Becoming limitless involves mental agility; the ability to quickly grasp and incorporate new ideas and concepts with confidence. – Lorii Myers
Is it Possible to Live a Limitless Life?
In the 2011 film, Limitless, Eddie Morra (played by Bradley Cooper) is facing unemployment and struggling to get a grip on his life. He has poor self-esteem, is lacking in confidence, and just doesn’t have the self-belief needed to get his life in order. To put it simply, his future looks very bleak and he doesn’t seem capable of turning his life around. That is until an old friend offers him something that changes his life forever.
What Eddie’s friend offers him is an NZT drug. But this is no ordinary drug. It’s a drug that supposedly enhances mental acuity.
Eddie is initially of course somewhat skeptical, and who wouldn’t be, right? A drug that improves his ability to think, to concentrate, to focus, and to better understand the world around him, seems kind of bizarre. But he is at a point in his life where he has absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain. And so he takes the pill.
With the help of this pill, Eddie suddenly acquires unimaginable and enhanced mental abilities that instantly give him more clarity of mind. Moreover, he develops superior memory and recall and seems to have an unlimited supply of energy to expend any-which-way he chooses. And what’s more, he now has this supreme confidence and self-assurance that he needed to be successful. It’s as if his beliefs have suddenly flipped in reverse and anything he sets his mind to, he believes he can achieve.
This mental, psychological and physical state that Eddie Morra unleashes onto the world gives him the experience of being LIMITLESS. And that’s, of course, the title of the movie.
Eddie uses these newfound abilities to turn his life around. No longer is he on struggle-street. Anything he sets his mind to he has the energy, intelligence and ability to achieve it. And he uses these abilities to grow his wealth and reputation over the course of the movie.
Upcoming spoiler alert… Don’t read on if you haven’t seen the movie…
Eddie Morra is of course only limitless for as long as he keeps taking these pills. The moment he stops taking them, he goes back to being his normal average and depressed self. He, of course, can’t imagine himself living without these pills. Not having these pills seems to take away everything that he believes makes him who he is. As a result, an obsession begins, and that is when things begin to slide downhill.
As with any drug, there are side-effects. And Eddie experiences these side-effects as gaps in his memory. One moment he is in one place, and all of a sudden in another moment, he finds himself somewhere else. And of course, he just can’t remember how he got there.
As the movie progresses, Eddie tries fighting through these struggles and other problems that come in the form of people trying to hunt him down. Does he come out on top in the end? Well, you’ve got to watch the movie to find out.
In 2015, a television show titled Limitless came out. The series is based on the original movie and follows the life of Brian Finch who also begins taking the NZT drug.
This is all of course wonderful. We all probably enjoy watching an inspiring movie or television show where a character on struggle-street turns his life around in remarkable ways. The important question here is, whether or not being limitless is actually possible? Well, it just might be, but maybe not in the way you think.
First of all I just want to make it clear that what I’m about to discuss within this article requires no miraculous pill. It instead requires that you work on mastering five key areas of your life. These areas include:
- Mastery over your mindset.
- Mastery over your actions.
- Mastery over your growth and development.
- Mastery over the influence you have over others.
- Mastery over your physical body.
Within the movie, Eddie Morra achieved instant mastery in each of these fives areas and became limitless. He, of course, used a pill to help him do that. However, we won’t need a pill. All we will need is the right attitude and the resilient willpower to see things through till the end.
For Eddie, the transformation was almost instantaneous. For us, however, it will be a much more drawn out process. It will require diligence, patience, self-disciplined effort, and consistency in action. Moreover, it will require an attitude that is open and willing to learn and grow throughout this process.
With persistent effort, it’s possible to attain a level of mastery in all five areas. Doing so will allow you to live a somewhat limitless life, as Eddie Morra did within the movie. Maybe not to the extent that Eddie lived his life, but certainly at a much higher level than probably what you’re used to at the moment.
Each of these five areas of mastery provides you with a platform for living up to your full potential as a human being. And as you read through this article I hope to help you get started along that journey.
It’s important to note that this article won’t go into a great deal of depth about each topic. However, what you will find are links to other articles that explore certain topics in much more detail. Progressively working through each of these articles will provide you with the knowledge you need to help you get started along the path toward living a limitless life.
