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Explore Possibility Thinking

“Nothing is so embarrassing as watching someone do something that you said could not be done.”

—SAM EWING

People who embrace possibility thinking are capable of accomplishing tasks that seem impossible because they believe in solutions. Here are several reasons why you should become a possibility thinker:

1. Possibility Thinking Increases Your Possibilities

When you believe you can do something difficult—and you succeed—many doors open for you. When George Lucas succeeded in making Star Wars, despite those who said the special effects he wanted hadn’t ever been done and couldn’t be done, many other possibilities opened up to him. Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), the company he created to produce those “impossible” special effects, became a source of revenue to help underwrite his other projects. He was able to produce merchandising tie-ins to his movies, thus bringing in another revenue stream to fund his movie making. But his confidence in doing the difficult has also made a huge impact on other movie makers and a whole new generation of movie goers. Popular culture writer Chris Salewicz asserts, “At first directly through his own work and then via the unparalleled influence of ILM, George Lucas has dictated for two decades the essential broad notion of what is cinema.”¹¹ If you open yourself up to possibility thinking, you open yourself up to many other possibilities.

2. Possibility Thinking Draws Opportunities and People to You

The case of George Lucas helps you to see how being a possibility thinker can create new opportunities and attract people. People who think big attract big people to them. If you want to achieve big things, you need to become a possibility thinker.

3. Possibility Thinking Increases Others’ Possibilities

Big thinkers who make things happen also create possibilities for others. That happens, in part, because it’s contagious. You can’t help but become more confident and think bigger when you’re around possibility thinkers.

4. Possibility Thinking Allows You to Dream Big Dreams

No matter what your profession, possibility thinking can help you to broaden your horizons and dream bigger dreams. Professor David J. Schwartz believes, “Big thinkers are specialists in creating positive forward-looking, optimistic pictures in their own minds and in the minds of others.” If you embrace possibility thinking, your dreams will go from molehill to mountain size, and because you believe in possibilities, you put yourself in position to achieve them.

5. Possibility Thinking Makes It Possible to Rise Above Average

During the 1970s, when oil prices went through the roof, automobile makers were ordered to make their cars more fuel efficient. One manufacturer asked a group of senior engineers to drastically reduce the weight of cars they were designing. They worked on the problem and searched for solutions, but they finally concluded that making lighter cars couldn’t be done, would be too expensive, and would present too many safety concerns. They couldn’t get out of the rut of their average thinking.

What was the auto maker’s solution? They gave the problem to a group of less-experienced engineers. The new group found ways to reduce the weight of the company’s automobiles by hundreds of pounds. Because they thought that solving the problem was possible, it was. Every time you remove the label of impossible from a task, you raise your potential from average to off the charts.

6. Possibility Thinking Gives You Energy

A direct correlation exists between possibility thinking and the level of a person’s energy. Who gets energized by the prospect of losing? If you know something can’t succeed, how much time and energy are you willing to give it? Nobody goes looking for a lost cause. You invest yourself in what you believe can succeed. When you embrace possibility thinking, you believe in what you’re doing, and that gives you energy.

7. Possibility Thinking Keeps You from Giving Up

Above all, possibility thinkers believe they can succeed. Denis Waitley, author of The Psychology of Winning, says, “The winners in life think constantly in terms of ‘I can, I will and I am.’ Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have done, or what they don’t do.” If you believe you can’t do something, then it doesn’t matter how hard you try, because you’ve already lost. If you believe you can do something, you have already won much of the battle.

One of the people who showed himself to be a great possibility thinker in 2001 was New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. In the hours following the World Trade Center tragedy, Giuliani not only led the city through the chaos of the disaster, but he instilled confidence in everyone he touched. Afterward, he gave some insight and perspective on his experience:

I was so proud of the people I saw on the street. No chaos, but they were frightened and confused, and it seemed to me that they needed to hear from my heart where I thought we were going. I was trying to think, Where can I go for some comparison to this, some lessons about how to handle it? So I started thinking about Churchill, started thinking that we’re going to have to rebuild the spirit of the city, and what better example than Churchill and the people of London during the Blitz in 1940, who had to keep up their spirit during this sustained bombing? It was a comforting thought.¹²

Sixteen hours after the planes struck the buildings in New York City, when Giuliani finally returned at 2:30 A.M. to his apartment for a rest, instead of sleeping, he read the World War II chapters of Churchill: A Biography by Roy Jenkins. He learned how Winston Churchill helped his people to see the possibilities and kept his people going. Inspired, Giuliani did the same for his own people six decades later.

HOW TO FEEL THE ENERGY OF POSSIBILITY THINKING

If you are a naturally positive person who already embraces possibility thinking, then you’re already tracking with me. However, some people, rather than being optimistic, are naturally negative or cynical. They believe that possibility thinkers are naïve or foolish. If your thinking runs toward pessimism, let me ask you a question: how many highly successful people do you know who are continually negative? How many impossibility thinkers are you acquainted with who achieve big things? None!

People with an it-can’t-be-done mindset have two choices. They can expect the worst and continually experience it; or they can change their thinking. That’s what George Lucas did. Believe it or not, even though he is a possibility thinker, he is not a naturally positive person. He says, “I’m very cynical, and as a result, I think the defense I have against it is to be optimistic.”¹³ In other words, he chooses to think positively. He sums it up this way: “As corny as it sounds, the power of positive thinking goes a long way. So determination and positive thinking combined with talent combined with knowing your craft… that may sound like a naïve point of view, but at the same time it’s worked for me and it’s worked for all my friends—so I have come to believe it.”¹⁴

If you want possibility thinking to work for you, then begin by following these suggestions:

1. Stop Focusing on the Impossibilities

The first step in becoming a possibility thinker is to stop yourself from searching for and dwelling on what’s wrong with any given situation. Sports psychologist Bob Rotella recounts, “I tell people: If you don’t want to get into positive thinking, that’s OK. Just eliminate all the negative thoughts from your mind, and whatever’s left will be fine.”

