How An “Impossible List” Will Change Your Life
Ever thought something was impossible? Yeah, so did I, and sometimes I find myself in that awful mindset.
Sure things might be improbable, but impossible? That’s not a word I like to keep in my day to day vocabulary – in fact it’s one I decided to ban one day a few years back when I began to achieve my impossible. If you are looking to make the impossible things happen in your life, know that I have a tool for you at the end of this article! Let me tell you a quick story... May 2010 was an interesting time for me (Marc Angelo Coppola for some more context). I had only one semester left in university and I had just sold my first real business (an indoor skatepark), which I had been running for 3 years – and with it I had lost my identity. So I decided to take my first big journey away from home for longer than a few weeks. I went to the other side of the world, actually backpacking alone in China, because I had always wanted to go to a place where I wouldn’t be understood, a place vastly different from my cozy Montreal life. Immediately after landing from a long plane ride after a month in Australia, I realized this was going to be really interesting... Why? Simply because within minutes I found myself surrounded by 40ish taxi drivers all trying to understand what I was saying despite asking to be taken to Tiananmen Square or the Forbidden City, the most iconic landmarks in Beijing! When I way saying Tiananmen Square they had NO idea what I was talking about – I absolutely couldn’t believe it! I mean, they really did not speak English, not even a little bit – to the point where pointing out the most famous landmark in Beijing wasn’t working. It was beyond me. Finally, I was lucky enough to find a picture of it in my Lonely Planet and one of the taxi drivers ended up bringing me over. What I learned right then and there was that this wasn’t going to be easy... and honestly I couldn’t have been more excited because I was one step closer. Let me back up for a second... I’m not telling you this story to make you jealous of my trip to China or to give you the travel bug, but rather, to tell you about this wish I wrote down in an old journal when I was 7 or 8 years old. Deciding what I wanted to do with my life as a entrepreneur without a business was really quite tough, to say the least. I was scrambling for ideas in a very emotional (and weak) state of mind in my room when I picked up an old journal of mine from elementary school and just started reading. I soon stumbled across a proclamation that I would one day walk on the Great Wall of China. When I first read the words the first thing I thought was: “Ya right that’s impossible. How would I even get there? I don’t speak Chinese...” You see that journal entry actually struck me in that very moment like a huge ton of bricks. It was an immediate wake-up call. I had spent the previous days checking out places close by to visit like Cuba or Mexico because they were “within my reach,” when I realized I was scared. I had this fear of the unknown that had crept into my mind, corrupting my thoughts. Have you ever felt this way before? Of course you have, we all have – but what sets you apart from the herd is facing those fears, right? Needless to say, that’s when I knew I had to do it. SO I DID. Honestly, that trip and the 10km hike I did on the wall that day was one of the most transformative moments of my entire life. I had achieved “my impossible.“ You see, I didn’t know what my new business would be, but I knew one thing. I would make it my business to live my dreams NO MATTER WHAT.
The truth was it was never impossible. I just had to write it down and then commit to doing it and planning it. So that day – literally while on the Great Wall – I ended up making something I would later call my “impossible list,” and it is one of the single most powerful things I have ever written down on paper. It wasn’t just a bucket list of dreams – but more so a challenge list of things I AM going to do. It’s not a “one day” list – it’s an action plan. I am proud to say that I regularly consult this list, and well, today I want to invite you to make your own. Actually forget the invite. I CHALLENGE YOU TO DO IT. Trust me, you will thank me later... .
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