This is why you miss opportunities!

I didn’t know it at first, it was the year 2000, the new millennium had arrived and I was unwittingly living behind the Pale. My conventional thinking, and compliance to rules, was keeping me playing small in my career and life. It wasn’t until a chance encounter to attend a seminar, that a whole new world was opened to me... a world beyond the Pale.

 I first read about the term “Beyond the Pale” in the book “Stealing Fire” in 2017, it nicely conveyed what I had been experiencing over the previous 17 years. The term was derived from an event in 1172, when the English Invaded Ireland and built a great big fence. The fence became known as the English Pale (pale, meaning stake or picket). This barrier defined the world for those invaders. Within the pale, everything was civilized, safe, true and ruled by the English Law institutions. Beyond the pale, was where mayhem, madness and insanity resided… and if you ventured beyond the pale, you may never return… or if you did return, you were rejected and deemed as crazy and untrustworthy. (sound familiar)

 With a strong dose of hindsight, I see how I had moved beyond the pale and into a place where Humans had potential and possibility was somehow limitless. Over the years I have staggered back and forth from living beyond the pale, jumping over the fence of politeness, rules and restrictions to back behind the pale as old mental constructs, and organisational norms unwittingly pulled me back to a place void of color and growth.

As my awreness grew, I began to notice the various pales that kept people stuck, and blind to the opportunities that are right in from of them. These pales of outdated rules were not conducive to living a life of full expression and were keeping people working for organisations with misaligned values, in jobs that lead to burnout, and roles that squashed full expression. People were doing this simply to pay for what lay ahead at the weeks end… Friday would arrive, the pale would be jumped for a few days to a place where life had more colour, more fun, less rules and no restrictions... only to be left behind come Monday, when with a heavy heart they jumped back to five days of conformity.

The Pale of the Company

The pale comes in all shapes and sizes, one of the fences I got so tired of trying to jump in my corporate life was the old ‘We don’t do it like that here’, ‘That’s not the way things are done’ ‘What’s your qualification’ ‘We need to get sign off’ “We don’t have money to spend on our people’… blah blah blah… the Organisational or Company Pale is what halts innovation and individual expression and development. Opportunities for innovation, growth and ideas are blocked by traditional thinkers, non-people focused budgets and bureaucratic rules. A pale well worth the leap!

The Pale of Gender

This pale is causing so much pain right now, Women attempting to jump the Gender pale… but wearing a man’s suit, and men jumping back behind the pale to protect themselves. The competitive nature certainly feels like it’s heating up right now. Beyond the gender pale is a place where masculinity and femininity walk side by side, celebrating and challenging the strengths of both as opposed to being agonistic. Competition and play can offer an opportunity to go beyond the boundaries or ordinary experience and this is exactly what we want… we want to step out together as a human race… test the limits of our capabilities, however it is important to note that the roots of the word ‘compete’ are the latin for con petire, which meant “to seek together” As each person, or gender in this case, seeks to actualise their potential, the task is made easier when others force us to be and perform at our best. In his book ‘Flow’ Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi writes:

”Of course, competition improves experience only as long as attention is focused primarily on the activity itself. If extrinsic goals – such as beating the opponent, wanting to impress others, or obtaining a big professional contract – are what one is concerned about, then competition is likely to become a distraction”

There are so may pales to jump over, and with each leap we open the door to exciting new opportunities. I invite you to challenge and explore the constructs of the pale of society, the pale of the church, the pale of the corporate world, the pale of gender, the pale of love and relationships, the pale of money and the pale of the body. Leave no stone unturned! Over the fence, away from the polite and restricting rules, is an unlimited amount of opportunities. Challenge your conventional thinking. Tear down those mental constructs, keep what works for you… and see how you thrive when you throw away the rule book of a polite and fragile society.

My personal journey has been one of seeking, learning, unlearning and experimenting to discover what was known about the limits of human possibility and how together, we can live beyond the pale and by doing so we open ourselves up to the opportunities that have been there all along… in the forbidden land, over the fence guarded by conventional thinking.

 If you want to know more about going beyond the pale. Join Six of the leading flow educators in Melbourne on May 19th 2019 for one epic day to explore what lies beyond the pale.  

The Science of Living An Optimised Life - Going Beyond The Pale

Georgia Ellis is the Founder Blue Chip Minds, Creator of Conscious Architects of Life, Life Reloaded & Rise Up Masterclasses, Host of the “Ellis in Wunderland” Podcast, Member of 'This is Kokoro', A Proctor Gallagher Institute Consultant and Co Founder of Leadership32 and Co Creator of The Awakened Leader Program… also a Law ABIDing, Rule BREAKing, Fear CONQUERing, Future CREATing... Human BEing.