A few years ago, we decided to replace a couple of doors inside the house with sliding doors. We consulted someone who had helped us with other remodeling projects, and their response was, “That can’t be done.” As we later discovered, what this person should have said was, “I don’t know how to do it.”
There are many similar examples of situations where, whether consciously or not, we project our own limitations and ignorance, mistakenly assuming that if we don’t know how to do something or can’t do it, then no one else can either. This was exactly the case with the contractor I just mentioned—when, in fact, there was clear evidence that it could be done.
On a humorous note, these kinds of situations reminded me of what often happens in cartoons, when a character only starts to fall into the void after realizing the law of gravity exists—or when they suddenly become aware that they’re in mid-air and about to fall, as if ignoring the laws of nature could somehow suspend them.
But projecting our ignorance onto others and imposing that reality on them has serious consequences in real life. Unlike in cartoons, where no matter how high the character falls from or what they crash into, they bounce right back up, in the real world the outcomes aren’t so forgiving. In other words, believing something is impossible is often enough to make it become impossible.
For example, before 1954, numerous athletics experts believed the human body was simply not capable—nor would it ever be—of running a mile (1,600 meters) in under four minutes. It was even considered a “natural barrier” that no athlete would ever overcome. That is, until British runner Roger Bannister broke it on May 6, 1954.
That day, Bannister (who later went on to have a successful career as a neurologist) completed the mile in 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds. But what’s even more remarkable is that his record only stood for 46 days, until Australian John Landy lowered it to 3:57.9. Today, the record belongs to Moroccan runner Hicham El Guerrouj, who ran 3:43.13 on July 7, 1999, in Rome.
But how and why was Bannister able to surpass what seemed insurmountable? Because he didn’t buy into the belief that the so-called barrier was truly unbreakable. Bannister is often credited with the saying, “The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.” In other words, by not internalizing the narrative of the unbreakable limit, he was able to transcend that limit.
Bannister’s attitude made me think of an idea from the ancient Stoics—the idea that obstacles are merely illusions, or if you prefer, forms of self-deception imposed on us by others, or self-imposed when we accept limiting narratives that we cling to as immovable, unquestioned descriptions of reality.
This quote is attributed to Marcus Aurelius:
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”