Resources vs. Resourcefulness: Discover Your True Potential and Overcome Barriers and Limitations
Have you ever felt stuck because you didn’t have the perfect tools or enough money? Today, I want to share a personal story that might shift your perspective and show you how tapping into your creativity can help you overcome the limitations of traditional resources. Get ready to discover the power of being resourceful!
From Excuses to Action
If you’ve been reading my articles, you know that accepting my life on Earth has been a challenge. I’ve often felt alone, misunderstood, and labeled "crazy" by others. In fact, one of my cousin’s friends even nicknamed me the "crazy cousin."
While this may sound amusing to some, it’s been a source of deep pain for me. Feeling isolated in a vast world can be terrifying. But I’ve always had this innate ability to self-motivate and keep moving forward, even when I was swimming against the current. Maybe it’s my Venus in Aries that gives me the strength of an Amazon—who knows—but what I do know is that I’ve always pushed ahead, regardless of the circumstances.
That being said, the loneliness has weighed heavily on me, and I’ve spent years searching for my "tribe." I’ve traveled from place to place, hoping to find that group with whom I could share everything I saw, felt, and experienced—without needing to explain myself or endure looks of confusion, fear, or laughter.
After years of searching, I had an epiphany: what if I stopped looking for it and created it myself? What if, instead of lamenting, I started generating the very space I was yearning for? A place where I could speak freely and be heard by those who truly wanted to listen? I already had a couple of friends and my goddaughter asking about energy shifts during the week, so I found myself sending them individual audio messages on WhatsApp.
That’s when the idea to create a community on Telegram struck me. If I was already recording these audios for people individually, why not create a space where I could share them with everyone?
How to Overcome Barriers and Limitations
I didn’t have many resources—no knowledge of social networks, no money—but I knew one thing: I wanted to share my voice. So, I looked around at what I did have: my voice, my phone, and a suggestion from a friend to use Telegram.
If you were to hear the first audios I recorded, you’d probably feel some sympathy for me! Not to mention, I’d lose my voice for days afterward. The resistance to taking that first step was immense.
But as the months passed, I began to enjoy it more. It got easier. And I started to love it! I even began sharing personal stories, something I had avoided before. A year later, I had downloaded a program, bought a microphone, and added background music! It was a huge leap.
I could have stayed in that initial sadness, thinking I couldn’t find a space where I could be myself without judgment. But instead, I decided that I wasn’t going to let that stop me. If I couldn’t find it, I’d create it.
This journey taught me an invaluable lesson: the difference between waiting for resources to appear and daring to become one. How many times have we convinced ourselves we can’t move forward because we don’t have the right tools, money, time, or support? I realized these were just excuses to stay in my comfort zone. I could have kept blaming the outside world, thinking there was nothing I could do. But in reality, the resources were already in my hands.
When we step out of the waiting game and use our creativity, paths begin to open up. Maybe the original idea won’t be the final destination, but it can serve as a springboard to greater things. The key is to MOVE!
From Waiting for Resources to Becoming Resourceful
Let’s break down the difference between these two concepts:
Resources: The tools, assets, people, and information we have at our disposal.
Being a Resource: The ability to overcome obstacles by using what’s available, involving creativity, adaptability, and problem-solving.
Let me give you two examples:
Apollo 13 Mission: Engineers had to rely on ingenuity to save the crew using minimal resources.
Steve Jobs: In his early days working out of a garage, he showed how creativity and resourcefulness could overcome financial and material limitations.
We can use a lack of resources in two ways: to fuel our drive to find what we need, or to stay stuck in a victim mentality. The choice is yours.
How to Cultivate Resourcefulness
Being a resource involves key elements:
Problem-solving: Cultivate the ability to find solutions, even when things aren’t ideal.
Creativity: Think outside the box and see challenges as opportunities.
Adaptability: Learn to pivot and adjust when faced with limitations.
Networking: Build relationships to leverage others’ skills and resources.
A Tool to Help You Be More Resourceful
I want to share a practical tool that helped me—SWOT Analysis, a framework I learned from Kira. It helps identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in any situation:
Strengths: What internal qualities or resources can you leverage?
Weaknesses: What limitations need to be overcome?
Opportunities: What external factors or openings can you use to your advantage?
Threats: What external challenges must you mitigate?
Here’s how it looked for my community-building journey:
Strengths: Creativity, voice, desire to share, and knowledge.
Weaknesses: Shyness, fear of judgment, and resistance to leaving my comfort zone.
Opportunities: Access to a phone, apps for group creation, and friends/family who were interested.
Threats: Lack of knowledge about technology and social media.
By breaking it down this way, I could find inventive solutions and take proactive steps to overcome my barriers.
Additional Tool for Cultivating Ingenuity: SCAMPER
SCAMPER is a creative thinking tool Kira introduced to me. It helps stimulate innovation and generate fresh ideas:
S: Substitute: What can I replace in my current process or product to improve it?
C: Combine: How can I merge two ideas or elements to create something new?
A: Adapt: Can I adjust my current approach to serve a different purpose?
M: Modify: How can I tweak this to make it better or more effective?
P: Put to another use: How else can I use this idea or resource?
E: Eliminate: What unnecessary steps or components can I remove to simplify things?
R: Reverse: Can I reverse the order or structure to gain new insights?
By applying these principles, you can explore countless possibilities and drive innovation in your own projects.
Believe in Yourself
This week, challenge yourself to identify an obstacle in your life and apply the concept of becoming a resource. It’s not as hard as it might seem, and I encourage you to share your story with others—let’s inspire each other with our ingenuity!
You can also listen to the episode of my Podcast Versus – Harmony in Contrasts, where we dive deeper into this topic. Here's the link for you.