Mastery Over Your Mindset
The first step to living a limitless life is mastery over your mindset. Our mindset, of course, has everything to do with how we think about ourselves, about life, about other people, and about the circumstances, we find ourselves in.
Circumnavigating Debilitating Weaknesses
You are only as strong as your weakest link. For many of us, our weakest links come in the form of unhelpful thinking styles, limiting beliefs, crippling fears, and debilitating habits that prevent us from moving forward in the way we had hoped and imagined.
Over a lifetime, you have conditioned yourself (or been conditioned by others) to be a certain way. All these thoughts, beliefs, emotions, fears and habits that are currently not serving you, will hold you back from living a limitless life.
Unless you take the time to work through them, nothing else you do will ever bring you the long-term success you desire.
Emotional Intelligence
We often hear about the value of having a high IQ and how this can lead to better opportunities for career advancement and higher financial rewards. However, studies have shown that having a high EQ is just as valuable as having a high IQ. In fact, in some respects, it could even be more valuable as it can often lead to a far happier, more fulfilling and healthier life.
Mastery over your emotional intelligence means that you are always in full control of your emotional states and experiences. Moreover, it means that you have a degree of empathy and can, therefore, understand and interpret other people’s emotional states and experiences, thereby helping you gather deeper insights into their state-of-mind.
Becoming a Possibility Thinker
To live a limitless life you must become a possibility thinker. A possibility thinker faces life’s problems and adversity with excitement and anticipation. They don’t see problems as problems, but rather as opportunities that can help them move forward in a better way. As such, they always think in terms of what’s possible and what else can be done or accomplished in each particular situation.
Acting AS IF You’re Confident
To live a limitless life we must instill a sense of self-confidence that radiates into every part of our being and is evident in every action we take. However, due to our limiting beliefs and various unhelpful thoughts, this can be a challenge.
One way to overcome a lack of self-confidence quickly is to Act As If. Act as if you’re already feeling confident, act as if you’re already successful, or act as if you can handle any problem that life throws your way. In other words, Fake it to Make it!
Acting As If, won’t provide you with all the answers you need to move forward, but what it will do is put you in the right frame-of-mind that will help you to find the solutions you need to move forward in a better way.
Enhanced Methods of Thinking
Within the movie Limitless, Eddie Morra had a remarkable way of thinking through his life, problems and circumstances. He would, for instance, see patterns that others weren’t aware of. These patterns then helped him gather unique and seemingly ingenious insights that brought to light ideas that helped him move forward.
Recognizing patterns, of course, isn’t easy. It takes time and practice. However, you can progressively become more aware of patterns within the problems you face by getting a little curious and asking a few key questions:
What happened?
What caused this?
What are the effects?
What patterns are evident?
What’s the opportunity here?
How can I take advantage?
Pattern recognition is tied to the questions we consistently ask ourselves. Ask the right kinds of questions, and it will help you to focus on things in a very specific way. As a result you will be able to gather key insights that can potentially unlock opportunities and solutions to help you move forward in a better way.
Another aspect of Enhanced Methods of Thinking comes in the form of reframing.
Reframing is a linguistic tool used to consciously change your limiting frames to help support your desired goals, beliefs and behaviors. Reframing does this by interrupting your old unhelpful thought patterns with new interpretations and perspectives that are more helpful and supportive of your desired objectives. In other words, reframing helps you put events and circumstances into a different context that is more favorable.
It’s as if you’re changing the meaning of an event or experience in order to put yourself into a more positive and resourceful state-of-mind. Therefore instead of sabotaging yourself, you are adopting more useful ways of thinking and doing things that will help you to potentially overcome your personal limitations, boundaries, phobias, fears and even trauma.
Reframing is something that will help you view your life and circumstances in more optimal ways, and therefore allow you to work through your problems far more effectively.
Mindfulness and Meditation
Both mindfulness and meditation are techniques that can help you to grasp better control over your thoughts and everyday impulses.
Meditation, for instance, can be used to help you clear your mind, improve your mental focus, and can also assist with reducing fear and anxiety.
