How do you know you've found your limit?

Hey Reader,

A listener wrote in after hearing us talk about holding back in races in our podcast episode.

He said he’d been thinking about why he always seemed to hold back in his races.

He realized he only really pushes himself once he can see the finish and knows he’ll make it.

In his head, the thought of blowing up and not finishing feels worse than finishing with a bad time.

He said people probably wouldn’t care that he finished five or ten minutes slower.

But they’d know if he blew up and didn’t finish at all.

He feels it comes from people-pleasing or external validation.

Whatever it is, he recognized something uncomfortable.

And I totally agree.

Because this approach can be quite limiting.

Definitely uncomfortable.

🧠 You never really know your limit until…

People are not really afraid to fail, they’re afraid to fail publicly.

Yeah, I don’t think anybody wants to fall apart in front of people who are cheering for them.

But if that’s the only focus of your goal, you can lose touch with the impact you’re supposed to make.

It becomes a thing about making sure you tell a success story.

That’s good, to be honest.

It’s a great way to reframe and push through suffering.

But when it is the only focus, it takes away the spark to explore and push yourself.

You can find yourself playing it safe, choosing less risk, familiar challenges, or going slower because, if it doesn’t work, people will know.

It steals the joy of the win because deep down, you know you didn’t really dig deeper.

You didn’t really discover anything new or exciting about yourself because you were too careful not to mess things up.

But if you don’t go harder, how do you know your limit?

How do you know what you’re capable of?

That’s so much potential left untapped.

❤️ “Fuck around and find out”

The only way to know what you’re capable of is to test your limit.

Sometimes that means getting it wrong.

Sometimes that means going out too hard and having a train wreck.

But that’s how you learn.

When you’re more focused on exploring your best self at anything you do, you’ll learn things about yourself you couldn’t have learned any other way.

You’ll become more confident in trying new things because, either way, you’re having fun finding out more about your purpose and passions.

You’ll care less about what people will say.

Like, so what if you fail publicly?

It won’t be the first of its kind anyway.

And definitely not the last of its kind either.

But you’ll sure as hell come out knowing more about what you’re great at.

Building your experience, winning some, losing some, and figuring out when to genuinely hold back or when to push forward.

And people will be fine.

Think about the goal you’ve been sitting on for a while now.

The one that genuinely excites you but also makes you a little nervous.

Where have you been holding back because you’re not sure how it’ll look if it doesn’t work out?

What would change if you were willing to push yourself?

In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “It is not the critic who counts… The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

Let go of that fear of failing publicly.

Go hard.

You might surprise yourself.

With appreciation,

Huw

P.S.: This week’s pod got really interesting. We talked about knowing when to push and when not to, and lots of interesting chats sparked by a stack of listeners’ questions.

I also shared how my recovery from a pretty tough 100-mile adventure is going and what I’m eyeing next.

Catch up on the episode here.