It’s quite amazing what you can learn from just observing what is around you.
Around 10 p.m., I was driving along Highway 2A [Charles Duncan O’Neal Highway], heading towards Warrens.
I could see a car’s rear lights in the distance. In a few seconds I caught up to this car and had to reduce my speed significantly because the driver was driving ridiculously slow. I was in a hurry and was being vigilant for any opportunity to overtake, but there was a continuous flow of traffic going in the opposite direction.
I became more frustrated when I peered down at my speedometer and realised that this person was driving at 50 km/h. Since I was unable to overtake, I decided to sit back and just drive. Immediately a thought came to mind and I said to myself: ‘It’s amazing that the average car speedometer can reach 180 km/h, however, we are limited by law to drive at 80 km/h maximum.’
As I pondered upon this, I realised that the greater majority of cars in this country don’t ever reach their maximum potential speed. As a matter of fact,
I would even be bold enough to say that this may be true around the world.
Let’s look at our lives and see if there is some correlation between the car and ourselves.
How many of us in our lifetime actually reach our full potential? How many of us have actually fulfilled our passions, dreams and aspirations? How many of us have had ideas to start a business or to study or work abroad or to build a house or to get married or to have a family? How many of us after reaching 40, 50, 60, 70 can look back and honestly say that we are pleased to see we have achieved most of our dreams?
We too, just like the car, have allowed man-made limitations to hold us back. There isn’t much we can do about man-made limitations, however, it’s the self-imposed limitations that we can do something about. We have little control over what happens to us but we have great control over how we respond.
I believe that there is power in words and words have life. We often use words and phrases like “I can’t”, “I am not smart enough”, “I don’t have enough qualifications”, “I might fail” and the list goes on. These are limitations that we impose on ourselves.
Words and phrases like these destroy passion, reject creativity and hinder development. I would urge that we earnestly seek to change our vocabulary by introducing phrases like, “I can do this”, “I will make this work”, “I will not give up”, “if this fails I will try again”. These motivate, build self-esteem and provide a foundation that should help us reach our potential by fulfilling our dreams.
There are four other elements that affect our ability to be successful in resisting self-imposed limitations when they present themselves. These are (1) what you read, (2) what you listen to, (3) what you watch, (4) who you associate with.
I once heard someone say that the wealthiest places in Barbados are the graveyards. So many passions, dreams and ideas that were never birthed or developed have gone to the grave with those people who had them.
Will we suffer this same fate?
Remember, words have power and words have life.
We can change a lot by what we speak.
• ?Corey Worrell is a former Commonwealth youth ambassador.