If possibility thinking is new to you, you’re going to have to give yourself a lot of coaching to eliminate some of the negative self-talk you may hear in your head. When you automatically start listing all the things that can go wrong or all the reasons something can’t be done, stop yourself and say, “Don’t go there.” Then ask, “What’s right about this?” That will help to get you started. And if negativity is a really big problem for you and pessimistic things come out of your mouth before you’ve even thought them through, you may need to enlist the aid of a friend or family member to alert you every time you utter negative ideas.

2. Stay Away from the “Experts”

So-called experts do more to shoot down people’s dreams than just about anybody else.

Possibility thinkers are very reluctant to dismiss anything as impossible. Rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun said, “I have learned to use the word impossible with the greatest of caution.” And Napoleon Bonaparte declared, “The word impossible is not in my dictionary.” If you feel you must take the advice of an expert, however, then heed the words of John Andrew Holmes, who asserted, “Never tell a young person that something cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for somebody ignorant enough of the impossible to do that thing.” If you want to achieve something, give yourself permission to believe it is possible—no matter what experts might say.

3. Look for Possibilities in Every Situation

Becoming a possibility thinker is more than just refusing to let yourself be negative. It’s something more. It’s looking for positive possibilities despite the circumstances. I recently heard Don Soderquist, former president of Wal-Mart, tell a wonderful story that illustrates how a person can find positive possibilities in any situation. Soderquist had gone with Sam Walton to Huntsville, Alabama, to open several new stores. While there, Walton suggested they visit the competition. Here’s what Soderquist said happened:¹⁵

We went into one [store], and I have to tell you that it was the worst store I’ve ever seen in my life. It was terrible. There were no customers. There was no help on the floor. The aisles were cluttered with merchandise, empty shelves, dirty, it was absolutely terrible. He [Walton] walked one way and I’d walk the other way and we’d kind of meet out on the sidewalk. He said, “What’d you think, Don?”

I said, “Sam, that is the absolutely worst store I’ve ever seen in my life. I mean, did you see the aisles?”

He said, “Don, did you see the pantyhose rack?”

I said, “No, I didn’t, Sam. I must have gone on a different aisle than you. I didn’t see that.”

He said, “That was the best pantyhose rack I’ve ever seen, Don.” And he said, “I pulled the fixture out and on the back was the name of the manufacturer. When we get back, I want you to call that manufacturer and have him come in and visit with our fixture people. I want to put that rack in our stores. It’s absolutely the best I’ve ever seen.” And he said next, “Did you see the ethnic cosmetics?”

I said, “Sam, that must have been right next to the pantyhose rack, because I absolutely missed that.”

He said, “Don, do you realize that in our stores we have four feet of ethnic cosmetics. These people had 12 feet of it. We are absolutely missing the boat. I wrote down the distributor of some of those products. When we get back, I want you to get a hold of our cosmetic buyer and get these people in. We absolutely need to expand our ethnic cosmetics.”

Now, Sam Walton didn’t hit me on the head and say, “Don, now what lesson did you learn from this?” He had already hit me on the head by looking for the good, looking how to improve, striving for excellence. It’s so easy to go and look at what other people do badly. But one of the leadership characteristics of vision that he showed me, and I’ll never forget it, is look for the good in what other people are doing and apply it.

It doesn’t take a genius IQ or twenty years of experience to find the possibility in every situation. All it takes is the right attitude, and anybody can cultivate that.

4. Dream One Size Bigger

One of the best ways to cultivate a possibility mind-set is to prompt yourself to dream one size bigger than you normally do. Let’s face it: most people dream too small. They don’t think big enough. Henry Curtis advises, “Make your plans as fantastic as you like, because twenty-five years from now, they will seem mediocre. Make your plans ten times as great as you first planned, and twenty-five years from now you will wonder why you did not make them fifty times as great.”

If you push yourself to dream more expansively, to imagine your organization one size bigger, to make your goals at least a step beyond what makes you comfortable, you will be forced to grow. And it will set you up to believe in greater possibilities.

5. Question the Status Quo

Most people want their lives to keep improving, yet they value peace and stability at the same time. People often forget that you can’t improve and still stay the same. Growth means change. Change requires challenging the status quo. If you want greater possibilities, you can’t settle for what you have now. When you become a possibility thinker, you will face many people who will want you to give up your dreams and embrace the status quo. Achievers refuse to accept the status quo.

As you begin to explore greater possibilities for yourself, your organization, or your family—and others challenge you for it—take comfort in knowing that right now as you read this, other possibility thinkers across the country and around the world are thinking about curing cancer, developing new energy sources, feeding hungry people, and improving quality of life. They are challenging the status quo against the odds—and you should, too.

6. Find Inspiration from Great Achievers

You can learn a lot about possibility thinking by studying great achievers. I mentioned George Lucas in this chapter. Perhaps he doesn’t appeal to you, or you don’t like the movie industry. (Personally, I’m not a big science fiction fan, but I admire Lucas as a thinker, creative visionary, and businessperson.) Find some achievers you admire and study them. Look for people with the attitude of Robert F. Kennedy, who popularized George Bernard Shaw’s stirring statement: “Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream of things that never were and say, ‘Why not?’ ”

I know possibility thinking isn’t in style with many people. So call it what you like: the will to succeed, belief in yourself, confidence in your ability, faith. It’s really true: people who believe they can’t, don’t. But if you believe you can, you can! That’s the power of possibility thinking.

Thinking Question

Am I unleashing the enthusiasm of possibility thinking to find solutions for even seemingly impossible situations?