Alexander’s struggles 9 – What more can I be?

You all achieved some things that you thought were not possible. There were moments where you thought that you are not capable of doing it but then you did it. No matter what it was, passing an exam you thought you never could do, learning a language, becoming good at a skill or a sport, giving a presentation, talking to somebody. They all have in common that you once thought that it´s not possible. Then you did and learned things and finally, you managed it.

In my head and maybe in yours too, that brings up the question: “What more can I be?”

I achieved some things that seemed to be impossible for me. Maybe the most striking example for me is learning English. Many of you already know this story but here in short for everybody else:

In school, I was not good at English at all (Actually, I was average in most things in school.). One year, the English teacher even told me and my mum on a parents’ evening that I should stop learning English, or even better all languages at all because it´s wasted time. He said that I should hope for a passing grade and then never look at languages again.

So, after this, I believed that I am extremely bad at languages and I will never become even decent at a language.

Only many years later, I realized that that´s not true. I learned Dutch, improved my English, and was able to talk about everything with everybody in those languages. It took approximately 7 years or more but I pushed this belief away and now I am writing my blog in English for almost two years, have many friends that I talk English with and the foundation language of the relationship with my wife is also English. Hell, I even learned Spanish and became good enough to have conversations! So, this boundary inside my head got completely demolished.

And I believe that we all have many such stories in our lives. You probably have one, don´t you? Maybe take some time to remember one or some of those stories.

That brings me back to the question: “What more can I be?”

Is there a limit? Probably the limit is only the sky or the time-limit we all have on this earth. But is there further a limit? I don´t know exactly, nobody can but what I know is that we have so much potential. So many things that we can learn and improve. Countless boundaries that we can push.

Maybe the question is: “Which boundary shall I push next?”

So, let´s think about the next steps in our life, choose priorities, and just work on them. I would bet we can continue surprising ourselves!

All the best,

Alexander

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Laozi