Why “Anything” is Possible
“Anything’s possible,” she says with shrugged shoulders and a half-smile…
I’m talking with a client about what might come out the other side of the current pandemic... And we’ve all heard that phase countless times, but is it real? Is it just a common colloquialism or is ANYTHING really possible?
It’s pretty clear that we all have limited resources all around us and at any given moment. It’s just a fact of life that resources are limited (and necessarily so). Like everyone else I sometimes think about having more, better different (fill in the blank)… But no matter how much we think or hope about anything else, we have a finite amount of money, time or whatever. We only know a certain number of people. The technology and tools we have only gets us so far. Limited resources seem to create constraints on what is possible, and in a way they do. Resources are fixed at any point in time.
It’s HOW we use resources that opens up new possibilities and taps into our own human potential. Let me tell you what I mean.
When we’re operating inside of a status quo — accepting the current state of affairs wherein what was true yesterday will be true tomorrow — and we operate as such, we use those limited resources in a way that we already know how. Why would we do anything else? It works! We know how Jennifer is in the accounting department. We know how to use the email app on our smartphone (most of us, anyway). We know how our teams behave and how our family acts.
I love all the brain science around what we’re doing so this might get a little technical, but stick with me. One of the facts we’ve come across is that our brains also have limited processing power. Processing power in the brain can be measured analogously to a computer in bits, the smallest unit of data. In any given second, we can consciously process about 50 bits of information. Oftentimes we only use that 50 bits of processing power to implement what we already know works. But we know it works only because it worked yesterday — purely a function of the past. It’s almost like operating on autopilot, which is necessary to do sometimes by the way. When we’re locked into that way of thinking (a function of the past) we’re stuck fixing, adjusting and changing what we already have and see very limited growth, if any.
Our subconscious is a different story — it’s wildly more powerful than what we can consciously process. In every second while our conscious mind is processing 50 bits of information, our unconscious mind processes 11,000,000 bits. That’s eleven million bits.
We have access to 11 million bits, but we only can consciously use 50.
That’s like having an entire room available to us — but only seeing something the size of a pinhead. It’s crazy to even think about. Take your perspective right now. How the room shows up around you. How you see the computer screen. Even how you’re understanding (hopefully) this idea. The consciousness you’re now noting is only about .00045% of what’s really there.
“Anything” actually becomes possible when we can tap into some of the 10,999,950 bits of information currently in our subconscious around HOW we can use those limited resources. When we remain focused on the purpose (Simon Sinek would call it "the why") and get creative on the how and what, it reframes / refocuses us on a new and potentially critical 50 bits of information that can lead to a breakthrough result.
A great friend of mine and celebrity fitness coach, Ted Ryce, was telling me about a great example of this the other day. Many of us are dealing with working from home, and working from home presents new distractions. Part of a plan he created for one of his clients was regular cycles of cardio — typically 45 minutes on the Peloton. Not a problem normally, but with the new “stay at home” orders, working remotely with kids home, it made getting on the Peloton all but impossible for his client. Limited time, limited resources, limited perspective and it would seem that the fitness plan would be off the rails.
But Ted is a sharp guy, he wouldn’t be coaching at the level he is if he wasn’t. He knew the goal was to do 45 minutes of cardio. He knew the limited resources on how to get there. Instead of giving up on the fitness plan, Ted and his client tapped into a new and different “how” using those same limited resources of time and having to watch kids to do something different. If the client played really hard with his kids for 45 minutes (tracking his heart rate on an Apple Watch) he could achieve the same fitness result and spend quality time with his kids at the same time. Achieving the goal, just in a new (and better!) way.
Whether it’s something small like fitting in fitness into your routine with your kids at home, or something larger like totally reinventing your business, these same rules apply. There’s no question we have limited resources. There’s no question the pandemic is impacting us all in some way but nearly anything is possible now and on the other side of COVID-19 when we push ourselves to think about how we use our limited resources in an entirely new way.