When facing an obstacle that prevents you from achieving your goal, and you say you can’t overcome it, you give yourself permission to stop trying.
When you stop trying, you become a victim.
When you become a victim, you stop taking responsibility for your future.
When you stop taking responsibility for your future you surrender your capability to plan. You just accept what life throws at you, and you try to cope.
When you grow too exhausted to cope you lose your desire to live.
And all because you told yourself “I can’t.”
When achieving your goal presents daunting challenges, and somewhere in the process of conquering those challenges you grow frustrated, and you are ready to throw in the towel and proclaim, “I can’t,” do this instead.
Take a rest or take a walk and just be. Ask yourself, “what would it take for me to find a solution to my challenge and act on it?” And in that state of just being let your mind conjure up whatever thoughts emerge. Don’t edit or judge your thoughts. Allow them to breathe and percolate. Explore them. Some of your ideas will take you beyond the boundaries of your self-limiting beliefs about what you can and cannot do. Indulge those ideas. Imagine executing them.
Watch as new ideas and approaches emerge. Capture the few that have the possibility to work. Prepare to be impressed by your creativity.
Then begin to face your challenge anew with ideas you never imagined. You just might discover you are more than you think you are.
The wonders of applied neuroscience underpin everything I said. I won’t go into the details now, but your takeaway is simply that this approach reliably works in ways that our conscious minds don’t easily grasp. You’ll experience it only if you try.