I’m listening to Andrew Hickey’s brilliant podcast “A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs,” and recently the  episode “'I Walk the Line' by Johnny Cash”, triggered a realization about my daily inventories: usually, my answers to the accomplishment prompts (e.g. “What are 3 things you did right today?”) are about things I am not particularly good at.

Early on, Cash and his friends Luther Perkins, and Marshall Grant played acoustic guitars and sang together, “mostly just hanging out…having fun.” (Hickey.) Later they decided they wanted to do more with their music. After taking an inventory of their strengths and weaknesses and realizing they needed more variety than three guys strumming guitars, Perkins switched to electric guitar and Grant to upright bass.

As a beginner on the bass, Grant taped markers on his bass and played a slow “boom—pause—boom”, which was really as fast as he could play. Those pauses became part of the sound. As Hickey wrote in Episode 37: “Their limitations as musicians meant that they had to find ways to make the songs work without relying on complicated parts or virtuoso playing”

Talk about not living in the problem! You can see Marshall Grant concentrating on his bass in this early TV performance of “I Walk the Line”

That moment in their story was thrilling, so full of possibilities, not letting anything hold them back! I’ve been trying to think of where in life I have turned limitations into strengths. None have come to mind yet, but I see many instances of working with what I've got, and that's pretty close. I’ll keep thinking about it.

How about you? Do you have any experience turning limits into strengths ?