It always seems impossible until it's done
Today I wanna talk about something that crossed my mind few times yesterday. I mean if you have similar thoughts few times a day provoked by completely different things, its worth writing about, right?
These days everything rotates around the World Cup so the initial thoughts came from football... after the Croatia vs England match. Since London was the place where I finally was able to find myself and feel happy there was no question about who I rooted for... and we lost. But that's irrelevant at this point.
After the match I watched very short interview with Modric. He mentioned English journalists and said
they underestimated Croatia tonight and that was a huge mistake
I realised that not only English journalists underestimated them. They had so many doubters... so many people who were sure they would lose. Now for the finals, it's the same... almost everyone believes France will crash them...
How many times you've been in Croatia's place? How many times people who were around you did not believe in you? How many times they were certain you would not make it? How many times they were hoping that you would not make it, so they could turn to you and say "I told you so..."?
And what do you do then?...
All the above thoughts led me to recall the flea experiment. Have you heard of it?
For those who haven't let me tell about it.
So scientist placed a number of fleas in a glass jar. Obviously they jumped out of it... So scientists placed a glass lid over the top. Fleas kept hitting the glass and falling back to the bottom of the jar. It took a while, but eventually the fleas, conditioned to the presence of the glass lid, began jumping slightly below the glass lid so they would not hit it. That is when the scientists removed the glass lid...
You know what happened?
The fleas had learned to limit themselves from jumping beyond the height of the lid. So now even when the lid was removed they still believed they could not escape from the jar and kept jumping just below where the glass lid was before.
Here look:
That's all it takes... and unfortunately the same happens with people. We tend to believe the limitations others artificially impose on us.
Often we are told that we can't make it because
"no one was able to do it before"
Complete bullshit!
As Mandela once told
It always seems impossible until it's done
And when it's done... there's someone who did it first, right?
Usually those first people are those who did not lower the hight to jump at even when the glass lid was on. The first people are those who don't look for people to believe in them in order to try. They try and fail... and then learn how to do it better and try again... and fail again probably. But they don't give up and they don't care if all the others around them have either discouraged them or tried too and gave up.
Because after all what matters is not who believes in you but what YOU believe in. If you believe that you can do it then most probably you really can.
After all it took Edison 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb.
But guess what? The 1001 th bulb was the one that changed the world.
And when it happens, when you get where you wanted to be, when your goal is no longer an impossible dream and when you make the impossible real you will look back at all those with the limited believes and be the one this time who'll say "I told you so!"
So I don't care if France plays better and I don't care what others think Croatia's chances are... I will be rooting for the later tomorrow!
As for you... don't set limits - especially don't let others set them for you!
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Croatia and the World Cup is a great example of what's possible when you believe in yourself. I've watched every Croatia match during the World Cup (even during the Group Stage), and one thing that really impressed me was their conditioning. Those guys are in fantastic shape. Even when their matches go into extra time, they don't put in substitutes. (and that's happened 3-4 times now!) So... one thing that I'd add to your post is that preparation is key. When you want to achieve something, you also have to put in the hard work. Anyway, I'll be rooting for Croatia on Sunday. Let's see if they can pull off one more miracle...
good point and yes without hard work you can't go too far, I totally agree. Let's see what happens today. Go Croatia!!!