What does impossible even mean?
How “impossible” is different from “unknown”?
We think that we know how things really are, but in reality, all we know is what we think.
Impossible? Impossible is nothing -Adidas.
What if impossible is how we call All we don’t know (and what we don’t know we don’t know?). The british professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience, Anil Seth, put it this way: “Less of what you see is what you get, and more of what you get is what you see.” Our brains are less of a film camera and more of a projector. We paint in our canvas called Awareness with our Thoughts. That painting we get, is what we call “reality.” But it is always our experience of it, not reality itself.
As a scientist myself, I love the role of science and keep in mind its purpose and reason: applying a method to give an explanation to natural phenomena. Science’s purpose is Not to demonstrate what can NOT be.
Science can not demonstrate you can’t. All it can say is that the way you tried didn’t work.
For a great example of this, take a quick look at the counterclock study.
Differentiate what is Uncontrollable vs. what is Indeterminate
There is a BIG difference between what we can not control or not have influence over vs. what we don’t know.
The reason we can not accomplish something.
By knowing why we do not get the things we say we want, could be an excellent manner to discover how we can make it happen.
I am using in research the so-called post-mortem process. Once that a company/person/process “die” or fail, the system is analyzed to define what made it not to work. With clarity on that failure mode, we can design a process to avoid performing the dynamic next time.
Why start-ups fail:
Interestingly, a research run in the Silicon Valley, analyzed start-ups that failed. Researchers checked the cause of the failure and sorted them as a percentile. 95% of all Silicon Valley Start-up failing accounted for only 2 reasons:
- Funders fought among them and terminated the company.
- The company finished the money before finding out what the market truly wanted.
Why ‘people’ fail (actually their psychology)
In his book “creating the impossible,” Michael Neil, in a less scientific manner but still based on 25 years of working with high performers creating impossible projects, proposed a list of the 3 reasons why a project is Not achieved:
- Never start. The person thinks it is too late, too expensive, too complicated. Or something along the lines of “I am not prepared enough, or ready, or have the experience, education…enough.”
- People stopped because they were not having fun, thought would not happen or thought it was too difficult.
- People run out of time because the timeframe was too short. That timeframe was usually a self-imposed expectation at the beginning of the process.
Self Deception
In my article “Wanting to win is useless without setting yourself up to win”, I spoke about self-deception. We THINK our way in and out of action, comparing and contrasting what is happening with what we thought would or should have to happen.
All those expectactions and assumptions… where… just… our thoughts: no more solid than steam or clouds.
As seen above, failures come from the way we thought things would have unfolded, or for getting discouraged, upset, or run out of money because of the misalignment of our thought vs reality. It does not mean “Doesn’t work” it is rather: “In the initial way we thought, is not working.”
Do not believe everything you think and choose the thought that serves you.
As Rumi, the poet, wrote, “It’s your road, and yours alone, others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.”
If you don’t go for it, for whatever good or bad reason, one thing is sure: You’ll never get it.
There are ways of thinking that can drive results. Also, are other ways of thinking that, right here and right now, make you think “I can’t” or “It is Impossible.”
Be an explorer rather than a researcher for creating the “impossible”.
Creating comes from nothing. When I started this morning typing these words, I had no idea where I was going and what I wanted to do. I let my self go, and hopefully, by the end of today, there will be something that was not here, or anywhere else, standing in two feet for someone to see, read, or experience.
Great, but HOW
- When in doubt, Start. “Just” that. If you are still, start to move. Start. Just do it.
- “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” — Maya Angelou. Start with the best you know. Type something, start to drawing, cutting, or speaking…you’ll know more, and then apply the new you know to make it better.
- Do not stop until you have Created something: You did not create something until it stands on its own two feet (or whatever number of feet your creature has). Someone should be able to ‘see’ it and experience it. Do not stop until then.
- Stop. Retreat. Take perspective. Return. There are a series of circuitry on our brain that forms a network called the default mode network. This region is where your intuitive, nonlinear, problem-solving abilities live. That area works when you are doing active routine tasks: during those moments, the activity in the default network is Maximum. Take distance by doing something else; the next time you sit at it, you will taste differently or just come up with a great solution before you get to sit with it again.