Mindfulness, on the other hand, can help to enhance self-understanding, situational awareness, and perceptual ability. In other words, mindfulness can help you to become more aware of the patterns around you.
Within the Limitless movie, it’s quite evident that Eddie Morra has incredible perceptive ability. This is where mindfulness comes into play. However, in order to become more mindful of your surroundings, it is helpful to regularly practice meditation.
The two practices of mindfulness and meditation are abilities you can develop over time. The more you practice, the better you will develop these key skills that can help you live a limitless life.
Operating Within Flow States
The final aspect of mastery over mindset comes in the form of flow states. A flow state is a mental state where time seems to disintegrate and you effectively become one with what you are doing at the moment. In sports, getting into a flow state is often referred to as “being in the zone”. However, getting into flow isn’t only for athletes. It’s actually for anyone who desires to work at optimal levels for extended periods at a time.
Within the movie, Eddie Morra often finds himself in flow states where he develops this incredible vision and clarity of what’s going on around him. Within this state, he loses all sense of time and just gets lost in the moment. This is what it feels like to experience a flow state, and it is something you can work on developing with focused discipline and practice. [flow state mind map].
Mastery Over Your Actions
The second step to living a limitless life is mastery over your actions. This is all about taking the right kinds of actions in the most optimal way possible to help you get the results you are after. In other words, it’s all about doing the right things, the right way, at the right time in order to accomplish your goals and objectives.
Living Life Proactively
To live a limitless life means living proactively. It means living life intentionally and with purpose. It requires that:
I know what I want…
I understand what it takes to get what I want…
I am fully committed to this cause…
Throughout the movie, Eddie Morra knew exactly what he wanted; he figured out a way to get what he wanted, and he committed himself fully to doing whatever necessary to see things through till the very end.
It, however, ain’t easy to live life in this way. In fact, it can be quite difficult. It, therefore, helps to treat every goal you set as a game, and to work through it in an experimental way. These two approaches will help you to feel more relaxed about the goals you are pursuing. Moreover, they will instill within you the motivation you need to keep moving forward despite the various obstacles you may face along your journey.
Living a Systematized Lifestyle
To live a limitless life requires high levels of productivity. It requires getting the most from every moment or situation you find yourself in. This, of course, means getting yourself organized and making sure that your time is spent on the right things. Moreover, you need to get the job done in the most optimal way possible.
There must be a place for everything and everything must be put in its place. This will help you to clear the clutter from your head and allow you to stay focused on what’s most important for longer periods at a time.
Living with a Sense of Urgency
Within the movie, Eddie Morra accomplished astonishing things within very short time frames. Yes, it certainly helped that he had an almost unlimited supply of energy and passion for what he was doing. However, this energy was essentially a result of working with urgency and with a purpose. He had a vision, and he knew exactly what he had to do to accomplish that vision.
He worked meticulously through every task and pushed harder than most people could ever imagine. Moreover, he worked with a very specific objective and priorities that kept him focused on the most important tasks at hand.
Building Supportive Habits and Routines
In order to significantly increase your output and boost your levels of productivity, you need to have effective habits, rituals, and routines in place that help you to stay focused and on track.
Spend time developing routines throughout the day that supports the accomplishment of your tasks and projects. It, of course, takes self-discipline to maintain these routines consistently over the long-run. However, over time, these routines will turn into deeply ingrained habits that will build the momentum you need to help you accomplish your goals and objectives.
Willingness to Challenge Yourself
Living a limitless life means stretching the boundaries of what’s possible. It means extending yourself and pushing beyond your comfort zone in an attempt to explore new frontiers that can potentially help you grow and develop yourself in an exciting direction.
With this in mind, it’s important to continuously challenge yourself in new ways. By challenging yourself you are keeping yourself interested, focused and motivated on the tasks at hand.
In order to put yourself into a more competitive state-of-mind, ask yourself two key questions:
How can I do better in this situation?
How can I be better in this situation?
These questions will keep you focused on consistently raising your standards of performance beyond what you thought was previously possible. That’s what it takes to live a limitless life.
Mastery Over Your Growth and Development
The third step to living a limitless life is mastery over your growth and development. You must be like a sponge that absorbs as much as possible to help you move forward in a better way.
