What would you do if you knew anything was possible, if you knew you couldn’t fail?
There’s a photograph of me as a child climbing up a slippery dip using just my arms. You see, no one told me that a paralysed girl in a wheelchair couldn’t go on the slippery dip.
Children don’t know about ‘can’t’ because our minds aren’t programmed that way yet. I just saw somebody else doing it and thought it looked fun, so I worked out how to.
The picture reminds me to approach things like a child, with a child-like mindset and wonder how I can do that, rather than thinking ‘I can’t do that’. Because, honestly, if you went to most adults in a wheelchair and told them to go on the slippery dip, they would say no, I can’t climb steps.
If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
So when I’m doing goal setting, I really try and get into that child-like mindset again. I do that by doing something that’s fun before I sit down to think about my goals.
Exercise is fun to me, getting in touch with nature, taking my dog Pepe for walks. I did that before I did my vision board this year, and that got me back in touch with the childlike mindset where we don’t yet start dumping ‘it’s not possible on ourselves’ because that is actually way more limiting.
Just like that paralysed girl who wanted to go on the slippery dip because it looked fun and figured out a way, if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
This is applicable in pretty much every situation. It’s not my quote, but it is one that I like to live by.
So ask yourself:
Is there another way I look at this situation?
Is there something I’m learning from this?
Could I do this differently?
Because every problem has a solution.