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To Dream the Impossible Dream...

If you're too young to remember this song, don't whip out the Wikipedia or YouTube search just yet--I'll spare you the song, dance and plethora of ambiguities and irrelevant hyperlinks by boiling it down for you. It's simply about pushing yourself to achieve the seemingly unattainable.

This week, as we talk about ATTAINABLE goals, it's important that we distinguish the impossible from the improbable, so you wont' fall into the chasm that lies between them like a lanky model stumbling off her stilettos into the runway-side audience (aka stylish mosh pit fail).

Sherlock Holmes once said, "When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Now, if you can't follow me through Sherlockian philisophy, I'll have to disregard your opinion altogether, so I hope you'll tag along with me on this line of reasoning.

The difference between impossible and improbable is clearly calculated based on facts, rather than determined by perception.  We used to think many things were impossible, but we were wrong due to lack of information or ambition to overcome foreseeable obstacles.  We used to think we would never be able to sail around the world, put a man on the moon, or, even more shocking, pass the doughnut box in the breakroom without being sucked into its riptide of nutrition naughtiness.  It was only our ill-informed perceptions that stood between us and success because we took the improbable victories and dumped them in the same outgoing wastebasket as the impossible ones.

We say that with God, nothing is impossible, but we make choices based on doubt, fear, or other inhibiting emotions. Although "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," doubt is the essence of things dreaded, precipitated by things equally unseen, but somehow more credible. The outcomes of both faith and doubt are equally unseen, but, being Negative Nancies at heart, we often choose the less improbable opportunities. What we fail to recognize is that, by keeping our goals and aspirations huddled in a safe little nest, blocking out all the dangers of the unknown and unexplored, the only thing we really accomplish is this: limiting ourselves.

Step out and take another look at what you've considered unattainable in the past. Is it really impossible, or just improbable? Have you boxed up a dream and put it away because some Negative Nancy (yourself included) told you it was beyond your abilities?  Be realistic, in the right way, for a change. Instead of deciding something is impossible because the chances of success are slim, slant your perceptions in the other direction: even a slim chance is, by definition, a valid chance that something is possible. It just might be attainable.

I challenge you to size up the obstacles carefully---Mount Everest was unclimbable, until someone climbed it.

"Only simpletons believe everything they're told~! The prudent carefully consider their steps" 
--Proverbs 14:15



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