Within the movie, Eddie Morra was obsessed with learning all that he could in order to better understand the workings of the world around him. Once he had that understanding, the sky was the limit, and he felt as though anything was possible.
To live life in limitless ways, we must also find that obsession to want to know and learn more about everything that matters most to us. The more we know, the greater insights we will gather from this information, which will allow us to be and do more with the resources we have at our disposal.
A Commitment to Lifelong Learning
To live a limitless life you must commit yourself fully to lifelong learning, growth, and development.
A person living a limitless life is always in the process of expanding their skills, knowledge, awareness, and understanding of themselves, others and their surroundings. They are constantly consuming information through books and podcasts on diverse topics that help bring them new insights and understandings.
In particular, these people focus on key areas of development that can help them accomplish their goals and objectives. They aim to be the very best and therefore spend a lifetime learning new skills and acquiring relevant knowledge that can help them reach their full potential.
A Commitment to Excellence
To live a limitless life means committing yourself to excellence. Everything you do must be up to the highest of standards — better than anyone else could ever model or produce. But do keep in mind that in the end, results are what matters.
Don’t allow perfectionism to bog you down. It’s great to have things perfected, but what you want most is to achieve that end goal you are pursuing.
With this in mind, commit yourself to excellence and deliver excellent results in everything you do, but be flexible with your standards to allow room to adjust your course of action if needed.
Development of Thinking Skills
To live a limitless life requires exceptional thinking skills. It requires developing your ability to solve life’s problems, to think critically, and to nurture your ability to think flexibly and creatively in various situations.
One of the key drivers for the development of these essential thinking skills comes in the form of curiosity. When we are curious we open doors to new ways of thinking about ourselves, about life, about others, and about our circumstances.
Improving Cognitive Ability
Within the Limitless movie, Eddie Morra developed what I would call a super memory that allowed him to remember, recall and make sense of everything. This was a key ability that helped him to accomplish his goals and objectives throughout the film.
With this in mind, living a limitless life requires that we spend time improving our cognitive ability. This involves spending time working on developing our accelerated learning skills and seven intelligence’s; on enhancing our rapid reading skills, and on improving our memory and recall of the information we are learning.
All this, of course, sounds like quite a lot of work, however, people the world over have developed some incredible cognitive abilities that have helped them improve their memory, recall and ability to learn information at a rapid pace.
Mastery Over the Influence You Have Over Others
The fourth step to living a limitless life is mastery over the influence you have over others.
Within the movie, Eddie Morra displayed an incredible understanding of human behavior. He clearly understood how to persuade and influence people. More specifically, he understood the psychological triggers that motivated people to take action.
Developing this type of influence isn’t an easy nor a quick process, but it’s certainly something you can work on developing over time.
Exemplary Communication Skills
One of the keys to persuasion and influence comes in the form of having good communication skills. Good communication skills help you to connect with people, to negotiate, to sell yourself and your ideas.
Great communicators typically use their voice in captivating ways. They, for instance, vary the pace and tonality of their voice to make themselves sound more interesting. Or they may for instance use carefully crafted pauses that create a little suspense and draw people into the conversation.
Great communicators are also fantastic storytellers. They use stories and metaphors to get their ideas across in persuasive ways that help them win people over to their cause.
Great communicators are also often exceptional negotiators. They know what to say and how to say things in order to get people on their side. And this is precisely how Eddie Morra came across within the film. He always knew what to say and how to say things that helped him win people over in just about every situation.
An Ability to Build Rapport
Verbal communication skills can help us to get our message across in a persuasive way, however, it’s our body language that is often the influential force behind what we say.
To live a limitless life you must understand how to build instant rapport with those around you. You can for instance use techniques such as mirroring and matching a person’s body language. Or you can mirror and match some of the words and phrases that people use — even their vocal tonality.
Two people with a high level of rapport naturally mirror and match one another. That is when you know they are in-sync and feel comfortable within that social situation, and in particular with that other person.
Within the movie, Eddie Morra used these above-mentioned techniques to help him build rapport with others and to influence them to his way of thinking.
