The Impossible Just Takes a Little Longer

I'm just about done with an excellent book called The Impossible Just Takes a Little Longer: Living with Purpose and Passion by the late Art Berg. In his early 20's, Berg was in a car accident that made him a quadriplegic. Told he would never work again, he ended up with a career inspiring hundreds of thousands of people as a motivational speaker. He was called on regularly by Tony Robbins to speak at his seminars, and played a key role in the Baltimore Ravens Superbowl season in 2000 - 2001.

His approach is decidedly not ra-ra. In fact, early in the book he says:

If you are looking for something that will act like a salve on your emotional wounds, making you feel better right now, then I recommend that you give this book to someone else - because I want to shake you to your very core, to wake you up, to make you stop sleewalking and start fighting for a real change that lasts...

I found the first part of the book a bit slow, but when I reached the section titled Overcoming Your Paralysis: Uncommon Strategies for Making the Impossible Probable, I found myself continually wanting to blog about what I was reading.

Each strategy has a chapter. Those chapters are:

Don't make your problems more than just that...problems
Strategy: Control your destiny by controlling how you choose to respond.

Start sweating the small stuff
Strategy: If you want to make the big changes in life, don't forget the small ones.

The problem isn't what you can't do, it's what you don't do
Strategy: Even when certain change is impossible, you can still make changes.

Learn to fail faster
Strategy: Create a different perspective on failure: It can be a great teacher.

Stop living on your little island
Strategy: Whenever there is conflict in your life, don't hide, but reach out to the people important to you. That old cliche, "no man is an island," contains more truth than you might know.

Ask better questions
Strategy: Learn to talk to yourself in a way that gives you better answers for your life.

Why are you obsessing about your goals?
Strategy: Goal-setting is great, but what's more important is setting a vision of who you want to be.

Don't let one bad day turn into a bad life
Strategy: When days get tough, take a break. Rely on the "power of the pause." Give up fights you can't win.

Balance is unachievable until you can focus
Strategy: Give up the idea that you must have everything in your life that you want. Instead, focus on what's important.

When we're laughing, we're learning
Strategy: aughter is essential to creativity, innovation, and perspective. Learn to laugh and play more.

Remember that some miracles take time
Strategy: Rediscover your childlike wonderment about life. Such a quality will get you through even the roughest of times.

Don't leave your valuables behind
Strategy: As you begin making significant life changes, make sure some very important things - principles, values, and faith - never change.

Be prepared to go the distance
Strategy: Recognize that your life is not a sprint, but a long-distance journey.

Are any of these earth-shakingly, ground-breakingly new? No. But they're also ideas that are easy to forget.

This is definitely a book worth a read.

Curt Rosengren
Passion Catalyst ^SM

Comments

[steven]

Thanks for the suggestion/review, Curt. I've added this to my to-read stack (listed on my homepage too).