It's All Possible

It’s All Possible, How To Lead An Epic Life and Unleash The High Performance Hero Within You, by Rob Hartnett, Major Street Publishing 2019 

Pre-pandemic when we thought of personal change, we were most likely thinking personal behaviors change, life change, maybe even career or marriage change!  Now, that’s all changed!  We find change forced upon us – change in job situations, change in personal habits, change even in what we wear, how we eat, whom we get to talk to.  So we are working in an entirely different landscape.

BUT, contained in this thin and marvelously positive volume are some useful tools.  In Part II, Step 1, Getting your attitude and mindset right, the author provides us with four powerful examples of positive people, high-achievers whose hard work and bright attitudes carry them –

Dr Hannah MacDougall has only one leg, and she’s a Paralympian cycling champion record-holder. 

Lance Picioane is another cycling hero, who came back from crippling depression and a suicide attempt. 

Carey Lohrenz was the first female F-14 Tomcat pilot to quality as a Top Gun pilot.  Hartnett credits Carey with teaching him that a positive attitude does not guarantee success, but it will provide better options for success than a negative attitude.

Lee ‘Hollywood’ Turner, a footballer turned cyclist who continues to shout Hartnett on.

I love Hartnett’s list of positive words – yes, opportunity, free, new good, love, growth, commitment, guidance, and negative, or as he calls them, powerless words – no, can’t, opinion, costly, expensive, later, waste, not, bad, hate , delay, busy, slow, negative, don’t, poor.  Somehow the negative vocabulary strikes the Mill Girl as just what we don’t want to hear right now, especially from our politicians. 

“Life,” says Hartnett, “is simple, but we complicate it.”  Procrastination, he argues, maybe be a necessary element of getting ready to move, thinking through goals and envisioning “a new way.”  For so many of us to whom the pandemic is bringing irreversible change, this book is a starter, a way to set aside limiting thoughts and dream the possibilities and work toward the possible.  Sometimes we need to lead with numbers, sometimes we need visions, sometimes we need new habits and sometimes we even need new friends.