Okay, no quote today! What can I do? Who cares?! It's what I can't do that interests me. If you always set out to do what you can do, then there is no growth and you can't progress. Therefore, it is best to try to do what you can't do. Over and over again, until you can do it. Thus you increase what you can do and have a fuller life because of it.
I was just reading a blog post by James Altucher. It was a long post, and most of it just wasn't memorable to me. Yet there is one part near the end where it really hit home. He was writing about how his daughter had just lost a tennis match. He asked her " 'What did you learn?" She said, “What do you mean? I was disappointed.” He wrote: "If she always sticks to only what she can do (a safe, consistent serve instead of a harder one that will miss more) then she will never get better at what, right now, she can’t do." It’s the can’ts that add up to a win or a loss. The “cans” just keep you in the box of what is safe. That last line is brilliance in a simple form. The world doesn't progress with what "CAN" be done, but it takes astounding leaps when someone accomplishes what in the past couldn't be done. Think about it: In 1969 NASA put a man on the moon. One hundred years earlier, man was only going aloft in balloons. In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright brought us the first heavier-than-air flight. In 1926, Robert Goddard invented the first liquid-fueled rocket and by the 1950's man was leaving the earth's atmosphere. Man progressed by doing what they previously could not. Nowadays, Elon Musk is trying to land a man on Mars! In the years since 1969, We have put space stations in orbit around the earth, and we have put rovers on Mars, as well as numerous other accomplishments in space exploration. All of these wonderful discoveries and achievements are being driven by men and women who are not afraid to try what they can't do. On a more personal level, we don't have to aim for the stars to do something that we have never done before. For me, the martial arts and my writing give me two outlets to do things I have never done before. In karate, I have been working on spinning hook kicks to the head for months. When I first started practicing them, I could barely do a spinning hook kick to the body let alone to head level. The more I practiced the kick I could barely do, the better I have gotten at it. Now I can hit the bag at head level regularly with my spinning back kick. I now work on the timing so that I can actually land it against a moving target. As for my writing, I am always trying to push the envelope. In general, I write for a living. I work for Value Line and I cover 49 stocks and an industry. At a minimum, that amounts to about 200 articles a year. Supplementary reports likely bring that number closer to 250 pages. On top of that, I also write 5 blog posts a week for Mountain Rants. That means an additional 260 posts a year. It is with Mountain Rants where I can really try to push the envelope. I use Mountain Rants to tell my daughters things that I want them to know. Little life lessons to help them learn to think or live their lives more happily. The beauty of the posts is that they are there for posterity. My daughters, and others, can look at them whenever they like. Hopefully, they will find one or two ideas that will make their lives easier in the coming years. When I am not trying to teach my daughters something, I try to explore my own thoughts so I can see where I am in my life. No one is perfect, myself included. The only way to move forward is to examine where I am and where I have been. Socrates once said: "An unexamined life is not worth living." For Socrates, I think he meant that he wanted people to make conscious, ethical choices. For me, it means to see where I am now and how I can better myself in the future. Moving forward isn't found in the can. It is found in the can't. What is it that I can't do now, that I may be able to do with a little practice or trial and error? Where can I then go once I am able to do that? These are the questions that I look to answer. The final question is: Is it worth doing? We all only have so much time on this earth. Why waste it doing something that just isn't worth the effort to do? The answer to that will be different for each person. While the time it would take me to learn how to play the guitar at 50 may not seem worth it to me, for someone else it may fulfill a life's dream. Meanwhile, others may find it incredibly stupid for a fifty-year-old guy to learn how to do a spinning hook kick to someone's head. To each their own. In the end, I am interested in the can't. While Elon Musk's urge to go to Mars may be a nobler effort than my spinning hook kick, the difference in our incomes make his can't a little closer for him to achieve than it would be for me. If I can get off this earth with having landed at least one spinning hook kick to the head and having taught my daughters all that I have wanted to teach them, then I'll have reached today's horizons. Will these goals be enough for me tomorrow? Nope. As long as I am alive my goals will continue to change.. or more likely to expand to include other can'ts. Right now, as I write this, I know I have other goals as well. Other can'ts that I want to become cans. This blog post would go on for pages if I let it. For now, these two will do for good examples. What can'ts do you want to turn to cans?
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