CHALLENGING LIMITATIONS

Song:

 1. I have a very big ooooo

Always by side

A mighty God oooo

By my side, by my side

2. We are victorious,

Yes we are victorious

Glory be to God who has given us victory, alleluia

Someone once said that the last continent to be fully explored is the mind. And that whatever the mind of a man can conceive, that he can achieve. The mind is like a parachute. Although you can have it secure on your back, unless it is opened when you jump off the plane you may just as well commit suicide. The Chinese have a proverb which says: “A closed mind is like a closed book; just a block of wood.” Our greatness starts when we break the limitations in our minds.

Most of us are not held back from our greatness by lack of education, resources or a lack of opportunity. We are held back by the fears and limiting beliefs that are in our minds. In the past we thought that every nice thing was for certain people in another country. If you were putting on something nice, or eating some junk food, your friends would remark that you are putting on or eating something that is for those people. Things have since changed a lot but somehow this school of thinking has persisted quietly in the lives of most of us. Most of us have to battle to convince minds that we can achieve greatness and we can stand anywhere in the world with pride and dignity.

It was the great South African liberation activist and martyr, Steve Biko, who said: “The greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” The first step to greatness is to deal with our minds. This is why the Amplified version Bible in Ephesians 4:23 says: “And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind (having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude).”

Dale Carnegie (1888 – 1955) is the father of motivational speaking who inspired the world with his books like, “How to win friends and influence people in business” and “How to stop worrying and start living”, Carnegie once said: “You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.” Fear limits the full exploitation of the power of our minds. Fear is always False Evidence Appearing Real. Fear is also False Expression Against Reality.

At times we just accept the status quo and assume that we were born to suffer, with our only hope of solace being heaven. We need to challenge our limits and refuse to languish in mediocrity. Who said that poverty is our birthright? Who said this is all that we can be?

To go beyond the present we need to start challenging our reality. Our minds should be more than just a warehouse of facts but a thinking tool. One of the men in history who challenged his limitations is Thomas A. Edison. At one time he said: “The brain can developed just the same as the muscles can be developed, if one will only take the pains to train the mind to think. Why do so many men never amount to anything? Because they don’t think.”

One is not surprised to hear these words from Edison because his life is a testimony of a man who refused to allow limitations to hold him back. Thomas Edison began his career in 1863, in the early days of the telegraph industry, when virtually the only source of electricity was primitive low-voltage batteries. Before he died in 1931, he had played a critical role in introducing the modern age electricity. From his laboratories and workshops came the phonograph, the carbon-button transmitter for the telephone speaker and the microphone, the incandescent lamp, a revolutionary generator, the first commercial electric light and power system, an experimental electric railroad, and key elements of motion-picture apparatus, as well as a host of other inventions. Singly or jointly he held a world record of 1093 patents (official documents). He created the world’s first industrial-research laboratory.

Edison was born in Ohio in 1847. At an early age he developed hearing problems due to some disease. Instead of his deafness becoming a limitation it strongly influenced his behaviour and career, providing the motivation for many of his inventions. Edison attended schools for about five years. Although he was imaginative and inquisitive, he was labelled a misfit by his teachers because of his hearing problems and received little attention from them. To compensate, he started reading widely and most of his education was informal.

At the age of 12, Edison quit school and began working as a train-boy on the railroad between Detroit and Port Huron, in America. In 1863 he became an apprentice telegrapher.

He challenged the limitations of the telegraphy system and devoted his energy towards improving the telegraphy equipment and inventing devices to facilitate some of the tasks that his physical limitations made difficult. By 1869 he had developed a duplex telegraph (a device capable of transmitting two messages simultaneously on one wire) and a printer, which converted electrical signals to letters. He then abandoned telegraphy for full time invention and entrepreneurship.

Edison’s work was driven by a passion to challenge limitations and invent things that could ease human life. Throughout his life’s work he had the following patents (official documents): 389 for electric light and power, 195 for the phonograph, 150 for the telegraphs, 141 for storage batteries, and 34 for the telephone. Edison refused to let his physical, educational or social limitations stop him from pursuing his life’s purpose. He always invented for necessity; his objective always being to solve some problem. He sought to devise things that he could manufacture and sell to the growing industries of the world. We can become anything we wish to be if we can only make up our minds and resolve to achieve greatness.

The mind needs to fed and nourished. Mostly by exposing it and thrusting it into learning opportunities. Margaret Fuller said it well when she said: “A home is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as for the body. For human beings are not so constituted that they can live without expansion. If they do not get in one way; they must in another way; or perish.” A mind must either expand daily or it will always shrink daily.

The mind is like a garden. Unless we deliberately chose what to plant in the gardens of our minds it will soon be overgrown with weeds of doubt, pessimism and limited thinking. We must jealously guard what we read and feed our minds with. Mahatma Gandhi once said: “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”

Reading is one of the ways of exercising our minds. Care must be taken that we nourish our minds with ideas and skills that empower us to achieve greatness and leave lasting legacies.

Shalom

Evang. John Bamidele Oseh