The possibility expansion principle

As I was writing yesterday's post about a career lesson from a rock climbing experience over the weekend, another one came to me.

In a nutshell, it's that getting out of your own way and reaching for things that may not even seem possible can end up expanding your concept of possibility.

Climbing in the gym a couple weeks ago, one of the people I climb with, Nancy Board, called me on my tendency to look at what a route is rated and say, "No, I can't do that one." She basically wouldn't take that for an answer and said, "Curt, do it."

I did (with a suitable amount of whining, of course). And I actually climbed it fairly well. "You've got to get that rating thing out of your head," said Nancy. She pointed out how I was limiting myself by my preconceived notion of whether or not I could climb a route.

Then at Smith Rock with Nancy and her husband Erden Eruc, I tried to say a route called Barbecue the Pope was too hard for me, but they would have none of it. I tried it, and it ended up being one of my most fun climbs ever.

Since then, I've developed much more of an "I'll try it and see what happens" attitude.

My success on those routes I had been telling myself were too hard has expanded my view of what is possible. Some of it is because my climbing is improving, but a lot of it is simply because I'm not limiting myself, and as a result I'm experiencing some of that expanded possibility. Which in turn feeds what I think is possible.

It's the same in my career. When I open myself up to reaching beyond my safe and comfortable sense of possibility, I find that things that once seemed far beyond my reach end up becoming a standard part of the landscape.

In my more enlightened moments, I really do believe that there is very little that is truly beyond our reach. We can make amazing things happen, if we can allow ourselves to reach beyond our current view of possibility and expand it.

Curt Rosengren
Passion Catalyst ^SM

Comments

[Johnnie Moore]

Hi Curt: Just to say I'm really enjoying your climbing stories. I'm working through Csikszentmihalyi's book "Good Business" at the moment, so your entries counterpoint his themes of flow really neatly. Isn't it just great to learn new things about ourselves?!