Know Your Limits

Recognizing your innate limitations can help you to focus your energy in the right direction and get the maximum fulfillment from your work. All human beings have limitations, and these need to be seen, not as "faults" or "failings", but as the inevitable result of having strengths in other areas. No individual has everything. Being able to understand those areas where essential character qualities might restrict your capacity to engage in or enjoy a particular kind of work, is part of the building of self-understanding and self-confidence.

Sometimes we have to try and then fail before we are able to recognise that we are undeveloped, unsuited, or simply uninterested in a particular sphere of life.

Pressure from family and peer group may push us into attempting to become what we are not, and much time and energy may be wasted in attempting to fulfil someone else's expectations when we know we are not comfortable in that particular kind of work. It is important to recognise that limits do not signify any irrevocable flaw in character. Working hard on an area of limitation may, in fact, produce great confidence born out of hard effort, and sometimes real talent may be discovered beneath the surface of what appears to be a block or difficulty. It is up to you to discern whether a character limitation needs to be worked on, or compassionately accepted, or both.