What’s possible?

If we put all the knowledge in the World into a circle it would be a massive circle. If I then think about the extent of my knowledge, what I know, it would be an almost infinitesimally small segment of that circle. Then take into account that most of what I know is probably my perspective then the segment has just got a lot smaller. So what do I know, it turns out not much.

Then there are things that I know I don’t know, for instance I know I don’t know how to sail across the Atlantic, or solve a problem using differential calculus or design a bridge to span the Thames. Again, if I added together all the things that I know I don’t know it wouldn’t amount to much in relation to all the knowledge in the World, that massive circle.

If I now add the “what I know” and “what I know I don’t know” segments together it still gives me an almost infinitesimally small segment of the circle of all that is known. The rest of the circle, all but a minute segment of it, represents what I don’t even know that I don’t know and this is what’s possible.

Possibility is huge, by this rationale almost everything is possible, and yet do I live my life as though that were the case? The answer is “no”, I live my life as though I know it all and almost nothing could be further from the truth.

And I am not alone; have you noticed how many politicians start a sentence with “the truth is ……” Well the truth is, it’s not the truth, it’s their perspective, and it may be well informed though it’s their perspective. And the other side has a different perspective. Have you also noticed how many times people, even you perhaps, say “the only way to overcome this problem is to ……..” Again that’s their perspective and a very limited one as its possible there are a million different ways to overcome that problem, we just haven’t explored them yet, probably because we don’t know what we don’t know. And how many times when someone is explaining something to you do you finish off their sentence or say in your head “I already know that” though when you take the time to listen really carefully they were saying something slightly different and you learnt something new. If you are anything like me, this happens every time I take the trouble to listen carefully.

If we can ‘get’ that almost everything is possible and that we don’t really know it all then it changes our mindset from fixed to growth, from scarcity to abundance, from “that will never happen round here” to “well that’s possible, let’s give it a try”. We become more open, more inviting, more innovative and more appealing, yes more appealing!

When I was a civil engineer I felt as though I had to be an expert (I knew even less back then!) and I had to be right. There was only one way to do the job and it was my way. Then about twenty years ago my career started to shift and I became a coach. The joy of being a coach is you don’t have to be right; actually the pressure is off, you don’t even have to have a perspective. The art of coaching, for me at least, is about listening and asking questions to explore possibilities. In hindsight I think I would have been a better civil engineer if I had given up the right to be right and listened and asked questions to explore possibility.

So what’s possible for me? Well, given that I know next to nothing then almost anything is possible.

Watch out, here I come.