Is 2024 Your Time to Declare a Breakthrough–To Do What Seems Impossible?
A breakthrough is a result that goes beyond what would logically be predicted based on past performance. You summon the courage to commit to achieve results you thought were impossible to accomplish. Share on X
Breakthroughs originate in our imagination. If we can’t imagine performing better than our history, our results won’t improve significantly. Our imagination defines the outer limits of our performance capacity—for better or for worse.
Here’s the “for worse” part. Comfort zones are also a figment of our imagination. We imagine if the right circumstances and emotions aren’t in place, we have slim chances for success. Without making the required effort to demolish substantial comfort zones, we have no factual basis to determine our full performance capacity.
Instead of a factual basis, we usually adopt our culturally inherited sense of reasonable effort/risk to determine when goals seem impossible to achieve. We conjure up potential reasons to avoid pursuing breakthroughs.
The source of your future breakthroughs lies in this empowering distinction:
Comfort zones don’t determine the limits of your performance capacity
A Mindset for Doing the Impossible
Mohammed Ali had the courage to declare his vision in his nickname: “The Greatest.” Ali created an empowering relationship with the word “impossible:”
“Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
Ali’s meaning of impossible transcends our wimpy cultural norms for defining impossible obstacles, such as: Lack of know-how. Insufficient motivation. Bad habits. Waiting for favorable conditions to appear someday.
When I explained this predicament to my wife, Haley, she remarked, “There is no such thing as impossibility. But in everyday life, we each define it for ourselves consciously or unconsciously. We take these limits as absolute when they are not. We are so far from what’s actually impossible, don’t sweat it.” It is more accurate and empowering to use the term “perceived impossibility.”
Vivid illustration of “perceived impossibility”
Impossible ≠ Perceived Impossibility
When you operate from a nothing-is-impossible mindset, many of your breakthroughs will be life-altering.
Ruthlessly Honest Question
What is one of your dreams you’ve considered to be impossible that you now regard as a perceived impossibility?
Heroic Experiment for This Week
For one of your breakthrough goals in 2024….
- Write down the reasons you’ve imagined so achieving your heartfelt goal appears to be impossible?
- What seemingly unreasonable effort will you take to prove the difficulties you imagined will NOT keep you from delivering a breakthrough performance?
- What small step will get you started on this breakthrough?
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