We Are More - Understanding Our Capacity

“Whatever you see within yourself, let it be the whole of yourself. For too often we have been brutalized by our own sense of inadequacy and we’ve been held hostage to the lesser choices born of such a debilitating sense of self. Know this, that latent within you there lies more than ample resources begging to be called forth to smash the chains forged of such an incapacitating sense of self. And it is my prayer that you would press against everything within you that would hold you back, and that you would raise whatever voice you have and extend that call.”

You are more than you realize. A lot more. You’ve probably heard that before, and if you haven’t, you’re long overdue. You are more than you realize. But the thing is, we don’t feel that we are ‘more.’ If anything, the things that happened to us would suggest the opposite…that we’re less than what we hoped we were (and probably a whole lot less). Whether that’s failure (in any of the million different ways that we fail), or ridicule, or jobs lost, or relationships that blew up, or dreams that went up in smoke, or friends that walked away, or opportunities that drifted away, or family members who were critical to the point that we wished they went away…or whatever it might be. The statement that “we are more than we realize” just doesn’t seem to fit this stuff.

In my recent book, “The Self That I Long to Believe In,” I wrote this:

“The majesty of our humanity and the capabilities laid out within us are nothing short of marvelous; so much so that we are barely cognizant of it. That in and of itself may be why we don’t recognize them and therefore don’t believe that they exist. All of us run deep with untapped potential that is rustling just under the surface of our lives waiting to be unleashed.”

We are ‘more.’ Our circumstances don’t have the power to refute that or change that. For sure, our circumstances can lead us to believe that we’re not ‘more,’ and they can be very convincing in doing that. Our circumstances can also lead us to believe that we’re a whole lot less than we thought ourselves to be, and those circumstances can be incredibly convincing as well. But our capacity exceeds the failures that we experience and the criticisms that are thrown in our faces. Our abilities are not defined by what people have said, or the choices that we have made. Our abilities exceed all of those. They are greater than the limits of our imaginations, and they are not limited by people or choices that have proven to be less than imaginative.

That “more” will always be there whether you use it or not. It sits at the ready whether we recognize it or not. We are ‘more.’ That’s not the issue. The issue is will we understand that we are ‘more,’ and will we allow that ‘more’ begin to shape us into ‘more.’

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