In the award-winning musical, Man of La Mancha, Don Quixote is asked by Aldonza what he means by “following the quest.” Don Quixote answers Aldonza with the following song:
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far…
For those of you who are inspired by song, here’s Richard Kiley, singing “The Impossible Dream” in the original cast version from 1965. Other notable renditions include Cher, Gomer Pyle (Jim Nabors), Elvis, Jennifer Hudson, Frank Sinatra, Ed Ames, Glen Campbell, Andy Williams, and the Smothers Brothers. (What’s your favorite? For me, Kiley’s version is tough to beat.)
What is your ‘Impossible Future’?
As a successful financial advisor, what is your quest? What is your impossible dream?
Or have you dared to dream this yet?
In the seminal coaching book, Masterful Coaching, Robert Hargrove talks about how to declare an ‘Impossible Future.’ “Wait!” you may be thinking, “An Impossible Future? Vas is das? How can I declare an Impossible Future? ‘Impossible,’ means unattainable, inconceivable, implausible, and unthinkable…”
But when Hargrove talks about declaring an Impossible Future…he’s goofing with our brains. By his coaching definition, all things are possible. So, his use of the phrase is ironically counterfactual. What he wants us to declare is exactly the opposite, that is, our completely-possible-and-achievable-future. Let me explain.
When you set your goals, do you do this?
- Extrapolate from the recent past. When we set goals, we often begin at the wrong end. We’ll look at what we’ve done recently, jazz it up a smidgen, and extrapolate forward. This is all very logical and linear. Yet, it doesn’t lead to many breakthroughs. And it’s pretty boring.
- Edit yourself by saying, “That’s a stupid idea.” We limit our thinking and ideas by pulling them out by the roots before giving them a chance to grow. Thinking about our Impossible Future is a right-brained activity. We want to maximize the creativity and the possibilities, not squash them at the get-go. When we brainstorm our possibilities, it’s all about quantity, not quality. No idea is stupid. Stop the judging and limiting beliefs. If you can imagine it, you can achieve it!
How to claim your Impossible Future
- Hargrove’s Impossible Future is what we dare to dream and imagine, even though we may not have all (or any) of the resources in place and even though we might not know the exact pathway to get there.
- Rather than working forward from our past, we must work backward from our imagination.
- With the Impossible Future to guide us, we set goals that are transformational. When achieved, our lives will be forever changed.
Here’s the thing about dreaming the Impossible Future. When you frame your goals with the Impossible Future in mind, you will not be using the rational, left-brain approach that is the foundation of traditional goal setting. (I’m looking at you, S.M.A.R.T. goals!)
When you dream your Impossible Future, you want to be freed from whatever has held you back in the past. You will be using your right brain to generate goals that have the following characteristics:
- Excitement
- Fear
- Inspiration
- Imagination
- Wonder
- Adventure
‘We choose to go to the moon’
The other key element in building our Impossible Future is that the goals we imagine might appear to be so crazy-big and impossible-sounding that it takes a lot of courage to even put the idea forward.
One of the best recent examples of building an Impossible Future was John F. Kennedy’s speech at Rice University on September 12, 1962 where he declared, “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
Some of you may remember the context of JFK’s audacious pronouncement. The U.S. was in the middle of the Cold War, and President Kennedy was under intense scrutiny and pressure vis-a-vis the USSR (and the fear of communism.) The prior year, the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba had failed in spectacular fashion. Also, the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had recently orbited the earth. More unbelievably, when Kennedy made his moon speech, none of the moon technology even existed. No Saturn V rockets. No iconic moon lander. No manned orbital rendezvous process. To top it all off, a Gallup poll indicated that 58% of Americans didn’t support the initiative at all.
Yet, sure enough, eight years later…it happened. On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped out of the Lunar Module and uttered his famous epigram, “That’s one small step for man…one giant leap for mankind.”
Imagine. Share. Begin.
How do you start the process of building your own impossible dream? In the first place, there is no cookie-cutter type process whereby: Presto chango! You declare and achieve these crazy-wild goals. However, there are some elemental steps:
Imagine
For the moment, leave the constraints of the here-and-now and whatever perceived obstacles that might exist regarding the achievement of your impossible dream. Give yourself permission to ask yourself the BAD questions—questions that are Bold, Audacious, and Daring.
