Self Estimation

Half a Life

I said something to someone earlier today that made me think. I said, I've got to stop estimating myself. It was in relation to something I thought I couldn't do and I thought, why did I do that? Why did I disable myself right off the bat? And now I'm thinking about the whole subject of estimating oneself at all. What payoff is there to predetermining your capabilities - likely based on past experiences that wouldn't matter in the now anyway? In asking myself, I don't really have an answer yet. Well one. To keep yourself down.
I've pondered the value of 'can't' for a long time. I try to correct it when I catch myself saying it and ask if it's a 'can't' or a 'won't'. In my book 'The Creator Connection' I describe legitimate can'ts vrs won'ts. 'I don't have legs so therefore I can't walk.' That's a legitimate can't. Doesn't mean there aren't other ways you can get around and will find. It just means there's an actual and real limitation on your ability for that function. 'I can't go through that again.' isn't a can't, it's a won't. Won't is a function of the will and a choice. Both limit but one is a real limit and one is a choice based limit and that makes all the difference. What we can choose, we can affect change or a deeper acceptance.
Now, think about where you have said can't in just a single day. Think about how many of those were real and how many of those were by choice. How many times just today did you willfully disable/limit yourself? Substitute the word can't with won't and you'll see the difference in how that feels.
I think I'd like change my language to a more exploratory language. I could say, 'lets's find out' instead of can't or won't; see how that feels for awhile. Lately I've been searching for ways to get my head out of dualities and into more open thought and this may help. I feel as though I've been chasing my life in duality. This is good, no this is bad. This is right or this is wrong. While duality exists as descriptive representations, experiences are seldom all one side of the equation or the other but rather a combination of both or something that transcends those definitions entirely. For several years I've tried to stay within the balance of dualities rather than weighted to one side or the other but inevitably I favor one more than the other based largely on habitual or predetermined thinking. 'Ugh I'm dreading this turns into - yep, I was right or surprisingly it wasn't that bad' but still trapped in that duality of thought. So what's so bad about that? Clinging to one side or the other limits the choices available to make. Limits to choice are limits to the fullness of an experience both in the now and in the future as that habit develops itself. by way of example: If I were to show you a cookie and let you smell it but not eat it, I've limited your experience. I've limited and controlled your understanding OF that cookie and by default I've also limited/controlled how you're going to feel about cookies in the future. Maybe you don't even know cookies are meant to be eaten? How would you know unless the experience changes?
There's another determining factor to breaking the cycle of dualities - curiosity. Some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs have been because of something that was tried and didn't go the way the facts told them it should. Maybe one day I left a cookie out alone and you got curious and tasted it. Now you have a new experience of that cookie and it opened a new way of thinking about and interacting with it. Darn, now I want a cookie.
I think I'll end my pondering here for today but this isn't all I got to say about this subject. Stay tuned.