Why is this not happening for me…

If it is true, that everything is possible, as is touted by many life coaches, spiritual teachers etc. than the following question is bound to arise in some of us:

‘Why is this not happening for me? Surely it should, since all is possible. Right?’

Personally I’ve come to the conclusion, that these absolute narratives, turning eventually into whole belief systems are basically unhealthy for us. There’s no nuance, not acknowledging the complexity of human realities.

If we buy too much into the story of limitless potential, we can get caught up into a sense of arrogance, as well as entitlement.

Maybe it’s as if our young magical parts are taking over, just wanting our wishes to come true. Like when we were kids.

I remember vividly, as a kid I so believed in all the fantasy books I was reading at the time, that I had to put things to the test.

It was a Sunday, which meant the shops were closed in Germany and I was so much wanting to have some chewing gum. So, I thought, if magic existed and everything was possible, I surely could make a package of green spearmint chewing gum appear in my hand. The time was passing bye, while I had my hand open to receive the gift, but nothing happened. My huge sense of disappointment stayed with me a long time afterwards, the disillusionment. Reality was vastly different to the stories I was  loving so much at the time.

Go figure…

The thing is, of course there are magical moments in our lives, where things all of a sudden come together. Synchronicities happening we possibly couldn’t foresee. At the same time reality is often vastly different to what we concocted in our dreams. Life comes with challenges and limitations, which are sometimes hard to stomach.

So, in a way both is true:

‘Maybe more is possible than we thought, but also not everything is possible all of the time.’

Which reminds me of a situation, when I was doing the film training in LA many years ago. We were doing monologues and had a very good acting teacher giving us feedback.

To one of my colleagues, who was quite successful in TV he said:

'You're not as good as you think you are, but you're also not as bad as you feel you are.’

It shows once more, extremes aren’t really helpful. Getting caught up in the belief, that we can’t control anything in our lives, leads to hopelessness, whereas the opposite generates some sense of grandiosity.

Some of us need to rather work on overcoming a limiting belief, that’s holding us back and others need to limit themselves more, set a boundary to gain more focus.

I believe, that limiting ourselves can cause us being more creative. Saying actively no, not everything is possible. Maybe here I can't change something, but let's work within this particular limitation. Only painting birds for example and seeing what happens with that. It’s giving ourselves a container within which we can explore more deeply.

As a life coach, I don’t believe it makes sense to tell people, that everything is possible. People just end up asking themselves, why things are not happening for them, constantly wondering what they’ve done wrong.

It's maybe that there are certain things possible they didn't believe were, and we need to look closely, at what they are, finding the next tiny step. Being gentle and not pushing ourselves over the edge. But it might also be the case, that they’ve become so unboundaried, that it would be good to impose some limitations for more focus.

So my question to you is, do you think you would need to limit yourself more and find the creativity within? Or do you need to break out of a certain limitation, of a certain box you put yourself in? Maybe a bit of both?

I'm very curious to hear what you've got to say.