Learning Limits
The following is an excerpt from a newsletter published April 20th, 2023.
I’ve had a few conversations lately about limits.
Pushing past them, becoming aware of them, and reorienting our relationship to them.
Sometimes, these edges make us antsy—“Will I have enough money next month?” They bring with them that narrow, swirling, grasping energy.
Sometimes, they provide a kind of comfort—“I’m saying no to the event because I’ve reached my capacity and I know I need to leave protected space for myself/my art/my family/my side project.” Limits can be steading, permission-giving.
Sometimes we can reframe the same edge. It’s not a no, it’s a no for now—“I can’t participate now but I look forward to doing that next year.” Or it’s a yes, but it’s an experimental yes—“Let’s try this for a quarter and reassess once we know what it actually means to be in practice of this.” Limits can be seasonal, in favour of something larger. (Do you see the dignity, agency, and power in this?)
Other ways I’ve been noticing, honouring, and playing with limits:
Not waiting to rest.
I’m not interested in running a business or living a life where I have to wait for evenings or weekends to rest. How can I fold even teeny, tiny, imperceptible pauses into my day? One deep breath with a longer exhale before I open my email. An ‘inner board meeting’ to check in with myself while I wait for the water to boil.
Staying in my own lane.
How do I know if I’m going too fast, too slow? Doing or holding too much, too little? What are the somatic guardrails I can notice and name for myself? I’m pursuing growth grounded in the pacing of my nervous system, the realities of my life, not someone else’s.
Right-sizing my expectations.
“This is my best today.” Thank you, Kathryn Hofer, for that one. Some weeks I’m creative and connective and others I’m not. I create systems—particularly marketing & sales systems—that have the flexibility to meet me where I’m at. Similarly, if I only have one good hour today, who or what is going to get that?
Limits, even the necessarily hard-edged ones, can be transformed into a larger understanding of what it is to be YOU, right now, in this life and business and body.
Limits can—paradoxically—be spacious, fortifying, and permission-giving.
Limits can be DYNAMIC, expanding and contracting like the seasons around us. They can offer the buoyancy required to pursue what we really want, what we truly need.
What’s your relationship with limits? What practices or prompts do you have in place that help you?
— Kate
