There is this very popular ad campaign run from a sports apparel manufacturer, which claims that “Impossible is nothing.” This is also a very popular saying among many “inspirational”-kinds of people. (Be it coaches, speakers, or whatever else they claim to be.) I don’t think this is true.
The fact of the matter is that I am fat. It’s also a fact that I exercise a lot. By all objective metrics, I exercise at a higher intensity and for more prolonged periods than the majority of my age group. Yet I am fat. I am fat, because of my bad eating habits. Exhibit #1: You can’t outburn a bad diet.
By all objective metrics, I have a much wider knowledge of the world around me compared to the vast majority of people in my age group. I have been pursuing a “classical arts” (also appearing in some texts as “well-rounded”) type of education, from a very young age. I have been digging into topics as wide as space exploration and political science, with equal amounts of interest. Yet just as everyone else, I often happen to find gaps in my knowledge base and consult (who else?) the Internet for guidance. Exhibit #2: You can’t outthink the Internet.
When a company is facing financial difficulties, the first reaction of the management in the vast majority of the cases, is to cut expenses. However, the very basic premise of a company is that it is a system of procedures run by people (in-house or outsourced), that in the long run, outproduce their costs. Otherwise, every entrepreneur would also be a sole trader. And thus exhibit #3 becomes evident: You can’t continuously cut expenses without hitting the productive capabilities of your business. (Or, in other words, of the production system that you have put in place.) Some things are impossible indeed. It’s what many of us call “reality.”