{"id":2766,"date":"2013-03-05T20:01:27","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T20:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iceandlemon.com\/v7\/?p=2766"},"modified":"2013-03-06T10:35:13","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T10:35:13","slug":"possimpible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.iceandlemon.com\/v7\/possimpible\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of the Possimpible*"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3498fe;\"><img class=\"alignright rotofoto\" alt=\"Can Opener\" src=\"http:\/\/www.iceandlemon.com\/v7\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/canopener3.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"131\" \/>IN SHORT:\u00a0<\/span>Changing our words really can change our world!<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a0&#8220;The difference between &#8216;can&#8217;t&#8217; and &#8216;can&#8217; is that &#8216;can&#8217;t&#8217; requires a lot of certainty while &#8216;can&#8217; just asks for a little possibility.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #888888;\">[unknown]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #888888; font-size: 0.85em;\">(~841 words, approx 5-8 mins to read.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Last time we discovered that the general assumption that words are just tools for describing our experience isn&#8217;t true and that in fact the words we use also <em><strong>define<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0our experience too. I promised that this time we&#8217;d dig into that a little more and discover how we can use that to our advantage.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s look at a simple statement:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>&#8220;I could never do that!&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Remember the times you may have heard someone say it, or found yourself saying it.<\/p>\n<p>Your list of occurrences might include some of the times I&#8217;ve actually heard it said:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>having to give a presentation or speech<\/li>\n<li>expressing an opinion in a meeting<\/li>\n<li>dealing with conflict<\/li>\n<li>cleaning out smelly drains<\/li>\n<li>running a marathon<\/li>\n<li>cleaning and dressing a serious wound<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>By saying &#8220;I could never&#8230;&#8221; the speaker has put the activity in question in a large box labelled &#8220;Impossible Things.&#8221; You might want to argue that much of the list I&#8217;ve given you above fits instead into the box of &#8220;Things I&#8217;m Very Afraid Of.&#8221; However, I&#8217;d posit that while you may be on to something, that latter category is actually a subset of the first one\u00a0<em>in the mind of the speaker<\/em>\u00a0because of the little bit of reasoning they&#8217;re doing, possibly unconsciously, which goes something like this:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I feel very afraid of that and because I can&#8217;t imagine admitting to the fear,\u00a0getting over\u00a0it, or facing and dealing with it, it&#8217;s easier for me to believe that the thing itself is impossible.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And I find that very interesting, because essentially they&#8217;ve popped whatever &#8216;that&#8217; is into the same box as spontaneously sprouting wings and taking to the air or growing a second head which are, in the normal universe, truly impossible. Because if we didn&#8217;t put &#8216;that&#8217; in the category of &#8220;Impossible Things&#8221; it would automatically have to be in the opposite category of &#8220;Possible Things&#8221; instead and that would mean we&#8217;d have to change that little sentence from &#8220;I could never do that&#8221; to the following:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong> &#8220;I won&#8217;t do that.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I know from experience when I&#8217;ve explained this in face-to-face conversations that some people find that a provocative thing for me to say and that&#8217;s because it highlights the fact that the impossibility of &#8216;that&#8217; is something we created ourselves simply as a result of the way we chose to describe &#8216;that&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>And that has implications: if you&#8217;ve decided that you could &#8216;never&#8217; do something, it means that just as the people we spoke about last time can&#8217;t tell the difference between blue and green, you won&#8217;t see the latent capabilities inherent in yourself or the possibilities\u00a0offered by a genuine opportunity to grow or try something new &#8211; you&#8217;ve robbed yourself of the ability to distinguish things that might take time and effort and some change, all of which are actually possible, from truly &#8220;Impossible Things.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Take running a marathon for example. Before late 2007 I had never run more than 5 miles or walked more than about 10 miles in one go in my entire life, and it&#8217;d been a while since I&#8217;d done even that. Yet about 18 months later, at 40 years old, I ran and completed my first marathon.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst it&#8217;s true I had no experience of marathons to look back on and therefore no real proof that I could actually do it, that didn&#8217;t mean it had to go into the &#8220;Impossible Things&#8221; box. On the contrary it had to go into the &#8220;Possible Things&#8221; box precisely because I hadn&#8217;t yet proved it to be impossible.<\/p>\n<p>And the way I, and countless others have done, made sure it didn&#8217;t go anywhere near the &#8220;Impossible&#8221; slot was to start by changing the way I thought about it to myself and spoke about it to others. Instead of something &#8220;I could never do&#8221;, it was something &#8220;I haven&#8217;t tried yet&#8221;. Before long it became something &#8220;I haven&#8217;t done yet, &#8221; and finally\u00a0became something &#8220;I have done.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s take a look at those phrases in a little more detail.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 13px;\"><strong>&#8220;I haven&#8217;t tried yet&#8221;<\/strong> creates the possibility of having a go, and the &#8216;yet&#8217; subtly implants the idea that at some point in the future I will have at least attempted it.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;I haven&#8217;t done yet&#8221;<\/strong> moves me on to something I&#8217;ve actually begun to find out what I&#8217;d need to learn or change in order to do it, or in this case have started training, and the &#8216;yet&#8217; reinforces the idea that at some point I will have done it<\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;I have done&#8221;<\/strong> is what you get to say when you&#8217;ve actually done it and, having kept it out of &#8220;Impossible&#8221;, moved it from &#8220;Possible&#8221; into &#8220;Accomplished!&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Because I talked about the task differently, I thought about it differently and therefore I felt about it differently too.<\/p>\n<p>No matter whether it&#8217;s a presentation, conflict situation, marathon, flying or something from your own &#8220;I can&#8217;t&#8230;&#8221; list, start by putting it on your &#8220;I&#8217;ve not done that yet&#8221; list instead and notice the beginnings of a shift towards the &#8220;Accomplished!&#8221; category.<\/p>\n<p>Changing our words really can change our world!<\/p>\n<p>Until next time,<\/p>\n<p><img class=\"alignnone\" alt=\"Steve\" src=\"http:\/\/www.iceandlemon.com\/images\/mysig.gif\" width=\"86\" height=\"19\" \/><\/p>\n<p>ps. If you&#8217;ve been on one of our &#8220;Taxi..!&#8221; workshops you&#8217;ll have experienced a number of other ways of changing words to change worlds too. And if you&#8217;ve not, look out for the next workshop!<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>* Possimpible is, according to Barney Stinson (How I Met Your Mother #4.12), &#8220;the place where the possible and impossible meet,&#8221; because, &#8220;nothing, and everything, is possimpible.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IN SHORT:\u00a0Changing our words really can change our world! \u00a0&#8220;The difference between &#8216;can&#8217;t&#8217; and &#8216;can&#8217; is that &#8216;can&#8217;t&#8217; requires a lot of certainty while &#8216;can&#8217; just asks for a little [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,44],"tags":[15,70,72,29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iceandlemon.com\/v7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2766"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iceandlemon.com\/v7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iceandlemon.com\/v7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iceandlemon.com\/v7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iceandlemon.com\/v7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2766"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/www.iceandlemon.com\/v7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2793,"href":"http:\/\/www.iceandlemon.com\/v7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2766\/revisions\/2793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iceandlemon.com\/v7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iceandlemon.com\/v7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iceandlemon.com\/v7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}