Doing The Impossible
In those moments when things feel impossible - I want to challenge you.
It’s time to learn how to change your thoughts.
Now, that sentence carries some problematic associations. We often connect the idea of change with the idea of control. Very frankly, you aren’t immediately in control of the first thought that pops into your head.
As Steven C. Hayes so eloquently put it, “When you try not to think about something, you do that by creating this verbal rule: ‘Don’t think of x.’ That rule contains x, so it will tend to evoke x, just as the sounds ‘gub-gub’ can evoke a picture of an imaginary animal.
Thus, when we suppress our thoughts, we not only must think of something else, we have to hold ourselves back from thinking about why we are doing that. If we check to see if our efforts are working, we will remember what we are trying not to think and we will think it. The worrisome thought thus tends to grow.”
“So what should we do, Dave?”
Let us become quiet, still, and carefully listen to our subconscious. Let’s slow down and engage our self-awareness.
When we connect with our inner monologue, we’re able to identify the specific statements we’ve agreed to that have mixed the narrative cocktail of, “this is impossible.”
We believe that our thoughts say, “this is impossible,” but that statement is actually the conclusion we’ve drawn based on the statements of our subconscious.
Our actual thoughts might sound more like:
Why didn’t he get this to me sooner?
I can’t just drop everything for this!
They don’t care about me at all.
No one helps me.
If we take our thoughts one by one and consider a reasoned response to them, our whole perspective shifts.
Why didn’t he get this to me sooner?
He’s got a lot on his plate. He got it to me as soon as he could.
I can’t just drop everything for this!
I’ll reach out to my supervisor if I’m not sure what I should prioritize.
They don’t care about me at all.
I’m on a team. I can advocate for myself and set the boundaries I need.
No one helps me.
I should ask for help.
Do you see how those new statements add up? Things don’t seem so impossible anymore.
Our thoughts calibrate the focus of our perspective. You have the power to make the impossible possible and take yourself from survival mode to thriving.
I believe in you. Go kick some ass today.