Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.
– Louis D Brandeis
You can’t do it. It’s impossible. Can’t be done. There’s just no way. You’re wasting your time.
When you say that – or someone convinces you that’s true – your brain shuts down. It doesn’t even try to come up with options. It just says, “OK, guess I don’t need to think about how to make that happen. I’ll just move on to trying to figure out the next thing they should stuff in our pizza crust.”
(We can buy pizza crusts stuffed with cheese, cream cheese, 3 cheeses, 5 cheeses, bacon – mmm, bacon – cheese and pepperoni, hot dogs…And we can dip it all in Ranch dressing. Gee, I can’t figure out why America has an obesity problem.)
If you believe it can’t be done, you will never do it. You will never even try to do it. Your ideas and dreams will fade and die.
“To believe a thing impossible is to make it so.”
– French Proverb
But what if? What if you assume it is possible? What happens then?
Manned flight, space travel, radio, television, cell phones, personal computers, lasers, cancer treatments and whatever else you can think of, were all considered impossible when the first person dreamed them up. Now, we have them all.
So, what if we start saying it’s possible? What if we start to imagine how it could be done?
Then, our brains start a new kind of innovative, inventive, creative, and productive thought process. We’ve asked our brains to find a solution so they’re working on it.
Remember the Apollo 13 space mission? After the fire and oxygen problems, imagine if the astronauts and engineers had said, “There’s just no way we can fix this.”
Instead, they said, “Failure is not an option.”
Is there anything recently that caused you to say it can’t be done?
- A potential customer you don’t think you can land?
- Discovering your Passionate Purpose to create the extraordinary life of your dreams?
- A new business venture you really want to try but you don’t see how you can make it work?
- Creating a lasting relationship with someone you might want to spend the rest of your life with?
- Buying that new house?
- Taking on a new project?
What would happen if you assume it’s possible, say failure is not an option, and start some imaginative thinking on how to do it?
If you start asking the right questions, you might be shocked by the answers your brain comes up with. And then – don’t miss this part – take immediate action on them.
Action steps:
1) Take some quiet time tonight and just dream. Ask yourself, what would I like to do if I knew I could do it? What one thing would I change, in each part of my life, if I knew I could?
2) Imagine everything is possible and start listing ideas on how you could make the changes you want in your life.
3) Pick the one change that matters most to you and write down every possible way you could make it happen.
4) Take at least one action right away to get started.
Let’s GO!
(I now offer one to one coaching and an online coaching program for various budgets. Click here for more details.)
I use this tool to help others that are stuck in the impossible or resistant to any path to possible: “I know [or, I agree] it can’t be done . . . but if it could be done, how would you do it?” This acknowledges their initial position of “impossible” so now I am not a threat. Then, it allows them to become almost whimsical and not embarrassed by any seemingly foolish answer. Most of the time I get an amazing response of a creative idea – frequently from a non-creative person – who was stuck in the “usual” or “normal” or “regular” answer.
I totally agree, Kurt. I do the same thing with people in my coaching. It’s very similar to when someone says, “I don’t know.” I respond with, “imagine you did know, what would the answer be?”
It’s amazing how often giving permission like that gets fantastic answers and ideas flowing.
All the best.
Greg Knapp