How to move past obstacles with just a few questions

What if every morning you awoke with this mindset:

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. –Frankly D Roosevelt

What would you do?  How would that change your world?  One of the hardest questions for most people to answer honestly is ‘What would you do if you knew you could not fail?’ This question, however, is not the problem. The problem is our reluctance to even consider such an outrageous and risky assumption. 

You see, in order to answer that question, we have to open up the door to the possibility that we won’t fail, but our brains are very protective.  Our brains remind us that in the real world, failure is always possible.   So our brains slam that door shut before we even have a moment to consider the answer to the question.  Our brains tell us that with a limited amount of brainpower, we should not ‘waste’ any of it on frivolous thoughts like ‘impossible’ ideas.  But, what if our brains are wrong about this?  What if our brains are, instead of protecting us, holding us back?

I often see evidence of this phenomenon in my work as a business coach.  One of the benefits of working with a coach, trainer, mentor, accountability partner, or various other outside support people is their ability to break through mental barriers like the one I just mentioned.  By the way, there’s no mystery here about why those coaches and mentors can see past that solid wall of impossibility when their clients can’t see it at all.  The simple truth is that an outside person can better imagine that the ‘impossible’ is possible because we are all more likely to believe that someone else can achieve something that, for us, seems impossible.

This is why you need a trained and experienced person to help you navigate through the process of visualizing the impossible.  You need someone who can see possibilities that are difficult for you to imagine.  For example, when the response of my clients to my questions about visualizing success are short, hopeless answers like ‘I can’t, it won’t, or it is not,’ I like to ask a few follow-up questions like these:

-So if you had unlimited resources, how would you do it?

-If your life depended on it, what would you do?

-If Sir Richard Branson (or insert your favorite wealthy individual) wrote you a check for $100,000,000, and gave you free advice.  What would you do with the money to fix the problem and what questions would you ask him?

All of these questions are targeted at the same issue.  Take away the perceived barriers and get people to open up their minds. We have to make some cracks in that wall of doubt and negativity.  We can’t start solving the problem until we are willing to consider that maybe we do have unlimited resources, and that maybe in some symbolic way, our lives do depend on what we do next, and, finally, maybe we don’t even need a billionaire because we already have all we need.  Only when you are able to acknowledge that the unimaginable is possible will you begin to make progress.

Once a client is willing to admit that positive change is possible, we can dive into what has been holding them back.  Was it really the money?  Did they need as much as they thought?  Or was it a missing piece of information that was so pivotal to success?  Or was the problem related to a simple lack of motivation and time? 

After you have identified the areas that need attention, it is time to start figuring out how many of those areas are accessible and where we have to go to access them.  Sometimes, what before seemed far-fetched turns out to be much easier to access than we believed.  But first, before you can get past that wall that blocks your progress, you have to believe that you are smarter and stronger and more capable than the wall.

For help dreaming big and then living that reality, Make the decision to reach out today.  Rainmakers bring whatever is needed for success, we can help you get there. 

burk@burkmoreland.com or 832-356-4585