Redefine Your Limits or living life without limits or setting limits for yourself will give us a greater chance to create change in our lives and achieve greater success.
Everyone must have heard the slogan of an energy drink brand since childhood: “There are no limits to life beyond 100.” Or, as the kids these days have changed it to: “There are no limits to life without sleep.” It has become a funny story. Words or phrases that are popular in each era tend to change according to events, situations, or stories of important people that occur.
The issue of limitations or restrictions is what makes people not achieve the same success.
When it comes to limits, for example, today we might set a limit for reading for two hours, tomorrow it might be three hours, or next week it might be five hours. In terms of limits, they are actually similar to setting our goals, which is to set a destination, when will we stop or end what we choose to do? At what point or point is it considered successful? Or when we have reached our destination, we might choose to continue by setting our limits again.
“I stepped out of my comfort zone by redefining my limits.”Tanya Streeter
Tanya Streeter is a freediving diver who has set a new record for freediving , a type of diving where the user does not use any breathing apparatus, and can only hold their breath once. Tanya doesn’t just want to break the freediving record and become the best freediver in the sport, she wants to break the men’s freediving record as well. She is proving that for her, there are no limits.
The devil told me, “Today is not your day. Give up and go back.”Tanya Streeter
In 2002, after Tanya trained hard to prepare herself as best as she could and called her most trusted team to prepare beside her, she thought everything was perfect for breaking the record today.
But she made a mistake. Deep in the sea, she was struck by what divers fear the most: Narcosis , or feeling unconscious, dizzy, and in some cases, unconscious. She knew it was happening to her because she noticed a small mistake in getting oxygen into her lungs before diving. And this is what happened.
The angel said to me, “Go ahead and let’s see how far you can go.”Tanya Streeter
Tanya knew all she had to do to survive was grab the lift bag, open the valve and pull the pin out. The lift bag would lift her straight to the surface. She made it to step two, but the looks on the faces of all the crew who had been taking care of her throughout her preparations were as if they expected it, and of course they expected it of her. Those images were like a projector projected onto the sea. She slowly moved her body little by little to get to the depth she needed, gathered her wits and pulled the pin out of the lift bag.
“If anything is trying to stop me, I think it’s my own mind.”
And for the first time, she’s come out and told the story of that dive. She rose to the surface and broke the record at a depth of 525 feet. That’s like extending the Frost Bank in Texas by another 10 feet, or about the same depth as a World War II submarine. The devils and angels under the water were all her own minds, and thankfully, her angel won.
“Trained hard, prepared well, but why did I fail?”
After breaking the world record, Tanya set a new limit. At that time, she was pregnant and would soon be a mother. She took good care of her baby, and people around her took care of her and gave her advice. She was confident that everything would turn out well.
But no, she had to go through postpartum depression. It changed her into a different person. It made her think she was the best, the most talented person because she had already broken a world record.
“It’s not about being the best in the world, but about trying to be the best in your own world,” her caretaker tried to remind her at that time, and it was this sentence that made her think and get out of that depression.
“Please give me a chance to give back to the sea.”
Soon after, Tanya was contacted by the Plastic Oceans Foundation with the opportunity to be involved in a semi-documentary film that presented the shocking truth about the impact of plastic in our oceans. The story does not want to be an exaggeration, but rather presents the truth, lifestyle, impacts, and solutions to the problem of plastic waste. The goal is to make people aware that this problem is not as far-fetched as they think.
“The sea is my playground.”
Tanya said that she grew up with the sea. In her free time, after school or on holidays, she had the sea as her friend. It was definitely her warm refuge. It protected her when she needed it and it was a place where she could prove herself. Now it’s time for her to give it back.
“Plastic is permanent and cannot be degraded, so it has no way of going anywhere.”
Over the past decade, we have been producing more than a century worth of plastic, and more than half of that plastic is single-use plastic. Why are disposables non-biodegradable?
Like plastic, when we throw it in the trash, we think it will be destroyed somewhere beyond us. But no, now what we throw away is floating in our oceans, and most of our world is made up of water. The plastic that is thrown away today has no way of going anywhere. It will definitely come back to us in one form or another one day.
“It’s not my world, it’s your world. Now it’s our world.”
Tanya said she is not suggesting that everyone should live without plastic. However, the people who invented it and introduced it had good intentions to improve everyone’s quality of life and hoped that it would make our daily lives more convenient.
But she would like to advise everyone to learn to live without it for our own future, our children’s future, and our families.
Now is not the time to think that our limits must be the best in the world, whether it is my world or someone else’s world, because now we have to do our best for our world.
Conclusion
Setting limits is a good thing for those who want to achieve success. Sometimes it makes us realize our limits, but sometimes it makes us realize that we can be more than we have ever set ourselves.
For example, today we might set a limit of 100 English words to remember in a week. If we break our limit, then next week we might be able to remember 200 English words, or this month we might be able to remember more than 500 words.
And it would be even better if we could try to set limits by not using plastic, whether it’s spoons, forks, etc. at lunch, or stop buying things that come in plastic packaging to keep at home, or change to bringing your own cup to put coffee in instead of getting a plastic cup from the local cafe. If we can really do this, our limits will not only be best for us, but it will be best for the world we live in.
“He who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, cannot become anything. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow, live, and love.”Leo Buscaglia – Writer
Redefine Your Limits – Tanya Streeter
Thanks to: https://www.deeperblue.com/tanya-streeter-featured-on-npr-podcast-about-breathing/ and https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/2549
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