It can’t be done; a man might as well try to fly

“We knew that men had by common consent adopted human flight as the standard of impossibility. When a man said, ‘It can’t be done; a man might as well try to fly,’ he was understood as expressing the final limit of impossibility.” -Wilbur Wright

Have you ever found yourself saying things like, ‘there is no way I’m ever going to get that promotion, it can’t be done; I might as well try to become the President of the United States.’ Or, ‘I can’t figure out how to pull our company out if this slump; at this point it would probably be easier for me to find a buried treasure.’ When things get tough, in an attempt to make ourselves not feel so bad about failing, we compare things in our lives to things we believe to be “impossible”.

Believe it or not, according to a Pew Research report, 37% of able-to-work citizens are “not in the labor force.” This means that they are not currently working and have not looked for work recently enough to be counted as unemployed. According to the research, of this 37%, over 90% of them said that the reason they don’t have a job is because they don’t want one. The question that stems from these numbers is this: Why don’t these people want jobs? Is it because people think finding and holding down a job they love is impossible? Perhaps others would love to be their own boss, but believe it is an impossible dream.

When the going gets rough, don’t give up! Like Wilbur Wright said, people used to say “It can’t be done; a man might as well try to fly,” but – news flash- people have been flying for years! Don’t start comparing things that are completely doable to a limit of impossibility, and if something really is “impossible,” take heart and know that one day it won’t be! If you find yourself starting to think something is impossible, keep trying, ask others for help or try something new! Just because something is hard doesn’t mean it is impossible!