The power of unlimited thinking
I love the word unlimited. It speaks to me; it talks to my soul. It makes me believe that I can be and do anything that I want, and that there are no limits to what it is I can achieve. And I honestly believe that. I believe it’s true. That there is nothing in this world that I couldn’t handle if I wanted to. And that’s why I love this word so much. It reminds me of the possibilities, even when all odds are against me.
I gave a talk once in which I explained how I believed I could marry Brad Pitt – if I wanted to. I remember the girls and women in the audience looking at me and going “yeah, right,” but when I said it I really believed it, and I still do now. To me, the possibilities that life offers are like the laws of physics. I don’t understand them all, and I don’t know them all either, but I do know they work and I believe them to be true. Every time an apple falls from a tree or we launch a rocket into the sky, I’m reminded of those laws.
With unlimited thinking, it’s the same thing. To me, it’s a law just like the ones from Newton. The only difference is that this one is about us and not the world we live in. And what it says to me is pretty simple: by believing in unlimited thoughts, you will achieve unlimited things. I love that. So simple, yet so powerful. But I didn’t always use to think this, and nor did I always like the concept. For a very long time, I believed that the world was small, and that my place in it needed to be even smaller. I had thoughts of all the things that I wanted to do and say and be, yet I never believed I could actually achieve any of them. My thinking was not unlimited at all; on the contrary, there were boundaries everywhere. I would dream about being me, living a life in which I felt happy and fulfilled and content to be who I was, yet I thought that those goals were totally out of reach. My daily life was filled with beliefs about the world that limited me not only in my actions, but in the way I looked at myself and loved myself. I was blocked and unable to move forward. In all honestly, I was miserable, too.
But, back to Brad Pitt. There I am, in an auditorium, speaking to college students, young women with a life of opportunities ahead of them, and none of them believe me. They all immediately limit the thought that I put out into that room: you’re too short, you’re too old, you’re not Angelina, so he could never marry you. All of them fair comments (it’s true, I’m not Angelina), yet really only speculation. And that’s the problem. Who in that auditorium actually went and called Brad, and asked him directly what he thought of the idea? And even if someone would have done that, marrying someone requires love (I hope), and that doesn’t happen overnight (well, it could, but it’s rare). So this goal would need to be put in motion with a lot of different actions, and if it were a real goal, I should keep at it for a while, in order to reach it. But that’s okay, no issues there. I’m all up for that, and it might be worth it, too.
The problem is the limits we immediately put on our thinking. And the results that that impulse has on the size and horizon of our personal universe. I cannot say for sure that Brad wouldn’t marry me, except if I try.
Yet, when our dreams get big we all immediately jump to conclusions and deny ourselves the opportunity. And that makes our world small – very small.
Think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian bodybuilder who not only became one of the best action heroes of our time, but governor of California, too. But okay, enough with the guys. What about women like Amelia Earhart, who made history as an amazing adventurer and flyer, or Coco Chanel, to this day one of the icons of style and fashion? What both of these women, and all the other women and men who wrote history before us, have in common is – I believe – a muscle for unlimited thinking. The biographies, movies, documentaries, and books about all these great people tell tales of thoughts that were greater than themselves, that they couldn’t shake, and that kept them going forward, even when everyone was against them.
That is the power of unlimited thinking. The limits we believe are all around us are not really there. Of course, there is order to be kept, and it’s important to respect and protect everyone’s freedom and life, but apart from those provisions, there are no limits to what it is you can achieve.
This realization came to me very slowly, and it took me a long time to grasp its full meaning and potential. One day, I wondered if, perhaps, instead of continuing to listen to beliefs that were keeping me and my life small, I could actually change my future and decide to live a life I really wanted to live instead. So I pressed against the invisible boundaries I had set for myself, and I pushed through. Once on the other side, after a lot of pushing and pressing and breaking through my own beliefs, I realized that in fact there are no limits at all, apart from the ones we create for ourselves. And so I developed my own muscle for unlimited thinking. And as a result, I have achieved amazing things, been to amazing places, met amazing people, and even married a man that I consider to be my very own – and better – version of Brad Pitt.
Because that too is the power of unlimited thinking. What we want changes over time and the more you use the muscle the more what looks impossible now will become part of your normal thought pattern in the future.
Never forget: everything you think is easy today, you once found really hard to do. So think as big as you can. It’s only up to you to decide how inlimited you want to live.
