Brother -
I dug out an old paper you wrote while you were in high school called "Gold Coast." You forgot to print it out the day it was due and called Mom to drive it to school for you. While it was printing, she was overcome with emotion as she read it. She decided to email it to me, even though it was a slight invasion of your privacy.
It's a powerful paper and something I'll cherish forever. At first glance, people would think it's about the effect I had on you growing up. If they look deeper, they'll realize it's about your introspection in creating your own path.
You wove lyrics from one of your favorite songs, "Gold Coast," as you described your journey. The first verse is powerful:
"So you'll run around your ego
You'll run around your gold coast
You know you got the time
Because this prison is our own design"
It talks about how individuals avoid going for what they truly want, and worse, make a prison of self-limiting beliefs that ultimately hold them back.
Early in my career, I looked up to a friend of mine from my fraternity who helped me land my first job at Intuit. He's a couple of years older than me and was a rockstar at work. I tried to emulate him as I wanted to achieve similar success.
I didn't hide my admiration. In my 1:1s with my manager, I would tell her, "I want to be like Will Dorsch." I made him my northstar of what I should try to achieve. One day she pulled me into her office and said,
"Be better than Will Dorsch."
My jaw dropped as I sat there dumbfounded, trying to process what she just told me. Will was like an idol to me. What does she mean to be better than him?
She helped me realize that I wasn't being true to myself —and by not being true to what I wanted, I put unnecessary self-limitations on what I could go and achieve.
So it's interesting that around the same time I learned this lesson, my teenage little brother was already figuring it out. I've continued to learn over the years, though, that these self-limitations continue to emerge in different forms.
So the message, Brother, is that only you can limit yourself. Your capabilities are so much greater than what you think they are.
Let me leave you with a quote and a question.
"You can't put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get."
-Michael Phelps
What are the current limitations you are putting on yourself?
Enjoy the dance,
Nate