Questions like:
- If I believed that anything was possible, what would I want to achieve?
- If there were no limits around me, what is the limit to my potential?
- If I had every possible resource at my disposal, what would I do to change the world? (Have you ever interviewed for a gig at Google? This is one of the questions that often comes up.)
Share
Once you’ve arrived at this impossible dream, share it with someone else. This might include: a mentor, trusted colleague, your coach, or anyone who you trust to hear your ambitions without judgment and provide valuable feedback. In the process of sharing with someone else, you will also introduce the all-important element of accountability that begins to commit you down the path.
Begin
Many studies have shown that one of the most problematic segments of goal achievement is the beginning, the very first step. What’s also interesting is that the order of magnitude of taking the first step can be very, very small…miniscule even. Indeed, to the outside observer, this first step might seem inconsequential or trivial. It isn’t. In fact, it’s not unusual that this first step might require as much courage as you can muster.
The story of Ralph Lifshitz
Ralph Lifshitz was born in the Bronx N.Y., on October 14, 1939, to Fraydl and Frank Lifshitz, poor Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants from Pinsk, then in the Soviet Union and now Belarus.
Lifshitz attended the Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy, and later the DeWitt Clinton High School, in the Bronx. In his 1957 yearbook, he wrote “millionaire” as one of his life goals.
At the age of 16, Ralph and his brother Jerry changed their last name to avoid the unfortunate obscenity reference Lifshitz has in English. “My given name has the word shit in it,” he once told Oprah Winfrey. “When I was a kid, the other kids would make a lot of fun of me. It was a tough name. That’s why I decided to change it.” (Later in his life, Lauren regretted the implication that he changed his name to avoid his Jewishness.)
He took business classes at Baruch College but dropped out after two years, and worked briefly at Brooks Brothers, the purveyor of staid men’s clothes, before being drafted into the army in late 1960. His two years of service were uneventful and undistinguished, following which he sold perfume briefly and then began working in sales for a tie manufacturer.
When Lauren’s own design for a wider-than-normal tie was rejected by his boss, who supposedly told him, “The world is not ready for Ralph Lauren,” he left to set up his own shop, which he dubbed Polo Ralph Lauren. (He had been to a polo game, and was entranced by the elegance of everything about it.)
Lauren’s first office was in the Empire State Building, where in his tiny space he began handmaking the wider ties that his prior boss had shunned.
It was during this period that Lauren asked to be cast in a film that was being shot in Manhattan. The director asked, “Who do you see yourself as?” Lauren replied, “Gary Cooper.”
“You’re a short little Jew,” said the director.
“Not when I’m dressed,” said Lauren.
His big break came in 1967, when Dallas-based Neiman Marcus ordered 100 dozen of his ties. They were followed by Bloomingdale’s, which gave in on its original insistence that Lauren replace his “Polo” label with one from the store, and reduce their width by one-quarter inch. He had refused, but a half-year later, Bloomie’s was back, without the conditions.
Ralph Lauren’s 79th birthday is October 14, 2018. He is estimated to be worth in excess of $7 billion dollars. He has met, and exceeded, his childhood goal…by more than 7000 times over.
Nothing changes until you act!
At some point in our lives, most all of us come to a position where we must choose to act, while asking ourselves: Is this where I take a giant leap of faith in myself and start becoming the person I aspire to become?
Are you at this juncture in your life?
Commitment and action
Action is the most potent antidote to indecision and fear. Action, by itself, nurtures courage and breeds confidence in ways that nothing else can. Also, there’s a critical symbiotic relationship between commitment and action.
- Action without commitment and thought is unsustainable. For any of us to take committed, sustainable action, we must first think through the issue for ourselves.
- Equally, true commitment is an act, not a word. Intentions and commitments, without action, are meaningless.
With your vision of your own Impossible Future to guide you, what is the one action (however small) that you can take today to move you one step forward?
I trust that you find this helpful.