Possibility and Imagination

What you imagine for your life matters.

“I've never done it before” is not a reason you can't do it.

Neither is “I don't know how.” Those are the very conditions under which we create something new.

When I talk to people about their future, they often look to the past for permission. They tell me what they've already accomplished, what they haven't been able to do, and what they think that means about their limits.

But the raw material for a different future isn't in your past. It's in your imagination.

Everything new began as an idea

Imagine us living in caves, sitting around a fire. Houses, roads, cars, and phones don't exist yet.

If we only looked backward for instructions, we'd keep making more caves and more fires. We wouldn't invent something different.

Look around your room. The desk, carpet, electrical outlet, and computer all began as ideas in someone's mind. They existed in imagination before they existed in the world.

The people creating them didn't begin with a complete reference from their past. They imagined something and learned how to create it by doing.

That is human ingenuity. I want you to apply it to your own life, not just admire it in the things other people have made.

Make friends with impossible

When someone tells me a result is impossible, I ask why. Often the answer is that they've never achieved it before.

That doesn't establish impossibility. It establishes that it's new.

I encourage my students to choose impossible goals because the brain's declaration that something is impossible doesn't have to end the conversation. It can be the beginning of creating a possibility.

The idea of an iPhone would have seemed impossible to someone living in a cave. Yet imagination and the willingness to create something unfamiliar allowed us to evolve toward it.

What result do you want that you've never created? What have you dismissed simply because you can't explain the whole path yet?

You can decide to pursue it before you have the instructions.

Learn the how by doing

Your brain can offer an idea and then immediately tell you it won't work. You can try it anyway.

If it doesn't work, ask why. What did you learn? What can you try next? That process is how you develop the ability to create the result.

We want a search engine to hand us the directions. Sometimes it can. But sometimes you're creating something that hasn't been done before, or something that hasn't been done by you.

When I chose the goal of making $100 million as a life coach, there wasn't a set of instructions waiting for me. I had to commit to figuring it out through doing.

If you do nothing because you don't know how, you keep using your past to create your future. You get more of what you've already had.

Even when a goal doesn't unfold exactly as you imagined, pursuing it can take you beyond where you began. Refusing to begin keeps you in the same place.

Commit to believing before you believe completely

In the Model, your thoughts create your feelings, which drive your actions and create your results. A new result requires new thinking.

You may identify a thought you need to believe and discover you don't believe it yet. You can still commit to believing it.

Practice it. Visualize it. Take action from it. Begin living as the person who believes it.

When I was teaching this episode, I talked to my team from the future in which our business was making $100 million. I asked what infrastructure we would need and how we'd make decisions with that many clients.

I wasn't waiting for the number to appear before changing how I thought. I was using that imagined result to guide the thinking, feelings, and actions that would create it.

Be more committed to the result than the plan

A plan is useful. But don't make one plan more important than the future you want.

If the first plan fails, you can try another. Then another. Each attempt can teach you the next step.

People often want the security of a known path before they commit. Then, when that path doesn't work, they give up on the whole future.

You can reverse that. Commit to the result and let the plans change. You're learning how to create it, not proving whether you're allowed to want it.

Your future is yours to imagine. You already do this with ordinary things, such as expecting to wake up in your bed and go to work tomorrow. You have an idea of a future that doesn't exist yet, and you live into it.

You can use that ability for something bigger too.

Don't buffer away the momentum

Growth brings discomfort. We have so many ways to cover that discomfort with immediate pleasure that we can stop listening to the nudge to move forward.

I talked to my son about video games and what his brain imagined was happening. His brain thought he was winning all the time. But that feeling wasn't the same as creating the things he wanted in his life.

When we continually substitute false pleasure for the work of growing, we can quiet the momentum that would move us toward our dreams.

Be willing to feel uncomfortable long enough to pursue what you imagine. The goal isn't to avoid discomfort. It's to create the life you want.

Your possibility matters

I began with things that felt impossible to me: changing my weight, living without alcohol, and creating a successful coaching business. As those possibilities became real, I began imagining more.

That growth allowed me to contribute in ways I hadn't imagined before, including helping people get clean drinking water.

Your dream doesn't have to be the same as mine. It doesn't have to be a project for the entire planet. What feels right to you matters.

Stay focused on what's possible and impossible for you. Imagine it. Commit to it. Be willing to learn how.

There is nothing more fun than looking back at something you've created and remembering when you thought it was impossible.