Think about something you really want for your life.  Something you do not currently have.  Something you don’t believe you’re going to get anytime soon.

I bet you have a Litany of Impossibility around that subject.  It’s the long, long inventory of reasons you have accumulated about why what you want just can never come to pass.  If someone should encourage you to go for what you want, you turn to this reliable list and begin to recite the minutia of why life is stacked against you.  You invoke Impossibility by droning on through your creed of what can never be in tedious detail.  Through sheer repetition, you convince yourself that what you are saying is true.

I’d like to encourage you to question your doubts rather than your dreams.

Try starting by writing your Litany of Impossibility down.  Actually write it.  There’s huge power in the written word.  I’m regularly amazed at how big something seems to me in my head, and how much smaller it looks when I get it down in writing.  So write out all your reasons and complaints and fears and certainties about how the world works.

Then take each statement and write the opposite.  You don’t have to believe it, just write it anyway, just for the practice of questioning your habits of impossibility.  Then look at your new Statements of Possibility and find evidence to back them up.

For example, suppose there is something you want to create, but your Litany of Impossibility reads:  Dear Universe, I hereby solemnly declare that I do not have time to devote to the project that is calling to me.  I am committed to the agreement that it is impossible for me to carve any time out of my heinously busy schedule to follow my heart.  I know beyond all doubt that the project I desire to work on will require a gazillion hours to complete so I’m not going to even bother to start.  Amen.

After actually putting your thoughts in writing, perhaps you’ll notice yourself questioning their veracity.  Now you write your Statements of Possibility:  The thought of working on this project makes me really happy and I believe that I have time to work on it.  I believe it’s possible for me to find some time each week to work on it.  If I’m working on it weekly, I will see progress which will motivate me to keep working on it and so I will complete it.

Wow.  Can you feel the difference there?  I feel so relieved!  Maybe it is possible to work on my project after all!  Now look for evidence to back up your Statements of Possibility.  Well, I suppose I could save an hour every evening by not watching the news.  It does nothing but depress me anyway.  I think my project is more important.  If I put just 5 hours a week into this project, I could have the first part finished in just 2 months!

Now you can turn this new way of thinking into a habit by creating a Mantra: I have time for the project I love working on.  Then you can seal the deal by reminding yourself how Grateful you are:  for your desire to work on the project, for all the time you have to work on it, and for all the progress you see as you move forward in working on it.

Oh, and be sure to trash that Litany of Impossibility — you don’t need it anymore!