Becoming Limitless

How many versions of yourself are lying dormant right now?

The musician?

The entrepreneur?

The actor?

What if I told you the only thing separating you from these identities isn’t talent or time—it’s a single mental shift that most people never make?

This mental shift is to become limitless.

Ever since watching the film Limitless, I’ve been obsessed with one question: What does it truly mean to be limitless?

I’m sure most of you have seen it by now, but for the very few who haven’t yet,

Limitless tells the story of Eddie Morra,

a struggling writer who unlocks 100% of his brainpower with a mysterious pill, NZT.

He becomes incredibly intelligent, successful, and seemingly limitless.

He is able to break past his mental barriers that held him back initially from starting something he's always dreamed of doing.

and how far he is able to push himself once he got over the initial hurtle of writing a book.

This concept of becoming limitless has always fascinated me ever since watching this movie

and ever since watching this film all i've ever wanted to be is limitless myself.

But what exactly does it mean to become limitless?

And why should you even want to be anyways?

Is this all just woo-hoo talk or something possible?

and that's what i'd love to talk about with you today

i’ll be breaking down in my perspective what it means to become limitless

not through a pill, but through mindset and action.

Part 1- Breaking Past the Mental Shackles. (dont talk)

So In the movie, Ed is going through a very rough time when we first see him in the film, he looks very stressed out as he claims,

"What kind of guy without a drug or alcohol problem looks this way? Only a writer. " (talk but will be edited over)

He struggles with his book, he faces it and says today is the day he is going to kick it's ass but he still just can't start it

One day, Edward bumps into the brother of a past lover who is a dealer, named Vern

When confronted with how he’s been, he starts to tell Vern about his new book deal he’s gotten he crumbles and admits he can’t even start it.

His old friend feels sympathy for Edward so he gives him a drug called NZT-48.

He thinks about it and figures not much else can get worse in his life so he decides to take the drug,

he is confronted by his landlords girlfriend and immediately starts getting chewed out over the rent.

All of a sudden he feels a different feeling, the color grade goes from dark and depressing to warm and uplifting, he has clarity.

With newfound clarity, he sees his filthy apartment for what it is: a reflection of his chaotic mind.

So what does he do?

He cleans. He declutters.

After he spends all of this time clearing everything up he realizes with this new found clarity, he knows what he needs to do.

He takes one look at his laptop , sits down, and just wrote.

And eventually throughout just one night of hard work and action,

he wrote out the entire book he had been putting off for years.

We all struggle at one point or another at this, when you find something you want to do with your life you’re met with the most resistance to doing it you’ve ever experienced before.

Just like Edward you sit in front of the screen just sitting there,

till finally you feel so uncomfortable you just get up and go to the bar, see some friends, watch some videos,

or play video games,

anything to get you to escape what you know you need to do

thinking to yourself it’s okay I’ll start once I’m done with this round or I’ll start tomorrow

because tomorrow is the start of a new week and I’ve already messed this week up not doing anything so might as well start a new.

Which this is something we’ve all told ourselves at least once in life.

This is the exact way Ed would think, until 10 years later he still hasn’t started at all.

And look where that has made him end up.

If you don’t want to be in the same situation as Edward, the solution is easy to break past this mental barrier.

Becoming limitless starts with one simple, often painful step:

just start. take action, even if it's messy.

like Edward once he feels the clarity from the NZT he is able to just start,

but you don’t have to wait for clarity, you already have it within you.

you just have to do at least something related to what you want to do

and now you’ve gotten the ball rolling,

even if it sucks, all that matters is that you did it

and that feeling of finally feeling a little bit of satisfactory lays over you.

you take action,

even if it's cleaning up the messy apartment,

once you feel clarity from just starting we can also clean our environments around us and the clutter within our minds.

We all want to be perfect from the get-go, but we have to be real with ourselves.

Whether it's your first song, your first business, or your first video,

you will have to embrace the suck.

Think of it like learning an instrument.

You don't pick up a guitar and shred like Hendrix on day one, do you?

