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Often, we mistake possibility for competence. We think something is not possible when in fact we just do not know how to do it.

Everything is simple when you know how to do it. I wish I knew that years ago, instead of beating myself up and telling myself I was useless.

Everything you have ever learnt and mastered started with not knowing how to do it, from learning to walk, riding a bicycle, driving a car. I remember how daunting it was on my first driving lesson, mirror, signal manoeuvre as well as having to master clutch control. Impossible, I thought!

We set ourselves up for failure; we mistake competence and knowledge for failure when all it is, is lack of knowledge, lack of know-how. I come across this all the time when coaching, mainly a client, has not achieved the outcome they wanted. I tell them “you don’t know what you don’t know. Yet”. If you don’t know how to do it, how could you possibly achieve it?

What story have you told yourself about trying to achieve something?

You have not yet reached the limit of what you are capable of. The only way you can prove you are capable of achieving a goal is when you achieve it. Until then, you don’t know, so it is better to believe you can. It is just as realistic to believe you can as to believe you cannot.

You can never prove you cannot achieve a goal because you cannot prove a negative. You can only say that you have not achieved it YET.

New impossible

On Saturday,  Emma Raducanu became the first British woman to win a major title in 44 years and the first qualifier ever to lift a grand slam.

The teenager, who was playing only her second slam, said her dream run at Flushing Meadows still seems a bit surreal.

Once it was thought impossible for any human being to run a mile in less than four minutes, then Roger Bannister did it at Oxford on 6th May 1954. After that, a strange thing happened – more and more athletes started running a mile in under four minutes, and dozens had done it, two years on. This ‘impossible’ achievement changed a worldwide belief in what is possible.

Impossible feats

History is littered with impossible feats that became possible. Sir Edmund Hillary climbing Mount Everest in 1953, Orville and Wilbur Wright with their first successful self propelled propeller-driven biplane in 1903 and NASA landing on the moon in 1969 all had their doubters that it was possible.

What’s possible for your reinvented life?

Reinvention coaching is about discovering who and where you are in your life, more impotently, it’s about planning and creating where you want to be, what you want to do and what you want to have in the future.

Right now, you have the opportunity to make a conscious decision about how you will spend the next 10, 15 , 20 years of your life. Don’t underestimate the power of that decision to create and reinvent it.

Final thought

What is important to you right now? What do you have the courage to do, and how are you going to make it possible? The only limit you have is the one you place on your-self.

As Roger Banister and all our other courageous  pioneers proved. What was once impossible does not stay impossible forever. 

Is this helpful, and can others use it? I bet you know a lot of like-minded people that would benefit from this conversation. Please share this post with them on social media.

If you like what you hear and want to discover more about reinvention coaching and how it could help you

Grab yourself a coffee and let’s have a chat. If all this call did was to inspire you into action would it be worth it?

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