How do we know our limits?

Until May 6, 1954 the mile had not been run in under 4 minutes.  Doctors said that it was impossible and that if it were done it would probably be fatal.

Then on May 6, 1954 Roger Bannister ran the mile in 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds. Within one month that record was broken, and by 1966 an additional 8.1 seconds had been shaved off of Bannister’s record.

Until Edmund Hillary climbed Mount Everest everybody considered it impossible. Now there are people-traffic jams on top of Mount Everest because so many people make that peak.

Why are stories like these relevant?  How many times have you heard or said that this or that cannot be done?  Good ideas or good plans are all too often scrapped because someone believed that they just could not be accomplished.

Have you ever thought that those new things have not been accomplished because of just that – just because they are new?  And the foreignness of the newness makes it impossible for our mind to conceive it, therefore it becomes impossible in reality.

What if it, whatever it was, was always possible?

The possibilities could change your business, community, relationships, faith community, your environment.  Ideas may have been escaping you because the mere thought that it had not been done before may be making you believe something is not possible.

How many times have we seen someone say that, “nobody could ever do that,” only to read in the paper that that exact thing had just been accomplished?  I contend that many things we see as impossible is a limit of our mind, not reality.  This is not to say that once we set our minds to accomplishing something that it magically happens.  The work has to begin, wanting to accomplish something in and of itself is not the magic. The want, the belief and the working towards is the magic.  Those three have to work in tandem.

I want to be a scratch golfer, however at this juncture in my life I do not have that belief in myself, and I am not working towards it.

One year ago Jamie, Nate, Michele and I had the want, and the belief and then began working towards the goal of having our own business.  One year later after starting in the worst recession in 80 years we have our own business.

WANT – BELIEVE – WORK TOWARDS…

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