Overtime the more you do something the better you will get at it,

and the more momentum you will have because once you start something,

this same momentum will create more motivation as a spiral effect

then once you know it, you’ve created something

and that something is better than creating nothing

once something has been created you now know how to do something so you can do it again with more ease,

and the more you do it the easier it will be to keep doing it.

So if you want to break past the mental shackles you feel holds you back,

the easiest way to break them is just by doing something about it.

and sometimes even your first production of something new could be really really good,

in the case of Edward, once he finally was able to just write his book it was received very well from his publisher

this could be easily be you,

Part 2, The Decision

There are two types of people in this life,

There are the Specialists and the Generalists.

By definition,

a Specialists is someone who concentrates primarily on a particular subject or activity;

a person highly skilled in a specific restricted field.

In other words, this is just the study of only one field in life.

You go to school, you become a Doctor, and you work only as a Doctor the rest of your life

You spend your entire life only focused on being a Doctor and nothing else extensively.

a Generalist on the other hand by definition,

is "someone who possesses a broad range of knowledge and skills across various fields, rather than specializing in one specific area."

This is someone who will go from topic to topic learning a lot about one specific topic then moving onto the next.

The Generalist is adapting, while the Specialist tends to stay in his one lane,

and this isn't meant to throw shade at Specialists by any regard,

some people enjoy being a professional in just one field,

and if that's what you want to be then there's nothing wrong with that.

But in order to become limitless, you have to be a Generalist.

You have to be willing to learn multiple subjects in life.

There's an old saying, Jack of all Trades and a Master of None.

I personally don't agree with this statement.

To become limitless means you can be a master of many things.

There are many examples of historical figures in history that were well renown Generalists.

Isaac Newton was known primarily for his discoveries of laws of motion and gravitation from his mathematical skills,

but he also was known to be an astronomer, alchemist, theologian and an author.

Benjamin Franklin is most notable for his work with aiding Washington and the Thirteen Colonies in the formation of the United States,

But he was also known to be a scientist with his famous experiment of flying a kite with a key attached to it during a thunderstorm to understand the nature of electricity and lightning.

He also was an author, and an inventor.

Theodore Roosevelt was known as a great the youngest President on the time,

but before that he was also a police commissioner,

Secretary of the Navy,

a decent fighter known to have a boxing ring in the White House

and a very avid hunter who before his time in politics owned a ranch in the Dakotas hunting big game

and of course he also wrote 35 books

and lastly the most famous Generalist of all time, Leonardo Da Vinci

Some know him from his famous paintings

such as the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper

and some know him by his scientific discoveries

He was also well known to have created concepts of inventions way beyond his time.

Inventions such as the parachute

the Helicopter

Paraglider

even some weird UFO sketches.

The world is full of Specialists and Generalists, which serve a pivot role in society,

However to become limitless means to be a Generalist

If anything ever seems too hard just remember,

there is many people in history who are known to have done so many amazing things

If they can do it why not you?

Part 3, Limit Distractions.

In order to learn, you can't keep yourself distracted by other forces that don't contribute to your overall goals.

If you want to learn to do carpentry

let's say you choose to watch some videos online about how to start or get better at the craft

but because you are only you are much more prone to watching some short form content from shorts

This begins to suck you in then all of a sudden the algorithm kicks in

then all of a sudden you're watching shorts about pottery when you don't even like pottery.

Distractions will easily throw you off learning and can easily suck you up from days to weeks to months if you allow it.

And distractions can come in many forms, and one of the sneaky forms i’ve discovered is from chores.

Maybe this just applies to me but let’s say

You finally sit down to write a book for example and get the resistance of trying to start then suddenly you just remembered you have to do the laundry and you think to yourself

"Huh well I didn't do the laundry yet and it has to get done so i'll just go and do that real quick then come back and work on the book.”

So you go and put your dirty clothes in the washer then get back to your desk.

Right as your thinking of starting again you think oh that's right I need to get groceries this week so you justify getting away from the computer to go get the groceries.

