Turning Barriers Into Opportunities

Dr. Seuss’s publisher once challenged him to write a children’s book using only 50 different words. Could you do it? Dr. Seuss could, and did. He wrote Green Eggs and Ham to answer the challenge. If you count the different words in it, you’ll find there are exactly 50. Not only that, but all of the words have but a single syllable except for one—the word “anywhere.” Green Eggs and Ham became Dr. Seuss’s best-selling book at more than 8 million copies.

How many times do we find ourselves confronted by a limitation that seems to block us from achieving something?  Well, these barriers can be a mighty opportunity to fuel our creativity, according to James Clear, author of the best-selling book "Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results." To prove his point, he uses the above example of Dr. Seuss.

The key to success seems to lie in knowing what the constraint is—in other words, "the size of the canvas”--and figuring out how to work within it. When I read the article by James Clear, I had not yet found a topic for this week’s Dean’s Corner, so I quickly gave myself a time frame—a constraint--to convert his article into a column.

Without exception, every task we attempt offers an obstacle. This is simply part of day-to-day living.  We need to learn how to overcome these barriers with the tools we have in store. Everybody’s chosen devices are different, of course. But "setting limits for yourself . . . often delivers better results than keeping your options open,” Clear writes. He asks us to remember to keep handy in our tool box this premise of “setting limits.”  He lists three reasons why restrictions are helpful:

1. Constraints inspire your creativity.
2. Constraints force you to get something done.
3. Constraints are not the enemy.

Finally, Clear lists successes he has had when imposing limits on himself to achieve something. Find the whole article on Pocket Worthy.