An Ability to Cold Read People
One of Eddie’s key abilities that stands out within the movie is his understanding of people. In particular, his ability to cold read people.
Just by looking at a person he instantly knew their story. He would, for instance, observe how they walked or sat, how they dressed, what they carried with them, their facial expressions, body language, etc. From his observations, he would then deduce this person’s state-of-mind, motives, and even what they might have done earlier that day, etc.
This ability to cold read people, of course, takes years of practice and requires a deep understanding of human nature and the patterns of how we live our lives. However, it is certainly something that we can all develop with some effort, patience, and practice.
An Understanding of NLP
NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming. It encompasses neurology, language, and programming. These are of course the three most influential components involved in producing human experience.
The neurological system is designed to regulate how your body functions. Language, of course, determines how we communicate with others, and your programming effects the kind of models of the world you create.
NLP essentially comes down to understanding the fundamental dynamics between the mind and language, and how their interplay affects our body and behavior.
Learning about NLP will help you to not only better understand yourself but also to better understanding and influence other people.
Within the movie, Eddie uses embedded commands to influence people. This is an NLP language pattern that is designed to bypass the conscious mind and influence another person at an unconscious level of awareness.
Learning NLP and how to use embedded commands is a process that can take many years. However, if you desire to live a limitless life, then this is certainly an area of study that you mustn’t forgo.
The Use of Topic Depth Escalation
Topic depth escalation is the process of progressively leading a conversation into a more meaningful place that draws the person you are talking to deeper into the conversation.
In order to develop a deep level of rapport with a person, you must move away from talking about other people, the weather or events. In other words, move away from the chitchat. You must instead progress toward talking about stimulating ideas that can help drive the conversation forward.
However, starting a conversation at such a deep level is more than enough to scare most people away. You must therefore progressively build up to talking about ideas using a series of three steps:
- Begin by making small talk using humorous banter to break the tension. For instance, you could ask the other person how their day has been.
- Next, ask people for their opinion about something that you have on your mind. However, make sure that what you are asking them isn’t too private or personal that could scare them away from the conversation.
- The final step is to discuss ideas surrounding people’s opinions. This might, of course, involve several layers of opinions that you progressively uncover as the conversation moves forward.
Topic depth escalation is an effective means of subtly drawing people into their conversation with you. Then once you draw them in at a deep enough level, you will have more rapport and a better ability to influence their opinion and behavior.
Mastery Over Your Physical Body
The fifth step to living a limitless life is mastery over your physical body.
Within the movie, Eddie Morra experiences incredible surges of energy that allow him to work beyond what we see as being humanly possible. He essentially felt unstoppable because of the state of his body and mind. In other words, his health and vitality were at optimal levels that allowed him to get the most from his abilities.
When our bodies are strong and we are physically and mentally healthy, we feel more alive, passionate and motivated. This subsequently provides us with the energy we need to work longer hours and to keep pursuing our goals beyond our normal perceived limits.
Having a Healthy Eating and Living Plan
Your body is a vessel that provides you with the energy you need to get stuff done. When we are sick, injured or simply in a poor state, we can’t be productive and certainly won’t be able to live a limitless life.
Taking care of your body is of paramount importance. For instance, a healthy eating and living plan that includes regular exercise, adequate rest and a balanced diet will provide you with the energy you need to work more productively for longer periods at a time.
Within the movie, Eddie Morra got all the energy he needed from taking the NZT pill. In real life, there is no such pill. We, therefore, need to spend extra time taking care of ourselves in order to acquire the energy we need to get stuff done.
One way to raise your energy levels and to improve your overall health and vitality is to move through periods of intermittent fasting.
Intermittent fasting involves scheduling your daily meals within one short time-frame throughout the day. You might, for instance, eat your first meal at midday, and then your dinner at 6pm. You then wouldn’t eat any food between 6pm and midday the following day.
For more information about Intermittent Fasting, please read: What the Science Says About Intermittent Fasting.
Maximizing Daily Energy and Sleep Cycles
Throughout the day we experience energy peaks and valleys. For some people, their energy peaks come in the morning, while for others it’s after lunch or maybe right before bedtime.