I'm not saying anything is wrong with getting chores done.

Obviously you need take care of things in life but if you don't plan it out accordingly and just constantly do it on a whim to the point that when you think it's the right time to take care of it is when you're in the process of learning or starting something new is a problem.

It's very easy to justify chores and errands as a way to not do something and distract our mind and we can't do that here.

Same thing applies with social media and technology

Both uses of these tools can create an amazing life and provide information for you

With information now at our finger tips, becoming limitless is easier than ever before in the history of our time.

However with the easy access to information, there is also the easy access to entertainment

When entertainment is overused as it has been, it becomes a problem.

It becomes a dopamine addiction.

And it not only will hault what you want to create,

But it also can negatively impact brain structure and function.

If you overuse entertainment to satisfy your dopamine levels,

you won't need nor want the dopamine from learning something new or creating something new

And I think you can see the

Part 4: Becoming Limitless

In the movie he is able to learn the play the piano in three days,

learn French just by hearing it once,

and shows off how much he knows about history to understanding how unpredictable the market can be from human greed over time.

He masters languages, music, and markets in days.

How can we approach that level of rapid learning?

The key is intense focus fueled by genuine interest.

While learning something as vast as Edward ranges person to person,

The way I’ve found to learn things quickly is just committing lots of time and actually having a lot of interest in it.

If I want to learn ride a bike pretty well, you have to learn to ins and outs of it,

you have to learn how to be in motion with it, take risks with it,

and understand how it works on different terrain I have to try many things out and understand how it works because once you understand how it works its far easier to master it fast and feel the joy of riding.

In the age of information it's easier now more than ever to learn.

If you want to learn how to survive staying warm in the wilderness, there’s a video for that.

If you want to learn how to be a graphic designer, Skillshare has classes for that.

We also have the gift of AI which really helps narrow things down

Pick a subject you want to learn and just ask it to cite you resources to learning about it,

it really helps condense down what you really should learn or at least start with

That way you don’t just go down the YouTube Rabbit hole but have a good structure to finding new ways to learn

Those who take the steps towards becoming limitless will thrive in the world we live in today

The path to becoming limitless is open to anyone willing to challenge their perceived boundaries.

Part 5: Don't Try

As I mentioned earlier, the key is intense focus fueled by genuine interest.

But let me clarify what this really means.

You have to not only love to learn about something, but the struggle of the subject at hand as well.

If you want to learn about physics but you hate math, then you won't get very far.

This ties into a famous philosophy by Writer Charles Bukowski.

He had the famous thought of "Don't Try"

he wasn’t advocating laziness—he was sharing the most misunderstood success principles of all time.

Which in essence means, if you don't have the passion to get through the hardest points of doing something, then don't try.

You have to love the process as bad as it gets, just as good as it gets in order to become a master.

You have to love the bad times because the bad times are there for you to learn

If the hard times don't feel worth it, just don't try

You can only do in life, you can never just try.

Think about it this way

The person who becomes a doctor because their parents expected it but doesn't have any interest in human anatomy

They’ll burn out pretty fast

The entrepreneur who loves the idea of success but resents the daily grind?

They’ll just quit when it gets tough.

The musician who loves performing but can’t stand practicing?

They’ll never achieve mastery in their craft, and fade out.

So before you start doing something ask yourself

Is the struggle of possibly failing when things get hard really worth it?

Conclusion

If you want to be anything like Edward Morra, it is totally possible.

You can become limitless without a pill.

You don't need to use anything external constantly in order to become more adaptable in life.

Not everyone is built to become limitless, but if you are still watching this video,

Chances are you are

Here's my challenge to you,

What's something that seems really hard to learn but would give you satisfaction in learning?

Just look into it

to Become Limitless means you can't limit yourself.

if you want to learn something new, learn it.

ff you want to become something, become it.

don't come up with excuses,

no matter what happens in life, we always have the choice to become who we are meant to be.

you just have to choose wisely.