It’s easy to fall on one side or the other of the boundary or boundlessness divide, but until you learn to master both, you might struggle at living your life.

This is part of the paradox of living as a human being. Half of you is human—you have a lifespan, need a set amount of food and shelter to live, and have to continually define boundaries to keep yourself safe. The other half of you is being, imagination, possibility, love—the kind that inspires songs about climbing mountains and walking 500 miles.

The mistake we make is that some of us look at the boundless folks and think they’re naive dreamers, while others look at the boundary-driven peeps and think they’re boring, old stick-in-the-muds.

To master yourself and become a powerful leader, you need both. You need to be able to paint in the bright colors and broad strokes of an artist… while also knowing how to lay down the simple boxes of a functioning system.

It would be nice to live in one or the other, but that would be kind of like cutting out your right eye to spite your left. And who is willing, really, to cut out a piece of their very own heart?