3 What Is Impossible?
A
few minutes ago I read about a woman who has 6 children, 35
grandchildren, 75 great-grandchildren and 10 great, great-
grandchildren—who jumped from an airplane to celebrate her
ninety-third birthday. That’s a woman who thinks big.
I believe in the impossible. I think you can have, do, or be any-
thing you can imagine. That’s the subject of one of my earlier
books, titled The Attractor Factor. It’s also, for the most part, the
way I live my life.
I love to think big. I also love to read about people who set “im-
possible” goals, and then achieve them. Whether it’s Roger Bannis-
ter breaking the four-minute mile, NASA sending a man to the
moon, Bruce Barton writing a fundraising letter that pulls a 100%
response, or a 93-year-old woman skydiving, all of it proves we
have no known limits. None.
What we have, instead, are mind-sets, or mental models. Yoram
Wind and Colin Crook, writing in their mind expanding book,The
Power of Impossible Thinking, declare, “Mental models shape every
aspect of our lives.”
For example, I am currently reading C.K. Prahalad’s book,The
Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, and love the true stories of
people and companies helping the poor in places like Brazil and
India. These people are not thinking small.
For example, Aravind Eye Hospital in India grew from an 11-
bed facility to the largest eye care facility in the world. They see