500 Words a Week - Your Capacity Is Greater Than You Think
“You have to believe in your capacity. You have to believe that your capacity is greater than you can probably imagine what it is.”
Rainn Wilson
A meaningful idea from a man who played one of my favourite TV characters, Dwight from The Office. Rainn reminds us that we might have our foot on the brake. As to why, maybe it’s fear. Fear of attempting and failing, fear of looking different, fear of deviating from the norm.
Sometimes it can be more comfortable in our minds to never try and never fail, than to try and potentially fail. People find comfort in inaction, they find comfort in seeing others attempt and fail. However, this comfort is ill-gotten. When we are in our later years, we will regret the dreams and ideas we didn’t go after, rather than wrapping ourselves in cotton-wool and never experiencing failure.
Regardless of whatever we do, we will have some form of regrets along the way, but we can choose our regrets. We can choosing regretting the mistake we made in going after something we wanted, rather than regretting never having gone after anything. Making mistakes and learning from them is part of life.
Why I like what Rainn said is that it reminds us to believe. It reminds us to believe in our own capacities and even push beyond that. This resonates with me because like with many people we can be hard on ourselves. We spend more time swirling around the cycle of despair, confusion, and feeling lost than truly believing in our own capacities.
Rainn’s above response was from a question Tim Ferris asked him: “what advice would you give to your 30-year-old self?” To which Rainn also said:
“God has given us talents and faculties and it’s up to us to discover them and expand them to their maximum and use them to serve the world.”
I’m not deeply religious but upon hearing this I have to agree. We have talents, we have things that come easier to us than others. It’s up to us to fully identify these and act up them.
The central tenet of Rainn’s message is to believe in yourself deeper.
Rather than constantly being the voice in our head that is tearing us down, can we look to lift ourselves up.
The concept of believing in ourselves more is an intensely warm and comfort bringing feeling. However, we must marry this believe with action. If we do nothing except believe in ourselves, nothing will happen.
