Don’t confine you to what you are good at now

[keannu]

Can it never be "you" when an action comes from the same subject in a sentence? Does it always have to be "yourself", a reflexive pronoun?

mo3-20)When you were a child learning to walk you didn’t think for a minute that, just because you were exceptionally good at crawling, you were destined to crawl for the rest of your life. Even if when learning to walk you fell over more than most of the toddlers in your play group, you didn’t let that put you off for long. Sooner or later you developed the ability to walk just as competently as you could previously crawl. Unfortunately, you are likely to forget what you have gone through. And you just notice things that seem to come easier to you and begin to ignore the stuff in the future that looks a bit harder. Don’t confine you to what you are good at now. You have a lot of potential that you can be good at what you’re not doing well now.

 

[probus]

In your example, of course it has to be don't confine yourself.

As to the larger question you pose, I think that a verb of reflexive sense always requires a reflexive pronoun, e.g. yourself rather than you. There may be an exception, but I can't produce it.

 

[Raymott]

Can it never be "you" when an action comes from the same subject in a sentence? Does it always have to be "yourself", a reflexive pronoun?

mo3-20)When you were a child learning to walk you didn’t think for a minute that, just because you were exceptionally good at crawling, you were destined to crawl for the rest of your life. Even if when learning to walk you fell over more than most of the toddlers in your play group, you didn’t let that put you off for long. Sooner or later you developed the ability to walk just as competently as you could previously crawl. Unfortunately, you are likely to forget what you have gone through. And you just notice things that seem to come easier to you and begin to ignore the stuff in the future that looks a bit harder. Don’t confine you to what you are good at now. You have a lot of potential that you can be good at what you’re not doing well now.

Is there any punctuation on the 'you' that you've underlined? I can understand the sense here as being different from an ordinary reflexive. It's common in pop psychology literature. "How do you define you?"; "What do I mean by me?"; "What is me?" (Not, "What am I?") This isn't quoting the word 'you' or 'me'. It's asking you to identify what attributes belong to me, when you think it, not when you use it as a word. It's hard to explain, but I can see a limited use for it.