It's possible to do things that we think are impossible right now.
I know that's a contradiction in terms,
But hear me out.
We,
Over our lives,
Will have repeatedly done things that,
At the time,
We thought we couldn't do.
We asked someone out.
We stood up to someone.
We went on an adventure.
We did things that,
At one stage,
Would have been impossible.
From a more direct perspective,
A young baby can't do anything.
But then it starts to do the impossible.
It starts to walk.
It starts to speak.
It eventually leaves home and has a baby of its own.
What I'm driving at is that,
Over time,
We will have done things that,
At one time or another,
Were impossible.
The problem is that we forget.
We forget that we have done so.
And the reason we forget is because,
When we look at those same things right now,
We're able to easily accomplish them.
Walking,
As an adult,
Is not a challenge.
We don't even think about it.
We just take a step.
Same as speaking.
Same as reading.
But,
At one time in our lives,
Those skills were exceedingly difficult.
So,
What I'm driving at is that there will be things right now that you think you can't do.
That you think you can't accomplish.
That seem impossible.
But in five years,
Ten years,
Maybe just one year,
You will have done it.
Maybe you will have done it multiple times.
And when that happens,
You'll look back and you'll think,
Well,
Of course I did it.
Of course I did that thing.
Look how easy it is for me now.
Forgetting that,
At one time,
You would have thought that to be impossible.
So,
What I want to encourage is the idea that we approach seemingly impossible tasks with the knowledge that,
In our future,
We will have accomplished this.
And we'll be able to do it easily.
And with that sort of faith in the future.
And it's not just blind faith.
It's a knowledge that we've done this same process in the past.
But if we know that we can do it,
If we know that we can overcome things and we'll look back upon it and find it easy,
We can look at our current tasks and find it equally easy.
Now,
This won't mean that the current quote unquote impossible task will be easy.
Of course it's not.
It's going to be the hardest thing you've ever done.
But if you know that you've overcome many previously impossible tasks and some of them have become mundane,
Some of them have become so routine that it's literally an unconscious process,
You'll know that you'll be able to do the same thing eventually for this thing.
But how do you do it?
Well,
Once again,
Look at the analogy of a child.
They practice and then they fail.
They try again and they fail again.
They try again and they get a little bit of improvement and then they fail.
But over time,
They persist and they persist and they try and they try and eventually they succeed.
And then they don't stop.
Once a baby,
Once a child learns how to walk or learns how to talk,
They rarely take a back step.
They rarely go back to crawling or rolling.
Yeah,
They rarely go back to using hand signs once they know how to communicate with their voice.
We don't easily unlearn how to read.
But they've,
Of course,
Got the internal drive and motivation to keep pushing through.
They see all of us walking.
They see all of us talking and reading.
And they're genetically programmed to focus and to learn and to grow down those areas.
So from our perspective,
When our tasks are a bit more abstract,
We need to have that same level of dedication and motivation.
The only problem is,
Is that we may not have true examples of this in our life.
You know,
A child can see everyone walking,
But if we're looking at doing something that no one else has done before or very few people have done before,
We may have little to no role models to demonstrate that process.
And yet we must persist.
The most basic forms of learning is trial and error.
You try something and fail,
You try something and fail,
You try something else and then you succeed.
And then you build upon that.
So I encourage you to consider that the things you're doing now that are impossible,
Things you're attempting,
You will be able to push through them if you keep persisting.
You know,
It's a cliche,
But it really is true.
The only way that you fail is when you stop.
Now,
I'm not staying to persist and do the same thing again and again and again,
Because if you do the same thing without adaptation,
The chances of succeeding after the first or second is quite low because why wouldn't?
But you can keep trying different approaches,
Different ideas.
There's an analogy here to physical training.
When you first start exercising,
If you haven't been exercising.
Lifting weights,
Going for runs,
Doing those sort of physical activities is almost impossible.
You don't have the muscle memory,
You don't have the stamina,
You don't have the force of will to push through.
But slowly,
Over time,
You'll start to notice your times are improving.
You're lifting heavier,
You're doing more work.
And that will compound and you'll be able to see the potential growth.
And very,
Very,
Very slowly but consistently,
You'll notice improvements.
And then all of a sudden,
You'll find yourself doing something that two months,
Five months,
A year ago,
You literally couldn't do.
And not only can you do it,
You can do it easily and consistently.
So let's apply those same lessons to our life.
Look at the things we want to accomplish.
Set the goals crazy high.
Set them impossibly high and start moving towards them.
Start moving towards them because really,
What's the worst that can happen?
You fail?
Okay,
You try again.
And let's say you never get it.
Let's say you've set such a high goal that you never get to that goal.
That's okay because along the way,
You're learning,
You're growing,
You're succeeding.
If you don't quite get to the absolute top,
You're still going to be living a life and doing things that the vast majority of humanity only dream of,
That they never actually approach.
Because really,
If you don't try for it,
You've failed anyway.
So you may as well give it a shot.
