When was the last time you felt that conditions were truly in your favor - where everything is in place that supports you to do exactly what you want, when you want?
Let me think...
Never?
Conditions are seemingly never optimal or perhaps it might be better to say, that conditions are always optimal, but never optimal for what we want, when we want. Perhaps as they say, the best time to act is now.
The world as we know it is obviously struggling at the moment, but even so, we as a species have probably never enjoyed better conditions than at this moment in regards to our general standards of living and general opportunity. So why is it that so few of us apparently feel that the time is not right to make a move?
I think that this is an eternal species problem, where we have always "suffered" a blindness of the present as we experience, where we focus on the negatives to the point we hold ourselves back from even attempting to improve our position. Maybe we are just built to restrict ourselves and those who find a way to "be bold" are breaking the code.
"Impossible is nothing"
― Muhammad Ali
It is a lovely quote that is easy to say and easy to feel one understands - yet how many truly contemplate the meaning of those words and onboard them? Perhaps it would be better that rather than a platitude, people read the whole quote:
“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
― Muhammad Ali
Impossible truly is nothing as impossible can never exist. If something truly is impossible, it truly can never be, but as the quote says, Impossible is temporary. There is an enormous amount of profundity in that quote, yet few stop long enough to think much about it.
What this quote means to me is that something might not be possible today, but that doesn't mean that the conditions of tomorrow could support it into existence, into being possible. Impossible truly is an opinion as we do not and cannot know all conditions that have been or will ever be, which means that we cannot know what could exist. All we might be able to guess at is what is impossible at this state and under these conditions, but even this is a tenuous position, as we do not know all conditions present or the full potential of what is possible under the conditions - we can only possibly know what we have managed to observe and possibly guess at what might be still hidden from us, yet to be observed.
The conditions we face might always be sub-optimal for what we want to do right now, but they must be optimal for something or perhaps, optimal for parts of what we want to do. I think that in some ways it is like the people who want to get fitter, but won't work while they have an injury, even though they could work under restriction at something that aids their end goal. When it comes to some of the larger things we want from our life, I think we are always injured to the point many of us restrict ourselves to subsistence alone.
Of course, you might have a completely different view of your world and believe that you are doing all within your power to reach your potential, but that would make you an outlier on the very edge of any population, several standard deviations from the mean. It is possible - but is it likely?
Well, that is the thing with probability, it is a confidence level of possibility and while we might intuitively feel that we have a good understanding of conditions and our potential, I strongly suspect that perhaps it is impossible for any of us to know what we are truly capable of, what our true potential actually is. Sometimes I consider what it might be to have lived an optimized life where every decision and action was the best in the moment, but that is unimaginable, as we be necessity will narrow our focus to specific points. But imagine just from a monetary perspective the difference of your current position if up until now you had done "everything right" and bought the right thing at the right time, sold at the right time, held at the right time, spent at the right time. What would your financial position look like? That outcome was a possibility, but the probability of only making perfect decisions is highly unlikely.
We are uncertain by nature and will always question the decisions we make because we do not act on pure instinct alone and we are able to reflect on what we have done and imagine the counterfactual alternatives, the things that could have happened - the ifs. If only conditions had been better.
They won't be.
It is not that they won't improve, but at any given moment conditions are perfect for something, even though it might not be what we might want that something to be. However, this is always going to be the case and since we can't change the immediate conditions, the only thing we can actually do is make a decision on what we are going to do given the circumstances we face.
Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it.
Everything we do has an effect and therefore, it is going to change the conditions in some way and create the possibility for new potential outcomes - for better or for worse. Each moment we have the choice to do something and standing still is a choice, as is blaming conditions for not making a move. This isn't even about taking risks as every moment we are surrounded by risk, the potential for loss, the potential to be harmed. If we live our world in an attempt to avoid risk, we are trying to empty the sea with a bucket, while standing in the sea. Perhaps this is the only impossibility we should accept - that there is no such thing as certain, there is always margin for error.
I don't know about you, but for me the conditions of the last six months have been sub-optimal for reaching my goals as I had planned them earlier, but it doesn't mean that the last 6 months haven't had the potential for great outcomes. For the most part, I have performed sub-optimally for the conditions, rather than adjusted and optimized for available opportunity. It isn't that I haven't adjusted at all, but I have been far from perfect in my decision making.
We do the best we possibly can with what we have at the time - and that includes the mindset we hold. Perhaps if we change our mind, the conditions of impossible might just shift enough to open up the possible - even if it is still not probable. But then, maybe once we change our mind, we might be able to make a few more decisions toward improving our conditions and increasing the chance that the impossible of now, becomes what we did yesterday.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]