Cast off your chains

Dec 30 2007 by Pauline Holt, Sunday Sun

ANYTHING is possible . . . very often the only person to place limits on our success is ourselves.

Sometimes you have to dream the impossible and then truly believe it in order to galvanise yourself to take the necessary steps to make it happen. Here’s a great quote from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass to ponder on: “I can’t believe that!”, said Alice. “One can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

First, this tells us how crucial it is to take the time to think, dream and plan . . . you can’t think creatively when you’re rushed off your feet. Secondly, to think big . . . to embrace the impossible.

In the 1980s I climbed Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia. This wasn’t a mountain climb in terms of using ropes and crampons but, rather, 13,500 exhausting feet of ascending rough steps that had been carved into the mountain. For me, who is not naturally athletic, this feat seemed impossible but, halfway up, I was overtaken by a young man who was undertaking the record for running up the mountain. Not only that, but this man had prosthetic feet. He, truly, had dreamed the impossible . . . and achieved it.

Is there something you have long dreamed of doing, having or being, but others have told you it was impossible?

Could this be the year that you set out to achieve it?

V Annabel Sutton is a professionally certified life coach and author of 52 Ways to Handle It — a Life Coaching Year, available from Neal’s Yard Remedies — www.nealsyardremedies.co.uk — priced £6.50. To contact Annabel or subscribe to her free coaching tips email annabel@life-designs.co.uk or visit www.life-designs.co.uk