Why “I Can’t” Is the Most Expensive Story You Tell: Limits Are Just Borrowed
“I can’t.”
It is quietly the most expensive sentence in the human language.
It costs businesses innovation. It costs leaders their vision. And it costs individuals decades of their lives.
Most of the time, we treat “I can’t” as an objective statement of fact. We tell ourselves it reflects our age, our past failures, our credentials, or what we are naturally built for.
It doesn’t. It’s simply a script. And many of the scripts we carry were never ours to write in the first place.
Who wakes up one morning and decides to run across an entire country?
Three thousand, one hundred and forty kilometres. From the Great Wall of China near Beijing to my home in Hong Kong. Sixty days on your feet.
When people hear those numbers, their minds usually jump straight to physical extremes: blistered feet, freezing winter winds, endless mountain passes, and sheer endurance.
Last week, standing on the red dot at TEDxTinHauWomen in front of 1,200 people, I shared what sixty days on the road actually proved:
The hardest part was never the physical distance.
It was the story I had spent twenty years believing about myself.
The Script I Lived Inside
Long before ultra-endurance running, I lived a completely different life.
In November 1996, I was a professional National Hunt jockey riding over fences in the UK. At fifty kilometres an hour, a horse hits a fence. You hit the ground. Another horse comes crashing down on top of you. In a split second, my back was broken.
My racing career was over. But the physical injury wasn't what derailed the next two decades.
The horse I was originally scheduled to ride that day - Mr Sox - was ridden by my friend Richard instead. At the very first fence, he fell and was killed.
My body healed, but the guilt didn't. For the next twenty years, I lived trapped inside one sentence:
“It should have been me.”
Grief gave me that sentence. Self-pity helped me keep it. And alcohol was where I hid. When you fundamentally believe you don't deserve to move on, you don't.
It took me until I turned fifty to look in the mirror, confront the stranger staring back, and stop drinking cold turkey. I started running - first 5 km, then 10, then 50, then 100.
I wasn't running to become someone new. I was running to return a story that had never belonged to me.
Action Comes First. The Story Changes After.
When we set out on the 3,140 km expedition across China for Action Asia Foundation, nine students joined the journey.
These were young men who had spent their lives being told by schools, systems, and their own self-talk that they didn't belong and couldn't succeed. They carried their own heavy scripts of failure.
One of them was sixteen-year-old Freddie.
Freddie spoke fluent "I can't."
Carry a pack? “I can’t.”
Help a teammate? “I can’t.”
Run? “I can’t.”
Until halfway up a mountain route, another student was visibly breaking down from exhaustion.
Without a single word, Freddie slowed his pace. He matched the struggling runner step-for-step, placed an arm over his shoulder, and ran with him.
No speeches. No advice. Just refusing to let someone run alone.
We didn’t hear “I can’t” from Freddie after that day.
We often wait around for confidence before stepping into uncomfortable ground. But confidence never arrives first. The action comes first. The story changes afterward.
By the final week of the expedition, young men who once believed they couldn't run three kilometres were covering fifty kilometres a day.
Handing Back the Limit
We treat our personal and professional limits like permanent architecture.
We inherit them from an old setback, a broken relationship, a failed venture, or a label someone pinned on us decades ago. We mistake those inherited limits for identity.
The turning point comes when you realize:
Limits are just borrowed.
And anything borrowed can be handed back.
You don’t have to rewrite your entire life overnight. You just have to take one small, deliberate, uncomfortable step that proves the old narrative wrong.
Then another.
Then another.
Because the story you choose to change today isn't just about your own freedom. It is the one someone else - your team, your children, or the people watching your lead—will never have to live.
Bring This Keynote to Your Organization
Resilient Keynote Talks with Jo Lodder
How many institutional and personal "I can'ts" are holding back your leadership, culture, and execution?
In his signature keynote, "Limits Are Just Borrowed," Jo Lodder draws on twenty years of surviving elite racing falls, overcoming trauma, and completing multi-thousand-kilometer endurance expeditions to deliver an unforgettable blueprint for teams operating under pressure.
Core Topics:
Breaking free from inherited operational limits and self-limiting beliefs
High-stakes execution and decision-making when conditions deteriorate
Culture through action: why leadership behavior must lead mindset
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