Your personal growth is limited by your cultural limitations.
When born, your sophistication, class, and feelings of self-worth are 100% determined by your cultural limitations.
You look at cultural limitations are like ancestral baggage. Presuppositions passed down to you from generations. It’s your hardware, and the initial download of information into your brain when you were too young to be considered a sentient being.
And then for most of your life you live these limitations out emotionally, while being mostly unconscious to them.
There is a way to break these limits, though.
Breaking Limitations
If you’re not lucky enough to be the few, born into a royal lineage, it takes tremendous effort to ascend pass the existence of “low-class” behaviors. Behaviors such as impulsiveness, negative attitudes, and poor work ethic.
Along with the massive physical effort to ascend, it also requires the breaking of a mental barrier.
Not only will it take plain ol’ hard work to become better in what you do, you’ll need to do things that make you feel silly and vulnerable. You’ll need to have courage to take risks and be awkward sometimes.
Indeed, the breaking of this barrier takes grit – it takes a willingness to tear down our ego and stomp it to death.
For within every culture, there are the do’s and don’ts – the loose rationalizations for why things need to be done how they are being done.
It’s in a state of reflection on these do’s/don’ts that you determine the true usefulness of your actions. Are they cultural limitations? From there, eliminate and optimize your daily actions for your own purpose to life.
If you reflect on it, most of the time, the rationalizations for a lot of your behaviors are very weak. Infuriatingly weak. Sometimes there are no rationalizations available.
Never let your ego’s be attached to any of these antiquated behaviors. Be constantly awake, “trimming away” at these behaviors and the cultural limitations that they impose on you.
Peasant Culture
A peasant doesn’t act stately and sophisticated because he is never around people that are not peasants. He does not exude class because he, simply, never needed to.
His children won’t need to, nor their children. Born into this peasantry environment, led by the peasant leadership in it, they won’t want to or feel like they could. Add in an oppressive King, and you get the nice, tidy, squared off limits to lifestyle.
Let’s say, as a child, you looked among your clan’s leadership to see only saw grimaces – complaints, groveling and negativity. Then, surely, that is your fate.
Likely, you’re born into families where the ancestry is a hot mess, full of oppression, and a couple of war criminals that make for a great story, but you know not to speak of.
Chances are, most of everyone’s ancestors went through major shit in their time. The traumas, fears, and anxieties are etched into our DNA through generations. We all hold onto some of that ancestral baggage.
In ancient, class-based times, why invest into refinement of lifestyle? How can they begin to add more value to others when they have to worry about their own imminent starvation and oppression?
Breaking Out
Nowadays, seemingly at humanity’s peak prosperity, we’re the fortunate ones, riding out a moment of history defined by relative peace.
Instead of over-indulging on the ease of modern living, we have the choice to reflect, refine and create.
We can even surpass our cultural limitations.
If only we take leadership, we can have choices that our ancestors could have never imagined.
Leadership
For cultural limitation is based upon leadership. Based upon that glance to see what everyone else is doing when you’re feeling insecure. Can I act like this here? Is this appropriate to act this way?
Without seizing leadership, you continue to live within the limitations of those you seek as leaders, gauging their responses, taking their emotions into consideration.
Are you a product of their approval? Are you the product of approval, in general?
You must take leadership and go on your individual path to ascension. You must feel like you know what’s best for yourself, and like you have the freedom to take actions towards it.
If you deeply, intuitively, know that your next actions are done in the purpose of growth, not to be gauged by culture, approval, or past – you will be successful in executing them.
This is to deeply know why you do what you do so you can sit into your decisions, so to speak. Be Always ready to eliminate any hesitant – doubtful energy you might be carrying before you take any action towards your personal growth.
Have the confidence to just be and know.
As a leader, your actions have an air of determination and destiny. You will create your own culture. You will know from deep-within that you are seeking to add value to the world – not your own ego… and this makes you powerful.
Royalty, even.
Go and Fall on Your Ass
Cultural limitations have defined your life as you’ve known it. So, naturally, course correction takes time.
Habits are not changed in 1 day. Neuro-plasticity takes time. Along this path, you will inevitably slip back into those old behaviors. If you try to escape your cultural limitations, you’ll more than likely fall on your ass.
That’s okay.
Take Your Time
The truth is, you might need a lot of course corrections. The personal-growth world is full of people who feel like they should be ahead of where they stand now. But perhaps, we’re just peasants trying our best to be kings, anyway. It’s not a big deal to fall short when we aim so very high.
Perhaps we’re also caught up in a senseless comparison, forgetting that its useless to compare if we all start in different points relative to each other.
For it’s easy to forget that we should compare ourselves to who we were yesterday, not to who somebody is today.
In times of failure, there is encouragement from the fact that, tomorrow contains the potential to live with sophistication and grace. In tomorrow exists an opportunity to take actions that are outside of cultural limitations, and unlock the best version of yourself.