This is part of the Claim Your AUTHORity series.

In April 2010, I did a crazy thing: I held the yoga pose ‘horse’ for 70 minutes. That’s right. One hour and ten minutes.

There was a lot of craziness in that situation:

I did it during a friendly yoga competition. Competition and yoga don’t belong in the same sentence, let alone the same practice. Crazy.

The prize was for a Manduka yoga mat. I didn’t need or want a yoga mat – I already had four mats at home. Crazy!

But here’s the really crazy thing: When the contest started and the pose announced, I groaned. The yoga teacher mentioned that the previous year’s record had been 28 minutes.

Here’s what I thought: “I hate that pose. I can’t even hold it for five minutes!”

Right there in that moment, I defined my edge. I had about five minutes holding a strenuous, quadriceps-burning pose. I surely wouldn’t win.

Before I go on with the story, what about you? When and how do you define your edge?

When considering the book you’re writing, what edge do you draw in your mind?

Back to the yoga story. It gets crazier.

Now, I’m strong-ish. Not athlete strong, but I do practice yoga a lot and ride my bike all the time. Still, my mind told me that I couldn’t do this.

But the evidence started piling up against my belief. We’d started with about 30 people. Soon most of them peeled off and we were down to a handful of ‘competitors’.

After 35 minutes the organizers started to get tough, raising the stakes. We were told to lift our heels and keep them lifted. Which meant holding this pose on our toes.

Okay, the four remaining crazy-yoginis took that in stride. Then they called in the tattooed, drill sergeant kind of yoga teacher. He put us through various paces. We hopped back and forth, dipped our upper bodies up and down. Yet we’re still holding this crazy pose.

Frankly, I didn’t even know why I was doing it. But I knew the longer I stood there, the more determined I was to not surrender.

Later, as I pedaled home on noodles for legs, I realized that my edge is way further than my mind thought.

Now I know this without a doubt: I am capable of WAY more than I knew possible.

And because I believe we’re all in this together, I believe YOU are capable of way more than your mind thinks.

Finally, with the spring night falling and patience all around waning, the teachers called the contest, surrendering for the three of us remaining fools who refused to surrender. Instead of awarding two yoga mats, they gave each of us one.

We are extraordinarily resilient, all of us. Yet we fool ourselves into believing that our edges are closer than we think. That we are weaker than we think.

My work as a coach is not to push you in ridiculous ways, but to remind you that you are more, can do and be more than you think. Not as a push into overdrive or straining, but as a way to access and express the infinite potential inside each of us.

But language like that can be vague and cliché. It’s our lived experiences that remind us our capacity is often way, way greater than we think.

What’s your (perceived) and (real) edge?

Consider your own edge-pushing experiences. Times as a parent when you held your patience in the face of a screaming infant. Times as an employee or student when you over-delivered on a project or task.

Borrow from your life experiences to contribute to your power as an emerging author. When you come to your edge with your subject matter and mental fog rises up to threaten your focus and commitment, know that you have it in you to keep going. Not to force yourself, but to stay with the book until it’s done.

I wrote sixteen drafts of Chasing Sylvia Beach in the face of at least triple that number in rejections. I never would have known I had it in me to keep going, to keep improving, to keep growing myself against my edge of what’s possible.

I’m not any more badass than any of you. Seriously. I, too, want to abandon difficult things and go for the low-hanging fruit. But I’ve become addicted to the thrill of overcoming challenges and shooting for the impossible.

Your edges will look and feel different than mine. But know them, and push past them.

What edges can you push past this week?

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