Don’t Let Them Put Limitations on You!
Hay Daizee Loves,
Between starting this company with my family and starting my blogging journey, I have never had so many people ATTEMPT to put limitations on me. People have been SO QUICK to make their opinion known about what I am doing with MY LIFE. With that being said, y ’all know I love definitions, so let’s look at some…
Limit (noun): a point or LEVEL beyond which something does not or may not extend or pass
Limitation (noun): a limiting rule or circumstance; a RESTRICTION
Confine (verb): keep or RESTRICT someone or something within certain LIMITS
If there is one thing I cannot stand, it is feeling like I am RESTRICTED. I do not like being told what I can or cannot do... in almost every situation. I hate feeling as if I am not in control of MY LIFE. I am in charge when it comes to WHAT I do, HOW I do it, and WHEN I do it. I have recently learned that this way of thinking and operating makes me an autonomous individual.
Autonomous (adjective): acting INDEPENDENTLY or having the freedom to do so
I will have to write a separate blog post about acting and thinking INDEPENDENTLY. Moving forward, being autonomous means you govern SELF. You rule SELF. You determine things for SELF. To me that means you do not let other people tell you what you can do or how you can do it. You understand that you do not need anyone’s permission to DO YOU. It took me some time to get to a place where other people’s opinions concerning MY LIFE became COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT (lol except my parents’… their opinions are relevant 98% of the time).
At the end of the day, IT IS YOUR LIFE TO LIVE, and nobody else’s. People FOREVER want to define your lane for you and live your life for you. That is not how it works. People are so worried about putting limitations on you and they should be more concerned with REMOVING the limitations they have let others put on them. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO TELL ME WHAT I CAN DO? WHO ARE YOU TO TELL ME WHAT LEVELS I CAN REACH? WHO ARE YOU TO DEFINE MY LIMITS? Depending on how badly I want to do it, I am going to do it. If no one has done it that way, I guess I will be the first! I will figure out how to do it the way I want to do it. People want to CONFINE you so badly and keep you on their level. It makes them extremely uncomfortable to see you at a higher level. It makes them extremely uncomfortable to see you do things in a way that they did not. It makes them extremely uncomfortable to see you think for yourself and make decisions for yourself. It makes them extremely uncomfortable to see you HAPPY… doing it differently and unbothered by their opinion.
Your discomfort will not limit me.
It is like video games. If you want to unlock new levels, you can. However, some people are perfectly CONTENT playing on the basic levels. They do not desire levels that are more challenging (EX: Unlocking the Special Cup on Mario Kart… y ‘all know that is hard). THEN they want to get mad that you desire to unlock new levels. WHY ARE YOU MAD? You could unlock them too if you wanted to but to you it is pointless. We already have courses on the basic level that are perfectly fine, right?. Moreover, even if you did want to try, you let people in your head saying it is too hard or there was no reason behind it. You let people in your head and they made you feel stupid for wanting to try. Now, since you feel like you cannot do it, you want me to feel THE SAME WAY. It is as if they want THEIR discomfort and disbelief with the idea to restrict you… to keep you from doing it. All I know is, I beat every level on Mario Kart and the creator of the game made it to where I could. I have the same goal in life. New levels. ALWAYS.
This is between God and ME!
God is the creator of this game we call LIFE. There is a spiritual side to everything. If there is one thing my best friend stresses to me, it is that it all comes down to how I feel about what I am doing and how God feels about it. At the end of the day, that is all that matters. At the end of ALL OF THIS, only YOU can speak for YOU. OTHER PEOPLE’S opinions are not going to be RELEVANT when God puts His judgement on us. I do not want God to be like “Megan I put it in your heart to do X, Y, & Z and you ignored it. YOU thought about it. YOU daydreamed about it. YOU knew you wanted to do it and YOU knew I was giving you the green light to do it. YOU saw where I had opened the door for you to do it. YOU knew that I was going to have your back along the way. Why didn’t YOU do it?” WHAT WOULD MY ANSWER EVEN BE? “Umm, God I wanted to but OTHER PEOPLE made me feel like I shouldn’t. OTHER PEOPLE made me feel like I couldn’t” I highly doubt God wants to hear that. OTHER PEOPLE did not create you... God did. OTHER PEOPLE did not put it in you to do it... God did. Why let someone put limitations on something they did not create, they have no power over, they cannot bless, and something they cannot understand?
PEOPLE do not define my limits, GOD does.
If you did not know, with God, there are truly NO LIMITS. OTHER PEOPLE cannot see what God sees. OTHER PEOPLE do not know what God knows. In addition, ooh y ‘all, OTHER PEOPLE do not have the power to send you to heaven or hell. Who cares if they feel some type of way about what you are doing! BYEEEEEEEE!
So much freedom and peace comes from making decisions solely for YOURSELF and whole-heartedly knowing that God is pleased with your decision. I am straight. I sleep just fine at night knowing I am 100% okay with decisions I have made for ME.
I am not you, boo. I am ME.
One thing I will never forget is how a group of upperclassmen told me as a freshman that I could not graduate with my engineering degree in 4 years. They laughed in my face and I was butt hurt. They really tried to make a joke out of my goals for myself. They thought it was so funny and crazy for me to even think I could. They were listening in on a conversation I was having with a friend and their opinions WERE NOT ASKED FOR. We just love giving our unasked for opinions don’t we? They told me “everybody else” does it in 5 years. I politely told them that I was not “everybody else”… I was MEGAN and I was going to finish in 4 years. I already knew it was completely possible. It was going to be ridiculously hard (which it was) but completely possible… other people actually had done it. No, it is typically not the NORM with an engineering degree but I do not typically fall into the NORM with anything that I do (separate blog post). They argued that I would not have good grades if I did because “everybody else” who tried to do it in 4 years did not have good grades when they finished (Again, I am not “everybody else”, I am Megan). They also argued that if I was going to become a member of a greek organization, finishing in 4 years was SUPER DEAD.
Throughout the 4 years, they would jokingly ask me if I was on track to graduate in 2016 and the answer was always YES. It is funny because some of those same upperclassmen were still there my senior year. They ended up apologizing for telling me I could not do it and they were extremely surprised with my GPA. They probably never realized how much their disbelief motivated me and kept me focused on WHAT I determined FOR MYSELF I could do. #ProveEmWrong
I spent a total of 4 years at Auburn (August 2012 – August 2016). I graduated with MY mechanical engineering degree and with a GPA slightly higher than a 3.0. In addition, I partied, went to games, interned, secured a job for after graduation, became an AKA, was involved with campus ministries, and was super involved with the program that poured into me. I did everything they said I COULD NOT do and THEN SOME. WHAT LIMITS?! Nobody but God allowed me to experience everything I wanted to experience in college and get out of there in 4 years with a B average in a ridiculously hard major.
I say all of that to say that WHATEVER IT IS, if you believe you can do something and you feel in your heart God wants you to do it… GO FOR IT! You already feel it so TRUST that God will help you along the way and know that there is NO LIMIT to what you can do, how you can do it, when you can do it and what He will do for others through it. No one can put limitations on you… unless you let them. No one can define your lane for you... unless you let them. No one can make you feel stupid for doing what you know you were called to do… unless you let them. DO NOT be concerned with OTHER PEOPLE’S opinions. It will just take your focus off your goals and not succeeding is exactly what they want. Prove them wrong!
This is just the beginning for me. Remember, new levels. ALWAYS.
Do not let anyone put limitations on you!
Thanks for reading.
Love ALWAYS, Megan