Three reasons why you have no idea what you’re truly capable of
What an “untouchable” Indian girl teaches us about moving past “the struggle”
Imagine being born in the worst possible circumstances. Imagine if you were born as a “dalit” or “untouchable” in an extremely poor village in a remote area of India.
As a young girl you are referred to as a “little pouch of poison” by relatives because of the burden they perceive you to be.
When you are enrolled in school, a rarity for dalit girls, you find that even those in your village look at you with disgust. Parent’s punish your fellow students if they so much as talk to you. Once a classmate is disciplined for sharing food with you.
By the time you reach 7th grade your family can no longer resist social mores and you are forced into an arranged marriage.
You are 12 years old.
If you thought life couldn’t get any worse, you quickly find out just how wrong you are. Your new “family” treats you like free labor and nothing more. You are beaten daily for a variety of minor “offenses”. The meals you were forced to prepare too salty? You are beaten. Laundry not folded correctly? You don’t get to eat today.
You slowly starve as you move through your day to day life without seeing any hope. Life is a continuous dull pain punctuated by the occasional sharp pain. When your father comes to visit you, at first he doesn’t even recognize you. You are just months away from dying. You receive maybe the first stroke of luck you’ve ever had when he takes you back to your village with him.
If you’d thought to find a supportive extended family who is outraged by the way you were treated you’d be highly disappointed.
Instead you are told that it would have been more honorable to die as a slave than to return to you family and live “in sin”.
In an attempt to improve your life, if it can even be called that, you try to return to school. You are refused even this.
At this point, you simply can’t imagine continuing on with life. You drink three bottles of pesticide.
It’s easy to imagine this story ending here. An unknown girl in a small village of India abused far beyond what most of us can even imagine. She takes, what at the time, seems like the only possible option, an attempt to end the misery that has been her life.
But it doesn’t end there. This is the story of Kalpana Saroj and from this point on she began to fight.
She left her village and found work. Through incredibly grit and determination she advanced and earned the title of “senior tailor”. She learned of a small business loan for “dalits” and began the bureaucratic approval process. Upon receiving the loan she bought a sewing machine and started her own business which, through sheer force of will, she made profitable.
Again, the story could end here, and this time Kalpana would be considered a success. She had suffered though unimaginable pain, worked insanely hard, and built a life from nothing. But again, she did not quit,
She used her profits and built a second business.
And then a third.
Today she is the chairperson of Kamani Tubes LTD and worth over $100 million dollars (U.S.).
One hundred million dollars.
Kalpana has gone from a life so horrible that most people reading this cannot begin to fathom it to a life most of us cannot imagine.
But this isn’t written for Kalpana.
This is written for those of you who want more, who are working incredibly hard but feel as if you aren’t gaining any traction. This is for those of you who are willing to put in the work but for a variety of reason haven’t scratched the surface of what you are capable of. For every Kalpana that is out there, there are a thousand of you who struggle day in and day out with no light at the end of the tunnel.
There are five basic stages to self-development:
1. Existence
2. Awareness that there is more
3. A desire for growth
4. Hard work, struggle, and perseverance
5. Achievement
A majority of people will never make it past the fourth stage. They will continually cycle through the first four. Because of this, there is a growing trend to see the fourth stage, the struggle, as the end result, as what is to be admired.
How many people have you heard brag about the level of pain they’ve endured, the hours of work they put in, but when you examine their results there is nothing there?
Struggle must produce results to have any value.
If Kalpana can go overcome the vast amounts of adversity she faced to get to where she is, what are you capable of?
Do you know what you are actually capable of?
The thing is that a vast majority of people have no idea what they are truly capable of. To discover this requires something most people are terrified of… the very real possibility of failure. Until you have reached the point where you are at your breaking point, where you can’t run any faster, where you can’t build it any bigger, then you do not fully know what you are capable of.
The three reasons you have no idea of what you’re truly capable of… and how to overcome them.
1. You’ve allowed your environment to define what you are capable of.
“What surrounds us is what is within us.”
― T.F. Hodge
So often people subconsciously define their limits by those around them, because that’s the life they know.
If Kalpana had allowed her environment to control who she was, it is very likely she’d be dead today.
The point is that you often do not know what you are capable of and because of this you define that by what others tell you is possible.
We are heavily influenced by our environment. Our environment tells us what normal is. It tells us a thousand times a day what our limits are and how far we can climb. It tells those in poverty that, that’s just how life is. Accept it, and maybe if you’re lucky you will get by.
It tells those in the middle class that they have enough and they shouldn’t aspire for more because there are so many people who have it worse.
It’s your friends who tell you to take it easy. To not work so hard. That to be successful, you have to be born in to it, genetically blessed, or just plain lucky. That life is something that happens, not something we shape.
Moving past environmental challenges:
A. Change your environment. In his podcast, Grant Cardone repeatedly tells people to move if their environment is holding them back. In fact, he advocates moving every time you get comfortable.
Is this extreme? Maybe, but what kind of life do you want?
You will never have extreme success if you do not take extreme action to get there. You don’t have to even leave the city you are currently in but what you do have to do is change the limiting environmental factors that are holding you back. Your options are accept the mediocrity you are currently living in or take the necessary action to put yourself in the environment best suited for your success.
B. Surgically remove the people from your life who are holding you back. I’ve talked about this in-depth here, but you have to remove negative people from your life. If you accept them in your life then you are accepting the limitations they are going to impose on your level of success. If you are aware that they have a negative influence on your life and you do not remove them from your circle of influence they you are implicitly accepting that same influence.
