In the past few months I have met and spoken to many people from the blockchain space. Enthusiasts, professionals, enthusiasts who pretended to be experts, people who were predicting the future of the decentralization and those who were super excited to hear about it for the first time… Moon and Lambo guys, crypto traders, blockchain startup founders…. people from the traditional finance who were telling me to run away before it’s too late because all this is just a bubble…  

Meetups and events, different faces, keynotes and panels… Everyone wants to learn more – especially now when Bitcoin is regaining its attractiveness among the newbies.
All the above made me recall back the 2016 and the days when I discovered the cryptocurrencies for the first time. What led me to that and how did I end up to still stay in this space through good and bad and ugly is another questions…  

What I recall well though was what attracted me at first place. I don’t think my reasons were original. Just like many others I joined the tribe of those who loved the whole idea of decentralization because it was so much in line with their utopian desire for independence and freedom. 

Yes, I know there is no such thing as ultimate freedom… yes there are always dependencies whether you want that or not… but nevertheless, with this new technology emerging there was a hope that maybe this would be the solution… or at least we wanted to believe so. 

It felt so romantically appealing… tapping into many people’s desire of bringing back the control to their own hands (or their private keys in this case).
All of us were decentralized and scattered all over the blockchain, but yet felt connected in a movement. The rebels and the libertarians, those who believed in fairness and those who truly wanted to change the world (…plus those who wanted to get rich and drive lambos). We were all connected. No surprise the crypto communities are so emotional, engaged and strong… 

And then the ICOs came. I was fascinated. As a bestselling fiction author who absolutely loved and always promoted the idea of self publishing I could see the parallels in logic.  

ICOs were giving a chance to those who had amazing ideas and wanted to initiate something awesome but would not be able to do it otherwise. Just like the writers, who no longer needed to chase agents and prove that they were good enough, here too the entrepreneurs no longer had to beg the investors to hear their pitch. In both cases they no longer had to prove those who would not be reading their books and using their apps anything. They did not have to depend on those anymore. 

Democratization of fundraising … getting rid of the middlemen and having the chance of finding the people who would believe in your idea and support you directly, could things sound better?  

Everyone from anywhere in the world gets the chance.  

Now the writer can go out there and talk directly to the readers and the reader will decide whether the story is good enough or not. During the ICO era the entrepreneur could go directly to the end users and they would decide whether they needed what he was planning to build or not… and if yes, they would pre-pay for him to do so. 

And then…  
Well we all know what happened after.  

ICOs had a good chance but partly the projects themselves are to blame that things changed. And I know many think that the reason for that change was the long crypto winter… but I don’t think it was the only reason.  

Another, not less important reason was how did those entrepreneurs behave and the ICOs perform.  
So many projects took advantage of the system and the generous chance that they’ve been given, that it led to the whole ICO space gain a bad name. Journalists started avoiding covering the topic, the regulators got an excuse to want to interfere and protect the “investor” and the token buyers and genuine supporters got burnt few times and decided to leave.  

As a result the potentially good and genuine projects suffered…  
As a result the whole space transformed…  

Now we’ve got the ICO version 2.0 in the form of Initial Exchange Offerings and a completely regulated model of the STOs… And that may be good, because it shows that the market matures, that the projects need to be better prepared now and that the token buyers are partly being taken care of… 

BUT 

Remember where we started? Remember the decentralization and democratization? Remember what you just read about why things were so cool back then? 

Don’t you think we have done 360 degree and now have ended up at where and why it all started? 

Now again IEOs are centralized and we will be dependent on the exchange. Here again we have the gatekeeper deciding if you are good enough to get in…  Here again IES and STOs are expensive to conduct so just few friends with a dream and nice idea would never get a chance… 

Or maybe it’s just me having a middle age crisis and thinking that everything changes and nothing does… who knows?

Years ago, when time was not an issue (and I was much younger…) I used to workout regularly. I would hit the gym and be there for 2-2,5 hours. Once you get in shape visits to the gym become a pleasure… not to mention how much you like what you see in full hight mirror.

Fast forward years and gym joined many things that dropped off the radar. I stopped exercising altogether and never looked back (the mirror is still kind to me though…).

So a week ago I finally got a membership and went back to the gym again, planning to make it part of my lifestyle again. 

After 5!!! years break you can only imagine how hard everything felt… Even forcing myself just to show up there was already hard, let alone be part of a 45 minute full body blast class…

And while I tried to keep up and not die right there on the floor mat my brain kept thinking. 

And I realised something about limits!

The workout felt like an army exercise. The coach was keeping an eye on us to make sure we don’t skip anything. Every time we took few minutes rest he made everyone stop and watch us do what we skipped. 

“C’mon, hurry up! You CAN do it…”

On minute 15 I was already half-dead. I was absolutely certain that I had used up all the energy and strength that I had left and I was determined to give up.

“No, I CAN’T do anymore. I’m done” I told and stood up ready to walk away.

I was absolutely sure that I had reached my limit and that doing anything on top of those 15 minutes was impossible.

Long story short – after that moment, I did 3 more full rounds which lasted for 30 minutes. 

Half an our and 3 sets of 20 of 5 exercises !!! And all that AFTER my limit was reached and I was giving up!

What does it mean (apart from the fact that I had to crawl back home) and why am I writing this?

Because I don’t want you to almost die on a gym mat and have terrible sore muscle pain the next few days to realise the following:

Often the limitations are only in our minds

I thought I could not continue. I thought it was impossible. My body wanted me to think like that. I was sure I had reached my limit. I was so sure that I was not even willing to try and see if what I thought was true. 

And that does not happen to us only in the gym… in life it’s the same. We often don’t even try to push a bit more, because we think that we have reached the limit. 

In most of the times if we try to push further we will see that the limit is way further than we thought!

Limits are like muscles

You can have limitation workout too. By working on them regularly they will stretch more, become stronger and with each day you will be able push them further. 

You can do what you thought impossible

Once the limit muscle is strong you can try to challenge any limitation in your mind that makes you think your dream/goal is impossible. 

Look back and recall everything you’ve achieved. Before that, didn’t you have a moment (at least once) when you thought it was impossible?

And how cool is it to do the impossible? 

… After all who decides what’s possible and what is not? 

Usually when you share an idea the first reaction you get from people is “it’s impossible… it can’t be done…” and even worse many get personal and say “you will not be able to do it”. That is exactly when and why we often get the well-defined limitation get to our minds. 

We believe what they say… 

But WHY?

I don’t mean why we believe them (we shouldn’t by the way…). I mean why do you think they say that? Why their natural first reaction is to discourage?

I have my theory about that…

Because they are scared.

They themselves have given up and now they are afraid that if you go ahead with your plan you may succeed. And if you do you will prove that at the time when they gave up, they were wrong. But until then they will be able to comfortably hide behind the excuse that it was impossible and have no regrets.

They tell you it’s impossible because at one point in their lives that is exactly what they thought about their own idea… and now they are where they are and want you to stay in the same place too…

Because if you go ahead and try, if you stretch your limit muscles and if you don’t give up you will end up where many people want to be but are not. So they will envy you when you get there.

So do that please.

Succeed, prove all the nay sayers wrong and make them envy you!