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  • Home
  • About
    • The Happy Fan Club
  • Offerings
    • Redesign Your Life 2.0
    • Get Creative
    • Personal Coaching
  • Creativity Conversations
  • LET'S CONNECT!
  • Blog
    • Live Free Your Way
    • Seeing Things Differently
    • Mistaking Assumptions for Truth
    • How Humor Keeps Us Sane
    • Know Thyself
    • Peach Pie for Breakfast
    • Explore Experience Express
    • Should You Be Downshifting?
    • Stop the Hustle!
    • Do Your Habits Serve or Sabotage
    • Settle Down? Down Where?
    • What Lights You Up?
    • Saying Yes When Your Mind Says No
    • Independence From What?
    • Letting Ourselves Off the Hook
    • Letting Go of Assumptions
    • Is Kindness Allowed?
    • How to Throw a Wrench in the Works
    • Happiness
    • Daring to be Lighthearted
    • What Happens When You See Things Differently
    • Find Delight in Everyday Life
    • Are You Saying What Needs to Be Said
    • Is Your Life in Alignment
    • Are You Trapped by Your Past
    • Can You Love Your Life
    • The Hallmark of Creativity
    • Out Of Ideas?
    • Waking Up to a New World
    • Are You a Possibilitarian?
    • Want to Love Your Life?
    • Is Creativity Necessary
    • What's Stopping You?
    • An Unexpected Discovery
    • Free Your Mind
    • Is Your Creative Genius Hiding
    • Empty Headed or Clear Minded?
    • Is Stress Really Necessary?
    • Will Creativity Improve Your Life?
    • Is Creativity In Your Future?
    • Replace Fear With Love
    • How to Get Out of Your Own Way
    • Just Take A Moment
    • You Don't Have To - You Get To
    • The Good News About Being Stuck
    • Interested in Inner Freedom?
    • Are You a Hoarder?
    • What Remains
    • Co-vid 19 Free Pass to the Roller Coaster
    • Grace Under Pressure
    • Now is the Time To Notice
    • Hanging With the Wrong Crowd
    • Make Your Life Simpler
    • What Could Be Different For You
    • Everything is a Miracle
    • Do You Have A Negativity Bias
    • Are You Really Seeing Or Just Assuming?
    • Happiness and Resilience
    • Wherever You Go, There You Are
    • Is Stress Making You Sick?
    • What I Wish My Humans Knew
    • Looking Backwards
    • Daring to Change Course
    • Lost in Thought or Taking Action?
    • Still Can't Focus?
    • Do Your Thoughts Get Dark and Gloomy?
    • Can't Focus?
    • An Instant Formula for New Ideas
    • Talk Yourself Out of Another Great Idea?
    • Is Your Busyness Keeping You From Getting Things Done?
    • What's that Feeling In the Pit of My Stomach?
    • How Cool is This?
    • How to Make Your New Year Happier
    • Why Be Open To Life?
    • Simple Ways to Transform Your Life
    • Get Clarity and Confidence
    • Are You Driven by Fear or Love?
    • The Number One Way to Keep Your Vision Alive and Well
    • Why Stop Trying to Figure it Out?
    • What Are You Trying to Prove?
    • Do Your Goals Reflect Your Hearts Desire
    • Why My Cat is My Spiritual Teacher
    • Surviving the Holidays
    • 3 Convincing Reasons
    • 3 Secrets to Enjoying the Holidays
    • 5 Quick Steps to Get Your Mojo Back
    • 3 Ways to Keep Your Energy High
    • 5 Reasons to Do Good
    • Pain Relief for the Soul
    • Tired of Living by the Rules? Go Rogue!
    • What? You've Made a Mess? Excellent!
    • Why You Need to Be Inspired Now
    • Change Your Life in Just 48 Hours?
    • The Cure For Mental Overload
    • 5 Infallible Ways to Stay Inspired
  • Newsletter

Are You a Possibilitarian?

3/22/2021

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​I ran across this word today - possibilitarian - and it has become my new descriptor!

As far as I can tell, the word first appeared in Norman Vincent Peale's book, The Power of Positive Thinking,  published in 1952: 

“I challenge you to become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities — always see them, for they are always there.”

Here's where I differ from his invitation to become one. We already ARE possibilitarians, but most of us don't know it or are wary about tapping into it.

There's a well worn phrase most of us have heard: we can either see the glass half full or half empty. If we see the glass half full, then we already qualify as possibilitarians, because we know there's more available to us than simply meets the eye, and we know that when we put our minds to it, we'll find the solutions we need.

Maybe you've been conditioned to believe you are limited in your capabilities, or maybe you've had difficult personal challenges that led you to conclude you can't do something, that you're not qualified enough or talented enough or smart enough or that you need to defer to the "experts". But how on earth would you know what you're capable of if you didn't first try your hand at it??

If there's any insecurity lurking in us, we often say no before we say yes because we doubt what we're capable of. But I think the way to realize our "possibilitarian-ness" is to start by doing a quick inventory to see how in so many ways and in so many circumstances we've already acted on past possibilities and made something we could claim as "yes, I did that!"

It's a simple act of remembering. Who hasn't had the experience of recycling and repurposing, making a meal out of leftovers, or creating something from not much of anything and having it turn out surprisingly well. Maybe you hiked a mountain, learned to swim, did a bicycle tour, wrote a business plan, learned how to dance, started a business, wrote a book, published an article - the list is endless. And they all point to your innate possibilitarianism.

Why would anyone ever think they couldn't do something before they gave it a whirl? Look at how children learn to walk: they get up, they fall down, they get up again, they take a few steps, sometimes they cry, sometimes they laugh. But they persist. 

Now, I will admit that when children are small they can be fearless and are willing to tackle almost anything because they're curious and open. As we get older, we're talked out of many things by our parents, our schools, our churches, our government - often in the name of safety but often at the cost of our own independence and self reliance.

But isn't it high time to take back your own possibilitarianism? By doing so you can begin again to connect with that innate sense of creative potential that is only limited when we tell ourselves it is. There is always a way to solve a problem or a challenge. It may take longer than we wish, or require resources or skills or talents we may have to outsource or collaborate with in order to get the possible into the manifest, but as Shakepeare said, "it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

And an increased sense of love is one of the benefits of being a possibilitarian. Love for the game, for the joy of creation, love for the talents and skills that are waiting within us to live life to the fullest and enjoy the time we have on this earth. This love becomes something we can experience for ourselves and share with others: encouraging them, too, to experiment, have adventures and discover that we all have far more left within ourselves than we ever dared dream.
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