A Spark by Innocent Mwatsikesimbe from The Vision, chapter 55

The walls around your life look permanent until you remember who built them. The house you’re in, the people you know, what you think you can achieve — human action shaped nearly all of it, which means human action can reshape it.

So belief does much of the work. Limits you don’t believe you can move look imposing; go about challenging them and “they lose all their grip on you”. Confront a limitation with an open mind and something you had filed as impossible starts looking achievable — a dream becoming a goal you can actually reach.

That is why Innocent is blunt about what keeps people small: “The power of mediocrity lies in our acceptance of limitations that can be subverted.” The limit does some of the holding; our agreement to it does the rest. In self-improvement, you are as good as you make yourself.