Limitations.

I’ve always known that I was different. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had this attraction to experiences that most people naturally seem to repel from. I was magnetically drawn to the things that were viewed as “wrong” and “unconventional” to others. This got me into a lot of trouble over the course of my life, and for a very long time, had me questioning if something was seriously wrong with me.

College was the first time that someone taught me how to embrace this. I was studying Entrepreneurship and Organizational Leadership at Illinois State University when I met Doan Winkel, an unconventional professor of Entrepreneurship. He ran his classes differently than I had ever experienced before. We didn’t have any books, we didn’t have any homework, and we didn’t have any grades. Even going to class was completely optional. Our only project, during that one semester, was to start and run a business on campus. And each class throughout the semester would be dedicated to teaching us about a different piece of the process that goes into starting a business.

This was not a common approach when you compare it to what other professors were doing, but it made complete sense to me. If you wanted to be an Entrepreneur, the best way to learn would be to get out there and actually try to do it. And he was there to offer guidance & support around the “how” during his classes. But he wasn’t going to micromanage or force you to come learn, you had to want that enough for yourself.

Up until that point, my ability to really learn what I was being taught in all my other classes was barricaded by the books, the homework, the grades, the focus on academic performance, and the idea of success & failure. And as a result, I had a really awful & strenuous relationship with learning. I somehow never felt like I was capable of retaining information that was being taught to me, and my grades were always reflective of that.

This man removed all of those barriers that had been put around me my whole academic life, and he cracked open a whole new world of possibility for me. Without the pressure, I could really learn. Not only was I able to learn what he was teaching in a really effective way, but I was gaining energy from what I was learning. And when you’re used to school draining you, it’s a complete 180 shift when you realize there’s a way that learning can actually bring you more energy. I went to every single class.

Well…. almost every single class. I was in college, after all.

But it wasn’t only the removal of barriers that allowed me to see a path that I could travel down, it was also the way in which he was teaching. One of the first exercises that we did was around how to identify what kind of business to create. He had us make a list of everything that annoyed us, everything that pissed us off. I think the title of this exercise was called, “What’s the Itch?” if I remember correctly. The idea was that if you could identify the things that frustrate or irritate you, then you could come up with a solution for those things and turn that solution into a business. If it frustrates you, it likely frustrates many people out there in the world, so the market can be endless in that regard.

This exercise may seem to some people like a simple, “duh” exercise, but at this time 10-12 years ago, before entrepreneurship was as accessible as it is today, people in my reality were not thinking this way. The most popular specializations that my classmates were choosing in ‘The College of Business’ were Finance, Marketing, Insurance, and things that one would assume would garner more success in the real world. To put it into perspective, there were maybe 30-40 people that were majoring in Entrepreneurship, and hundreds of students majoring in Marketing & Advertising. It seemed that every other professor I had throughout the entire course of my college career followed the same commoditized protocol of teaching what they needed to in order to receive their tenure.

It was the same boring & endless process of lectures, notes, homework, quizzes, tests, and ultimately, that final grade. Rinse & repeat.

What Doan taught me in that one semester was different than anything I had learned my entire life in the education system: that the real answers are not taught, they are discovered. And the discovery does not live in the solutions, but in the problems. In the limitations.

If you’re given a specific problem and told to find the solution to that problem by using a formula, there is only one answer you can come up with that is “the solution”.

But if you’re asked initially, “what is the problem?”, well, that’s a challenge that excites me endlessly. Because not only is there an infinite possibility of solutions, but there is an infinite possibility of problems as well. And the problem that you identify, I believe, is the problem you are meant to solve over the course of your life on this earth.

Is it more beneficial to be taught to memorize a formula or to be empowered to create one of your own?

I felt as if something had been unlocked within me, and it started to completely shift my energy and attitude toward school. I was excited to go to class, to learn, to practice, to put what I was learning into action, and I had no fear around it.

This eventually started to open me up to a different way of learning in other subjects that I had previously been uninterested in. The way in which these other subjects were taught was still very incompatible with how I was meant to receive information, so it was still insanely challenging for me to perform well, but at least now I had the energy to face those challenges- which is something I never had before.

I went my whole life thinking that something was wrong with me because a) I couldn’t retain and regurgitate the information I was being taught in school, and b) I had an attraction to the problems, the limitations, the trauma, the ‘bad’ choices.

I was living in a world where “underperformance” and “trouble” were rejected aspects of the human experience. They were not recognized as characteristics of a good person, or a successful person, or a valuable person. They were viewed as quite the opposite. And so these aspects that, over time I have learned, are inherent to my individual authentic path, were rejected, shamed, punished, and completely misunderstood. And so up until that point in my college career, I spent my life rejecting, shaming, punishing, and completely misunderstanding myself.

I spent the beginning of my life trying to be the opposite of what always came natural to me, and it wasn’t until this one person came into my life and taught me a new way of thinking, a new way of being, that I was able to crack open this idea that maybe the things that come naturally to me, are in fact what lays down the path of my life in front of me. And the only thing that knocks me off that path is my own resistance to what and who I naturally am. That resistance, though, is something that never came from within me, but from outside of me. It’s a product of a lifetime of programmed teachings of who I “should” be.

What I learned through that semester of irreplaceable experience was that nothing was, in fact, wrong with me. That it wasn’t about the information that I was being taught, but it was the way in which it was being taught to me. And that my attraction to the problems in life were not a sign of something being wrong with me, but of something being very right within me.

I believe that Doan (whether he knew it or not) was really just feeding light into the darkest, most hidden, most protected parts of all of us. I look back with such gratitude that I was open enough to be able to receive it, and to let it transform me. The more light that he shined on the unconventional, the more I embraced the unconventional parts of me. The more light I was able to feel, and express.

Because Doan was able to teach in a way that resonated with me, I was able to shine as bright as I ever have. I was able to move things forward, to take aligned action, and to do so with so much excitement and grit. I believe that when you follow energy that contains all that brightness, it opens you up to receive even more opportunities that will continue to illuminate you.

Doan became somewhat of a mentor for me, guiding me and supporting me as I grew into this new version of myself. And it’s no coincidence that some of my most valuable and remarkable experiences came through opportunities that flowed to me through him.

He was the one to encourage me to utilize an entire semester’s worth of work to enter into a institution-wide business plan competition, of which my team got second place. He introduced me to the CEO of the company where I would get my first job outside of college (who, ironically, happened to be a judge at that same business plan competition just a few months prior). And after a few years out of school, he brought me the opportunity to do a TEDx talk and pretty much forced me to take the opportunity, which I am forever grateful for.

I believe that the light he exuded through his natural way of teaching, brought out the light in my natural way of learning. I believe that he saw his own light being reflected in me, which encouraged him naturally to send more of his light in my direction, to which I was able to receive & express outward to a wider range of people. This is the very ripple effect that the power of one tiny stone has on the entirety of the World. This is the magic of the Universe.

This time period was among one of the most monumental periods in my life because this is where I learned the power of what it’s like to believe in myself, and the opportunity, support, and freedom that comes pouring in naturally when I do. It allowed me to see that [what I perceived as] my own personal limitations were, in fact, the very things that I needed in order to set myself free, and to grow beyond what I thought I was capable of.

Limitations are the very roots through which my business and my life’s work bloom from.

What was once the thing that broke me down, held me back, made me feel small & contracted into myself, now serves as the cornerstone for my continuous expansion.

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