Achieving the Impossible is more a Process than an Expression
Ideas from an Evolving Mind #Idea 5
It always comes so natural to us- the ability to keep at something after having surpassed the point of no return. It is the zone where you’ve achieved for yourself something that you had never imagined you could. The phenomenon of surpassing one impossibility fills one up with an inexplicable drive and enables the mind to let go of its fixed learning pattern for good. Refer this piece (https://journal.thriveglobal.com/if-you-dont-believe-in-setting-goals-it-s-because-you-don-t-know-how-to-do-it-cdddea181aab) by Benjamin P. Hardy for more on what a fixed learning mindset entails. Overcoming such a frame of mind allows one to train to be able to achieve whatever the mind conceives and is the only way to feel fulfilled thereafter. As a by-product, it entails letting go of one’s self doubt that is invariably present when eyeing for something meaningful.
If you haven’t felt it already, take a moment to relate this to the idea of compounding. Compounding effect is so powerful and omnipotent that it can kick down any barrier that seems too big for a start. Let’s walk through a hypothetical long jump exercise.
- Visualize a pit of decent dimensions, enough for you to doubt your ability to make across it in one leap. Take a jump. Either you make it, in which case start setting bigger goals for yourself and overestimating what you can actually achieve. In case you don’t, you’ve got the first part right- having the ability to visualize a seemingly worthy goal. An initial failure is thus a portent that you are on track to achieving greatness in some form and shape.
- Next you try to make through that pit by having a greater momentum to start with. You start earlier and run faster to the line marking the point of the jump over the pit. You might also try to stretch yourself further apart each time to be able to land ahead of the pit. By undertaking such contraptions, you might fail again but in the process, improve your run-up and train your muscles to some extent. That obviously seems better than goofing around with jumping over menial pits in life and always staying the way you started out in this world.
- As you keep trying to further your speed and body stretch, some day you get fast and long enough to make it through that pit. Great! Awesome! We often assume that the feat would flush us up with the right mix of energy and emotions and keep us fulfilled thereafter. But unfortunately or otherwise, that never happens to be the case. The exhilaration in achieving something you couldn’t conceive for yourself has no close second. It corresponds to the self-actualization of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs- the apex of all that satisfies a human. Once there, there’s no coming back.
The process is exactly the same in anything one sets out to achieve. One needs to consciously work and overcome the ennui that accompanies the start. Everything below the top is enticing in its ability to pull one away from the grind needed to hit the top. The best way to overcome it is to visualize the top while working towards it. To the extent one is able to live the moment of achievement before it ever happens, the feeling of fulfillment is afforded in advance that helps beat the need for any other below it. That’s exactly how and why visualization works.
It is once you are there, does the power of compounding kicks in. It becomes increasingly easier for one to visualize seemingly impossible goals and harness the feeling of self-actualization. The more you do that, better you are shielded from the lesser needs in the hierarchy allowing you to focus on the grind & hit the next impossible. Such is the path to greatness trodden by numerous before, assisted neither by luck nor talent but through deploying an ability to focus on what really mattered from the very beginning and letting the world around evolve to meet them from there.
Read: Ideas from an Evolving Mind- Preface
