Your limits are not real — the fundamentals of impossible
To be investigating breakthrough patterns, we must first identify what’s a breakthrough. All writing is meant to persuade. I will simply choose to define the impossible concept on an emotional basis. Instead of a clinical, scholarly one.
Whenever you accomplish something you think impossible, that’s a breakthrough.
The keywords in that sentence are “you think impossible”. I want to unpack the whole concept of impossible in this post.
Your impossible world
Your impossible world is something that is unique to you. You may find it impossible to jump high and do a slam-dunk, but it’s nothing to LeBron James. Another person may find it impossible to whistle “Uptown Funk”, but you can do it in your sleep.
Everybody has their own impossible world. Whether they can consciously perceive it, everybody has one.
Now let’s talk about something a little harder to imagine.
The REAL impossible world
Here’s the tricky part. You can never fully access the real impossible world. You only have access to your own impossible world. So what really happens is this:
Now we have 3 parts to talk about. Let’s go from right to left. Just to mess with your head a little.
Unknown walls
The part where impossible things objectively exist and yet outside your field of perception, let’s call them unknown walls. If they don’t exist in your perception, it’s fine. For now.
Another scenario is these exist in your perception, but yet you think of them as possible. That mis-reading of reality won’t get corrected unless you get hurt by your own misunderstanding. Someone’s gonna get hurt real bad when that happens.
In other words, unknown walls are unknown totally or they are unknown as walls.
Known walls
This is where you get to say, “I told you so”, when your friends attend too many motivational seminars and tell you to do just do stuff that are impossible. There are such things that are really impossible. At least for now.
Imaginary walls
Finally, we come to the zone where your obstacles, your impossible things, your limits are purely in your own head. Remember, those same friends who told you to do impossible stuff from earlier? They were actually talking about these obstacles.
Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they are yours.
— widely attributed to Richard Bach
So if we put them together in a nice table, you have the following:
If I were writing an essay for university, this is the kind of diagram I would draw. I would be rewarded for organising information in a meaningful way and presenting it with multiple perspectives and options.
But I am not writing for grades. I am writing for results. I am writing for you.
You don’t go through life knowing which of your beliefs on what’s impossible are real and false. You simply go through life having beliefs. Some are useful. Some are not. The most harmful beliefs are those that hold you back unnecessarily like the imaginary walls.
You don’t go through life knowing which of your beliefs on what’s impossible are real and false. You simply go through life having beliefs.
American psychologist Martin Seligman once coined the phrase learned helplessness to describe the results of experiments he did with dogs given random electric shocks. Yes, I am saying we are like animals too. We have unconsciously picked up beliefs that might have been useful once, but now have become useless or outright harmful to our growth.
So instead of 3 scenarios and 3 actions, there’s really only one objective to pursue and one course of action to take when it comes to having breakthroughs in impossible things. Reduce your imaginary walls by testing your beliefs.
Wait, this sounds strangely familiar…
The end of Waitbutwhy’s post on Elon Musk covers a similar point but he worded it slightly differently.
Our imaginary walls and limits are the 4–7 scale on his diagram. The part he calls the “Chef Lab”. Our job is to expand it and knock down as many imaginary walls as possible.
The One Meta-belief
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
— widely attributed to Albert Einstein
Forget about what’s right or wrong. What’s possible or what’s impossible. Just focus on what’s useful and every thing will become clear. Adopt a belief about your beliefs. Right or wrong matters less than which beliefs are useful to hold or ignore temporarily.
That’s the ultimate meta-belief to adopt.
Is it useful to have imaginary walls? No.
Is it more useful to reduce imaginary walls than to do something about the other 2 scenarios? Yes.
How useful is it to prove an impossible belief to be true? Not really. People used to look at the sky and think they cannot fly. Now we have budget airlines. What used to be impossible can change. So can the opposite.
How useful is it to think and be aware when impossible things become possible? Very. You only need to disprove the impossible once.
How useful is it to know which are your imaginary walls? Extraordinarily so.
How likely is it that you are walking around with at least one imaginary wall in your head? Highly likely unless you are an arrogant simpleton who has figured it all out.
To round it all off, I have simplified it to the smallest possible action-idea for you.
There’s a high chance that you are walking around with at least one thing you thought is impossible.
That thing is 100% possible and real. You are just mistaken.
You just have to test which one that is. Suspend your judgement of what’s right or wrong, true or false. Focus on what’s the most impactful belief that you can discover by testing turns out to be an imaginary wall.
I look forward to hearing from what you discover.
Special thanks to Winson Teo, Zell Liew, and Karen Ang for reviewing the essay. Especially to Winson for his additional feedback.
