"Many of us hate limitations. We rail against them and push into them, HARD. And sometimes to great effect...."

Video portrait of the blogger finally starting to hit a skill that took 2.5+ years of off-and-on work....both soft work and "smashing into the rocks" work.

 "There is a skill you will never do. It may require more strength than you will build, more flexibility than your body can manage, a specific kind of coordination, timing, or momentum that is outside of what you'll develop. We like to think of ourselves as limitless. But this is a mistake. We will always be able to continue to grow, but we grow like oaks, up and out and down and sideways, in accordance with our environment, our genetics, and our experience with previous growth. We don't grow infinitely in all directions at once.

"Many of us hate limitations. We rail against them and push into them, HARD. And sometimes to great effect.

"And sometimes, we put so much of our energy into railing against a limitation, pursuing a skill or a trick or a goal -- that we fail to grow into the soft places where we can have more success.

"I'll be the last to tell you to take the path of least resistance. But I'll be the first to tell you that what sets you apart as a performer, and as a human, is the beautiful variety of what comes naturally to you. Lean into what works, what feels good, what you do that no one else does. Strive for excellence AND don't smash yourself against the rocks of a skill that isn't coming.

"It's a hard balance to strike, it's even hard to explain. But if you needed permission to work on something different, or to soften your intensity where it's only frustrating you, or to spend time playing with that sill arm movement you like to do. This is it!"

- Janelle Peters / @cirque_psych 

I keep returning to these thoughts. I'm not a performer, just someone who likes to move and, both separately and relatedly, keeps needing to learn not to rail against limitations.

I hadn't experienced that in such a physical way until I started recreational circus. Aerials are physically strenuous enough that I found I could quickly ruin my whole evening if I didn't know when to quit trying, when to leave a skill alone that just wasn't happening for me. I'd get more and more tired and more and more frustrated (which is hardly a combination that leads to breakthroughs, huh)...

Anyway, I was grateful for this perspective and copied these words down into my aerials notebook. Circus specifics aside, maybe they'll resonate with you too.