Search out people who are on the same journey you are, or even better, have experienced some level of success in areas you want to see change.
2. You believe those who are successful are unimaginably different than you
It’s common to see those who have reached a high level of achievement as vastly different from who you are. The truth is that this is completely understandable. Think back to Kalpana. Can you even imagine living the life she was born into? Now think about her current life where she has experienced incredible success and wealth. If you didn’t know her back story, might you imagine that she had been born to much better circumstances? That she had been born lucky? That she had some genetic trait that you didn’t?
The question is, why do you see the incredibly successful as vastly different? Is it because of factors outside of your control? Or things that are within your control?
Try this simple mental exercise. Who is someone you believe is the epitome of success? What makes them so successful? Really think about that question.
Now answer this…
Are the traits you thought of that made them so successful traits you possess? Or are they things you view as out of your control such as intelligence or looks?
The reality is that not everyone will reach the level of Kalpana Saroj. But when you have a mental model of successful people that consists of traits you do not believe you possess you are severely limiting what you are truly capable of. This is what many of you will recognize as a fixed mindset.
It’s easy to look at Elon Musk’s IQ and think that’s what made him successful but did you think about the fact that he’s willing to sleep on the floor of the Tesla factory in order to ensure his goals are met? The fact that he has a drive and tenacity that anyone of us can work towards. And perhaps most importantly, that he has tied this insane work ethic to a higher purpose?
You are capable of so much more than you believe is possible IF you stop using limiting mental models of what is, and isn’t, possible.
Overcoming limiting mental models:
What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself. — Abraham Maslow
Re-write it! You must replace your current mental model with one that is reflective of what you are truly capable of. For example, your old subconscious mental model may have been something like: “If I were more intelligent it would allow me to be as successful as ___________”. This isn’t something you would have ever actually said to yourself, but it is a deep seated belief you hold.
That former mental model should be replaced with something like, “If I work incredibly hard, and understand that I will face obstacles which I can persevere through, I can reach a level of success I never previously believed possible”. It is important you add more specific details related to your situation, which are based on what you truly want to out of life.
Repeat this new mental model to yourself every single day. Change how you see yourself!
The second important factor is that it must be tied to a higher purpose. Elon Musk believes he is doing what he is doing to save humanity. If he didn’t then he would have quit after he sold PayPal and lived an incredibly luxurious life. Kalpana Saroj believes that she is helping raise others out of the circumstances she grew up in. They both have a deep seated belief that what they are doing has a higher purpose.
3. You lie to yourself.
“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.”
― Rudyard Kipling
It’s incredibly common for people to lie to themselves in order to protect their psyche. It’s easier to purposefully confuse being satisfied and being grateful. To tell yourself that you don’t want more and that it’s wrong to think otherwise. How many people ridicule the “one percent” one day and play the lottery the next. Think about that. It’s perfectly fine to play the lottery, but understand what you are saying when you do, that you want more in life. That when you really break it down, you want more out of life. If that’s the case, then why do you spend so much time telling yourself that you’re content with where you are?
This same concept applies in any area, not just wealth. How often do you tell yourself you’re happy with one area (your physical fitness, relationships, career satisfaction, etc.) only to catch yourself eyeing a quick fix for that same area?
Moving past the lies you tell yourself:
A. Understand the difference between grateful and satisfied. We have come to a place in society that if you admit you’re not content with where you are it is perceived as a weakness. Being grateful for what you have (relationships with friends and family, finances, health, etc.) does not have to mean you’re satisfied with every area of your life. It does not mean you can’t want more. But you have to stop lying to yourself about what it is that you want.
B. Self-analysis and Introspection. This can be surprisingly difficult, especially if you have spent years, even decades, telling yourself to “be content” or that you are “satisfied”. It’s not wrong to want more out of life. Try this writing exercise to really get at the root of what you want. Write out what your perfect life would be like. Everything about it. From your career, to your family, to your finances, to what an average day would look like. While doing this do not apply any sort of limitation to it. Money is no object, nor is where you live, what you do for a career, etc. The only important thing here is that you do not lie to yourself. Even if you might find some of the things embarrassing if you had to share with others. Odds are that you will find your ideal life is significantly different than what you are living.
The great thing about realizing what YOU really want is the freedom it provides to move towards it. To go after it.
The reality is that you can never move past that fourth stage of self-development if you lie to yourself about what the final stage (achievement) actually looks like. Being honest with yourself allows you to move in a direction that is aligned with where you actually want to be. It allows for you to move towards a level of achievement you never not thought possible.
The struggle, the hard work, the challenges, these things are not the end point. The struggle is not the success. It is part of the process and to move past it you have to push your limits. The life you want, really want, when you’re being honest with yourself is something you can have if you take control and make it happen.
It will require change. If you remain in the same environment telling yourself the same lies and keeping the same limited belief system then that’s exactly what you’ll get. More of the same.
You can refuse to accept this. It doesn’t matter what those around you insinuate your capabilities are, it doesn’t matter the circumstances you grew up in. What does matter is that you accept responsibility for the outcome and grasp what you are truly capable of.
Dan’s passion is taking his experience and helping you apply it to your day-to-day life in order to define and achieve personal success. He has decades of experience as a leader and mentor through his time in the military and law enforcement. Interact with him on instagram @dan_truex
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