A Practical Way to Achieve the Impossible
Talent, Looks and Money Not Required
“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” — Francis of Assisi
This post is not about motivation.
It’s not about self-belief.
In fact, it’s not about believing at all.
Asking you to believe in something you think is impossible is a losing game.
To really believe something in your sinews — to have that internal sensation that you’re destined to achieve the impossible, requires a dose of delusion, meaning it feels real. That can’t be taught — it can only be developed. And it’s a subject I’ll cover later in this series.
For now though, I want you to do something much more practical.
I want you to do what you do when you watch an action, sci fi or superhero movie…
Don’t Believe the Impossible, Simply IMAGINE It
We imagine impossible scenarios in film all the time. It doesn’t mean we accept them as true.
And this is what I challenge you to do going forward.
I say “challenge”, because what we’re about to do is likely going to raise your resistance alarm.
You may think it’s stupid.
Your brain will likely scream out reasons why it can’t be done.
Well, that’s what it’s supposed to do.
We’re administering a jolt to your normal way of thinking and your brain doesn’t like jolts.
A net is trying to yank you out of your old familiar fishbowl.
So refer to our movie example, because what I’m going to ask you to do is…
Regularly Engage in Thought Experiments
The general purpose of a thought experiment is to have you imagine an unlikely or impossible scenario, then come up with practical, real world ways in which things would have to change in order for that scenario to operate.
Here’s a more real world example from David Schwartz’s classic book, The Magic of Thinking Big.
If we had to abolish the prison system in say 5 years, what would have to change in order for that to work?
You see, we often deem something impossible not because it’s never been done before or because it’s highly unlikely.
We assume something is impossible because 1) we can’t imagine how it could be done and 2) because we’re rarely under a time limit in which we must make the impossible happen.
But once you break down HOW an impossible thing can happen with practical, real world actions, then you add the constraint of a time limit, your brain changes gears and you start to think of solutions you’ve never considered.
And when you take a step back and realize the impossible thing is made up of a series of possible scenarios, achieving the impossible seems…pretty possible.
So it is with that realization I present you with two useful thought experiments that can help you…
Achieve Huge Goals in Record Time
Our first thought experiment comes from Tim Ferriss, who has built his fame helping people reframe what is possible by breaking things down into simple steps.
Thought Experiment #1 — “What would this look like if it were easy?”
Test-drive the path of least resistance. See if you’re making things more complicated than they are or if there are things you can get help on.
You’ll start asking yourself a few questions:
- Is there someone else who can help me that’s better at this particular task?
- Am I priding myself on how hard this is?
- Do resources already exist that I can use?
Even if you can’t find a single answer — which I doubt — you will at least put yourself in a mindset of ease, getting closer to flowing than to hammering the problem.
Thought Experiment #2 — “How can I achieve my 10-year goal in 6 months?”
This comes from Peter Thiel, billionaire and co-founder of PayPal.
I love this question because it makes you trim the fat and imagine what a straight line from A to B would look like.
All those means to your end — are they absolutely necessary? Or are you just doing what everyone else has always done?
Can you just skip right to the end?
Maybe, maybe not.
But habitually imagining how a fast path would look makes you think more from first principles and less from conventional wisdom.
Let’s Review
Thought experiments aren’t meant to be believed or even to come true.
They’re meant to jog your mind out of conventional thinking in order for you to achieve highly unlikely goals, to work faster and more in flow, to get you thinking more efficiently.
The benefits of regularly engaging in thought experiments are many:
- It teaches you to trim the fat, to rid yourself of the unnecessary and think of the fastest way from A to B
- It gets you thinking creatively, imagining innovative ways to solve the problem
- It gets you thinking from what’s actually true instead of what you believe to be true
- You think from within your control, not from what you can’t control
- It reduces overwhelm by breaking down the complex into the simple
Remember, this isn’t about self-belief.
It’s about breaking down an impossible goal into practical actions. If you can do that, is the goal still impossible?
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This article is Day 2 of the 30-Day Fishbowl Series
You can start the series by clicking HERE.
