So in this one, what a great topic, impossible2Possible, I just love the title. Starting with something you think it’s impossible and it becomes possible. That’s what this whole conversation’s about. That’s what that whole story was about that they talked about in the conversation. And that’s what this whole topic is about in this lesson set. It’s shifting your mind, things that you thought were impossible that maybe you wanted, maybe you think are important but you think it’s impossible or it’s very difficult. I can’t do it. And changing that so you believe that yes it is possible, step 1, and then step 2, I’m going to do it. And step 3 you actually do it.
So what are the steps? How can we make this practical? What do you need to do to get more excitement and to take the impossible and to make it possible in your own life. And live your dreams. Isn’t that what we’re talking about in this topic, living your big dreams? Well, the first thing is think bigger. Think bigger. So many of us, especially as we get older as adults, lose our dreams. We lose our big dreams, our big ideas.
When people are young they tend to dream big and have all these great big dreams. And, y’know, unfortunately a lot of times when we’re young we’re not really very focused and so we have all these crazy dreams. And we don’t really actually do most of them. So then what happens is that as we get older we start thinking, oh well, those dreams, those ideas, those were just crazy foolish things, just when I was young. And we forget them. And then even worse the next step is that we just stop dreaming and thinking big in general.
We start being practical. We start being realistic. And what that means is we just start conforming to what is expected, to what we’re told. So, I’ll just keep working this job. It’s okay, y’know? And I’ll just keep doing the same old thing. And we lose that feeling of really thinking big and dreaming big and being just super excited about something that seems almost impossible. And yet that is the most motivating thing in the world.
The most motivating thing in the world is to go after a huge big dream or a huge challenge. We need big challenges in our lives to feel alive. I mean that’s what this is about to me, this impossible2Possible. It’s about the idea of taking on a big challenge, I mean choosing a big challenge and then meeting that challenge and overcoming it. It makes us stronger and better as individuals. It gives us confidence. That’s how we get greater confidence in our life. That’s how we get greater success in our life. That’s how we get greater fulfillment in our life. Not by everything being easy. Not by just getting everything we want just handed to us. Not just by going along doing the same thing and following the rules. That’s a recipe for boredom. And that’s what a lot of us have and what happens a lot.
We stop thinking big. We stop taking on challenges, but we’re made for challenges. As human beings, just physically we evolved to need and meet big challenges. Our ancestors had to fight and hunt and run. And they had a lot of tough physical challenges they had to face constantly. So our bodies are made for that. So when you just sit around and everything is super easy all the time, our bodies get sick and fat and diseased. And all kinds of terrible things happen because we’re not challenging our bodies.
Well, the same thing happens to our mind, our psychology, our emotions if we’re not challenging ourselves, if we’re not facing things that seem almost impossible. Then we lose a lot of our enjoyment for life, a lot of our life energy. And our passion drains away. We don’t want that. So if that’s happened to you, the good news is you can change it and get it back. If it hasn’t happened to you, great. I’m going to challenge you now to increase it even more.
So the first step is you’ve got to start dreaming bigger, thinking bigger. So let’s get very practical and specific. The first thing I want you to do is get a journal or a diary or a piece of paper. And I want you to sit down and just remember some of your old crazy dreams that you had when you were younger. And that could mean a year ago or five years ago, ten years ago. Just through your whole life, things that you always dreamed about doing.
I did this recently, let me give you some examples from my own life. One of my first dreams was to open my own like karate martial arts school, right? Because when I was in middle school I was really into karate. And I loved it and I had this amazing teacher who was just a super amazing teacher and role model and a great guy who really influenced me a lot at that time…tough time in my life, like it is for most people. And so that was one of my dreams. And then I kind of stopped doing martial arts and I kind of just went away. But that’s one dream and I wrote it down, y’know, martial arts school, be a martial arts instructor. And it still, it’s always been back there. Even though I stopped training and I haven’t done it in decades at this point, it still was always in the back of my mind.