Don't limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your m... — Mary Kay Ash

Don't limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.

Author: Mary Kay Ash

Insight: We all have that voice in our head that says "people like me don't do that" or "I'm not the type to succeed at X." It whispers so quietly we barely notice it's there, but it's incredibly effective at keeping us small. The tricky part is that this voice often feels like reality, not like a choice we're making. It feels like facts about ourselves rather than beliefs we inherited from past failures or things other people told us. The non-obvious part? Recognizing your self-imposed limits doesn't actually require forcing yourself to suddenly believe you can do anything. It's smaller than that. It's just pausing when you catch yourself shutting a door and asking: am I closing this because it's actually impossible, or because I've decided in advance that people like me can't walk through it? Sometimes the answer is the first one. But often enough, it's the second. This matters now especially because we're all drowning in comparison and feedback. We see what everyone else achieved and immediately file ourselves into smaller categories. But your mind is more flexible than your past suggests. The real achievement isn't positive thinking—it's the honest work of testing whether your current limits are facts or just very old assumptions.

Source: Mary Kay: You Can Have It All, p. 25, 1995