A couple days ago I went on a hike with a friend. I’d heard about the hike before; it was a trail about three miles long that led up to a natural hot springs. It sounded fun and beautiful and relaxing, and I was excited to go. But about two miles in, with the hot sun beating down on my shoulders, my lack of hydration becoming obvious, my light-headedness reminding me I forgot to eat, and the steep incline bringing to my attention just how out of shape I was, I had to rest in the shade for quite a while.

I remember plopping down on a rock and thinking, Geez, if I knew how pathetic and miserable I’d be, I wouldn’t have even come on this stupid hike.

I didn’t realize how incapable I was when I started at the bottom of the trail. And if I had known, I probably would have focused on how difficult the hike would be rather than the beautiful hot springs at the end, and I wouldn’t have wanted to go at all. It wasn’t until it was too late to go back that I learned I wanted to give up.

Luckily, I was ignorant, because the views from the top and the soak in the hot springs were definitely worth all the misery I experienced with my idiotic mild heat stroke. My ignorance was the only thing that kept me from quitting before I started. The very fact that I didn’t know what I was incapable of made me capable.

I’ve experienced this phenomenon on a slightly larger scale as well. If you’ve ever read an article of mine before, or talked to me for more than two minutes, then you know I’m from a small town. And with my first year at college, I learned, the hard way, one of the most negative effects of growing up in a small town: the inherent disadvantage you have when you go out in the real world.

When I went to college, I was suddenly a student in the same space as people who already had associate’s degrees from programs like Running Start. People who took tons of AP courses. People who actually had options for art classes and science classes and literature classes and math classes. People who had a variety of clubs to join. People whose music programs went to major competitions and offered private lessons. People whose upper-division sports teams competed nationally. People who had opportunities to get actual life experience.

I love my small town, but I honestly had very few opportunities in high school. Options for classes and the difficulty of the curriculum is insanely limited in a school with somewhere around 150 students and 20 teachers. As someone who grew up in a small school district, I was restricted by the very nature of a rural area.

No one ever told me about this disadvantage before I went to college, or if they did, it never really sunk in to me. I made big plans to journey alone to a private college over 600 miles away from my hometown. If I would have fully known how just how incapable and disadvantaged and dumb and afraid I’d feel my first semester, I honestly probably would have been scared out of going to a place so far away and foreign.

Just like on that hike, I was ignorant of my incapability until it was already too late to go back. By the time I realized what I’d gotten myself into, the only option was to keep going. And I ended up suffering into something really good — to go with the analogy, I found a sort of hot springs at the end of the school-year. By the end of the year, after feeling like I was playing catch-up for so long, I finally didn’t feel disadvantaged anymore. I ended up conquering my courses and finding my place. I "did college" just as well as the people who I felt were so far ahead of me at the beginning of the year. Since I wasn’t able to chicken out because of my incapability, I ended up being perfectly capable.

Here’s my point: Don’t let people tell you what you can’t do. Literally. Sometimes it’s best to stay ignorant of your disadvantages. “Incapability” thrives solely on the power you give it, and it proves to be a lie once you withhold that power. There have been so many times in my life when I over-thought what I was afraid or incapable of, and it prevented me from trying things that probably would’ve ended up being good.

I want this to sound as sincere and non-cliché as possible: you can kick butt and achieve whatever you want when you don’t know what you’re supposed to be unable to do. Stay unaware of circumstances that might hold you back, and they won’t be able to hold you back.

Once you’re forced to stick with something, once you have no choice but to keep going forward, it’s easier to focus on the good you’ll reach at the end rather than the fear you face in the middle. If you don't worry about your shortcomings, you’ll realize that incapability is a joke, and you can actually achieve whatever you want. So don't be held back. Go do that thing you don't know you're afraid of.