Everything that we, today, accept as possible, we are either doing and achieving or idly ignoring (because its possible anyway!).
I recall conversations with coaching clients and teams that ascribe ‘impossible’ to extreme outcomes, and the ‘impossibility’ of change in a situation. Too quickly do goals, aspirations and desires get tarred with the impossible brush, lowering expectations, ending thoughts that might have kept the tiniest glimmer of hope burning. Boundaries are created to restrict our creative selves from daring to dream.
It seems easier to accept impossible and operate within the zone of (currently) possible.
Yet sometimes we are reminded that what was once deemed impossible could actually be achievable.
The astounding successes of sports people often breaks the boundaries and remind us that anything can be achieved. Ben Stokes this summer, both in the most recent men’s Ashes Test match and weeks ago in the World Cup final, reminded me of the Champions league semi-final wins of Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool back in May this year (on which I wrote simple note...) which dramatically realigned our perceptions of what can happen.
Since the cricket win (and of course you know of my passion for the game), more people than I have ever noticed before, have commented on and shared in the euphoric elation of the win. This has spun my thinking and noticing into our relationship to ‘impossible’. Many things are impossible until they are not! Thereafter beliefs shift, doubts diminish and hope springs, our relationship to ‘impossible’ changes and behaviour and performance finds new powerful levels.
What is your relationship to impossible?
Are you unconsciously accepting your current situation, restricting and deleting thoughts of what could be? Have you created a habit of ending aspirational thinking as soon as it reaches what you (currently) judge to be impossible? What aspects of hope and desire have you not visited for a while? Now might be time to visit them again.
I have worked with people who have stayed in roles too long (thinking it impossible to find what they truly want). I have met people who are unfulfilled, hesitant, reluctantly accepting their lot, operating within their currently defined boundaries of possible.
Make a list of your impossibilities. Bring them to the surface of your thinking. Don’t judge them, just notice your reaction to each item on your page, that reaction is likely to encompass your resistance habits. You can transform your team’s performance, you could find the perfect role for your next career step, you can achieve what you have previously held to be impossible.
Stay open, loosen your attachment to and act in spite of what seems impossible. Be more Ben!
And, as always, keep it simple.