I once saw a Nike advert on a t-shirt with these words: “You are faster than you think.” It reminded me of a quote I had read years earlier, which went like this: “You are only limited by your imagination”.
I have come to know that just as people do in high jump, there is usually a bar we set for ourselves as the highest we think we can jump. I realised that there are many things I have achieved by simply changing my mind-set; by believing that I was faster than I thought and that I was only limiting myself by what I imagined possible, I have unlocked new doors.
We usually define what we believe to be possible and impossible, and for those we believe to be impossible we usually say “I cannot do that.” Once we use those words, our mind – the seat of motivation – closes up, and we are indeed unable to achieve the (im)possible. On the other hand, once we change the words to “how can I do that?”, our minds open up. We look for answers and as we continue to look for ‘hows’ we will find them.
The Wright brothers believed that the only thing that made it impossible for humans to fly was the “bar” we had set on our ability to discover how to do it. They raised the bar and asked “How can we make humans fly?”. They ended up finding the answer by building the airplane and in the process, changed the world forever.
The movie Akila and the Bee shows clearly how we are indeed faster than we think we are. In one scene where the young girl goes into the spelling bee finals, she recalls these words: “Our deepest fear is not that we are incapable; our biggest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure”. Yes indeed we are more powerful than we measure ourselves.
Indeed there are things that are impossible to be achieved. We cannot turn ourselves into air for instance, but a good number of times, what we set as impossible for us to achieve has already been achieved by others… so is it really impossible for us? With a change of our perspective of what we are and what we can do, it is possible to knock off the “im” in “impossible”. Yes, we all can do the (im)possible.
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