to give up on his goal to have a stick shift car. Guess what kind of car he’s driven his entire life? A stick shift. He wasn’t letting them steal his dream or his belief in himself.
Sometimes we are told to have goals that don’t resonate within us. I remember being in sleep-away camp and trying to dive to earn an accreditation. I was a good swimmer. I waterskied, canoed and could work with peers to manage the sails on a sailboat. But I couldn’t dive. I remember trying to dive into a lake, exiting the water and trying to dive again. After my first few attempts, the camp counselors stopped helping me and instead just chatted, passing the time. They waited for me to make one decent dive so I could earn the accreditation. In the years since, I wondered why they didn’t try to coach me more. Then I recalled that they weren’t diving coaches — they were British teenagers who got to go to America to be camp counselors for the summer.
I tried to dive about 20 times, getting more tired with each attempt. I knew I tried my best, but I also knew I wasn’t a diver. The funniest thing is, while I still remember that day, I don’t recall the details about the accreditation. In retrospect, I don’t think that experience was about becoming accredited for whatever it was. I believe what I learned that day is that I’m not good at everything and that just because someone has a goal for me, that doesn’t make it my goal.
I only lived in upstate New York during the summer and lived the rest of the year in Brooklyn, in an apartment building without a pool. Even as a kid I knew that my failure to dive didn’t impact my thoughts of self-worth or ability to participate in water activities.
Interestingly, through the years, diving boards were removed from swimming pools because of the huge risk of getting hurt. I recall jumping off diving boards but never diving. I didn’t avoid diving boards when I was a kid — they weren’t the bane of my existence. As a matter of fact, I used to jump off of the ‘high diving board’ of a Miami hotel pool we frequented. One of my favorite pics of our stay was me on the high diving board, appearing to be leaning against a nearby palm tree, an optical illusion that I thought looked cool! So it turned out that I didn’t have to be able to dive or think of it as a shortcoming.
Barriers can be real or fearful thoughts and limiting beliefs. Real barriers may exist for my own protection — like the removal of pool diving boards to avoid diving accidents. Conceptual barriers can stop me, but only if I give them credence.
