Hey buddies, I get this newsletter in my email from Dotti (of Weight Watcher’s fame) once a week or something. I don’t always read it, but today I did for some reason. Anyway, there was an article in it that I found especially inspirational and useful. Thought I’d pass it along to y’all. It’s long, but very worth the read. Ok, hope y’all are having a fabulous weekend! xoxo Angie
The Impossible Dream
By Al Coon
What Is Impossible?
What makes something impossible to you? There are three things really:
- The physical laws of the universe
- Your personal physical limitations
- Your being convinced that something is impossible.
The physical laws of the universe do set real limits on what you can do. For instance, you cannot draw a square circle. By definition, a square and a circle are mutually exclusive, one being composed of nothing but straight lines, and the other one is just one big curved line. Another example is creating a temperature that is lower than absolute zero, because temperature is a measure of heat (not coldness) and when the heat is all gone, you are at absolute zero (an incredible –459.67°F or –273.15°C) and no more heat can be removed. It is the limit past which it is impossible to go.
Your personal limitations are provided by your body and are as individual as your fingerprints. You will not be able to run a 4-minute mile if you have emphysema, nor hit a 90 mph fastball if you are blind. While these limits are real, it is quite amazing what people with emphysema and blindness can accomplish in spite of their challenges. Each personal limitation must be given a hard look, because usually they are not impossible roadblocks, but merely difficulties that might be overcome if approached correctly. Before labeling anything as being impossible because of a personal limitation, make sure that it is really as you think, and not an illusion of impossibility.
The saddest, but most common thing that makes something impossible is for someone to believe that it is impossible, even when it is not impossible. I have heard from a number of people who have said with resignation mixed with obvious grief, “I am overweight [or something less complimentary about themselves] and I can’t lose weight and keep it off!” Is this really the Impossible Dream?
Should You Choose to Accept It
The 1960’s TV show Mission Impossible usually began with the star of the show, Peter Graves obtaining a recorded message that began, “Good evening Mr. Phelps. Your mission, should you choose to accept it…” and there followed a description of a task that seemed nearly impossible to accomplish. Of course “Mr. Phelps” never turned down the “impossible” mission, and with his trusty crew of conspirators, set out and accomplished the task, however crazy it sounded.
There are two points to my bringing this up:
1. Just because something sounds impossible, or even feels impossible, doesn’t at all mean that it actually is impossible. Your goal, should you choose to accept it is: “To bring my actual weight to my personal goal weight, and to keep it there for the rest of my life.” It may sound impossible, or even feel impossible, but it is NOT actually impossible.
2. The reason that the impossible sounding missions were accomplished in the show was that the team who tackled them took them seriously, planned a course of attack down to the smallest detail, and then executed the plan as precisely as they could.
Anytime your goals seem like they are impossible missions, it is time to take the Mission Impossible approach to them:
- Take your goal seriously—this is not “going on a diet” for a while to lose some weight. That is NOT taking your goal seriously at all. This is a lifetime change of your lifestyle. This is a difficult task and must be approached as if it was worthy of your time and attention. Otherwise it will overwhelm you. You can reach your goal, but only if you take your task very seriously. It is dedication and focus that will win out. Half-hearted attempts will always fail.
- Plan your course of attack down to the smallest detail. This is critical! You are going to face life—your life—day after day, while maintaining your attack on accomplishing your goal. You can’t wing it, because you have already tried that, and it doesn’t work. You have to plan out what you are going to do. What will you do when you have to drop and run and take care of this or that emergency that comes up over and over again in your life? Put a solution down in your plan so you will have something to eat, and a way to make sure that you remain OP, even if you find yourself at the hospital in the ER waiting for your child to get stitches in the hand that he cut when he accidently put it through a window. There is an answer to every single thing that you normally find overwhelming in your life, if you search it out in the cool passionless moments of your time, when you are able to think clearly. This is where we far too often fail. We try to succeed without a plan, and it doesn’t work, and unfortunately, it never will!
- Execute your plan as precisely as you can. Notice that I didn’t say, “Execute your plan perfectly.” We are not perfect, and aren’t likely to be in this lifetime. It is a fool’s errand to strive for perfection. Don’t bog down your journey in vain attempts to do it perfectly. Nobody does it perfectly, and nobody ever will. Success is spackled and tarnished on the surface with many imperfections, but it is beautiful nonetheless.
Each day, do your best to follow your well laid out plan. Try to do a little better than yesterday, and believe that you will do even a bit better tomorrow. One step at a time, build your ability and your success. Use your plan to defeat the things that once overwhelmed you, one event at a time. If your plan fails you, go back and rework it, and find a better solution. This is a living breathing process that is never completed, even after you have been at goal for years. One step forward—a bit of improvement, each day—that is how you reach your dream, which is now not so impossible.
Imagine That!
An exercise you might find helpful is to think of a set of circumstances where remaining at your goal weight would be easy. Perhaps being stranded on a small island—maybe you have already been in this fantasy, with other aims in mind
—where you had to struggle to survive eating fish and high fiber food, with just enough to get by. Working hard each day to obtain food and shelter, you would no doubt get thin and stay thin.
Perhaps it wouldn’t have to be so drastic a change as being stranded on an island in your mental exercise, but I am sure you can find some setting in your mind’s eye, where being thin would be the normal thing for you. You can then think about what specifically it is about this imagined setting that makes it easy to be thin. This exercise can give you some very good hints at what you need to change in your life, in order to change the results you are getting. It is very helpful being able to identify what is wrong in our lives, if we want to plan our success for the future.
Your Brain is your greatest asset
When you think something is impossible you are killing your best weapon, your greatest tool for success.
It is by assuming that something is POSSIBLE that you can then use your mind to marshal your resources to change your circumstances.
The human mind is an irresistible force, and the only thing that can stop our mind from bringing us success is our refusal to use it.
Just think about what the human mind has brought. It was our ability to think, plan, and act that moved us:
- From caves to skyscrapers.
- From hand delivered mail to email.
- From horseback to jets.
- From witch doctors to heart transplants.
- From leaping just a few feet to propelling ourselves to walk on the moon.
- From a reach that only could point at the stars to sending probes to planets as much as 2.7 billion miles from the Sun.
- At 60 miles per hour, that distance would take over 5,000 years to drive. If you had a road to drive on, and started driving when the first incarnation of Stonehenge was being built, or the first Egyptian hieroglyphics were being created, and continued until today, you would be just approaching the orbit of Neptune.
And we have only scratched the surface of what the human mind can accomplish. This list is not meant to boggle or amaze so much as it is to show that we can do things that seem impossible on the face of them. People have leaped for the moon, in the past, and found that they were falling 238,000 miles short, but, even so, walking on the moon turned out to be possible. (Of all the celebrities that I have met, Neil Armstrong was the biggest thrill for me…aside from Dotti of course. )
It is by using our minds that we can discover the safe path to our dreams, no matter how impossible they may appear to us. Believe, plan, act, persevere and you will succeed.
Don’t just dare to dream, but dare to reach your dreams, because YOU CAN!
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