In order to maintain peak levels of productivity throughout the day, you must be very conscious and aware of your daily energy cycles. Understanding these energy cycles will allow you to schedule tasks and activities more responsibly throughout the day.
For instance, let’s say that your high energy period is in the morning. You would, therefore, schedule tasks and activities that involve a lot of mental energy during these early hours. With this in mind, you would then schedule tasks and activities that don’t require a lot of thought during low energy periods throughout the day.
The same principles also apply to your sleep cycles. You need to figure out when is the most optimal time for you to go to bed, and when is the most optimal time to get going the next day.
Keep in mind that your sleep cycles will be tied to your energy cycles. If you go to bed late or sleep in too long, then your energy cycles may change for that day. It’s therefore worthwhile establishing a regular routine and pattern of when to go to bed and wake up the next morning. In this way you will develop good productive habits that can help you get more done throughout the day.
Moving Your Body with Purpose
At times we feel tired and drained not because there is something wrong, but rather because of habitual patterns of movement that make us feel sluggish.
How you use your body influences how you feel, and how you feel affects your energy levels.
Within the movie, Eddie Morra moves his body with purpose. He walks with confidence, talks with confidence and even sits with a self-assurance that tells us that he is in a good place. And this is how we must all be in order to live a limitless life.
With all this in mind, moving your body with more purpose and developing a physiology of excellence can help you to optimize how you work throughout the day. It seems like such a small thing, but it makes a world of difference.
Concluding Thoughts
So there you have it. You now have all the components you need to help you live a limitless life. This journey, of course, won’t be easy. There is, in fact, a hell of a lot of work to do. However, if you’re committed to getting more out of yourself then you ever felt was possible, then these are the steps you need to take.
In many respects, all of us have this incredible untapped potential within ourselves. Eddie Morra was of course no different. The movie simply enhanced what was within Eddie all along. He had all these abilities and the self-belief he needed to become limitless. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tap into those abilities at the start of the movie. His mental state-of-mind kept him living an ordinary existence when in reality he had so much more to give.
To one extent or another, we are all where Eddie was, or have certainly been there before. We limit ourselves and our own abilities with how we think about ourselves, about our lives, and about our circumstances. This has a tendency to put a ceiling on our growth and development. It’s a boundary that we are simply unable to cross. That is until we begin to view ourselves as being limitless.
The lesson here is not to box yourself into thinking that you have a limited amount of potential. Instead, adopt a growth mindset, and begin working step-by-step on becoming more limitless in every aspect of your life.
You will never know just how far you can go unless you make a conscious decision to push the boundaries of what’s possible.
Time to Assimilate these Concepts
Did you gain value from this article? Is it important that you know and understand this topic? Would you like to optimize how you think about this topic? Would you like a method for applying these ideas to your life?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then I’m confident you will gain tremendous value from using the accompanying IQ Matrix for coaching or self-coaching purposes. This mind map provides you with a quick visual overview of the article you just read. The branches, interlinking ideas, and images model how the brain thinks and processes information. It’s kind of like implanting a thought into your brain – an upgrade of sorts that optimizes how you think about these concepts and ideas. 🙂
Recommended IQ Matrix Bundles
If you’re intrigued by the idea of using mind maps for self-improvement then I would like to invite you to become an IQ Matrix Member.
If you’re new to mind mapping or just want to check things out, then register for the Free 12 Month Membership Program. There you will gain access to over 90 mind maps, visual tools, and resources valued at over $500.
If, on the other hand, you want access to an ever-growing library of 100s of visual tools and resources, then check out our Premium Membership Packages. These packages provide you with the ultimate visual reference library for all your personal development needs.
Gain More Knowledge…
Here are some additional links and resources that will help you learn more about this topic:
- 6 Rules to Live the Limitless Lifestyle @ Live Limitless
- 10 Things Every Man Can Learn from the Movie Limitless @ Menprovement
- 12 Life Habits that will Make You Feel Like You’re on the Limitless Pill @ Airows
- Behind the Power to be Limitless @ Yale Scientific
- Fact vs. Fiction: The Science of Limitless @ Time
- How to Become Limitless Like Bradley Cooper @ Academy on the Go
- How to be Limitless in Real Life: 14 Mental Hacks @ Limitless Mindset
