You Can Do It, You Just Don’t Know It……Yet

Posted on 17 May 2007

I frequently get people that I am coaching telling me that they cannot do some particular task or other. It can be a little bit infuriating because often it is something that they haven’t even tried or at best have had one or two goes at.

Imagine a baby giving up trying to walk after falling down once or twice or somebody getting into a car for the first time and declaring “nope, I just can’t seem to get my head round this one” or somebody else swinging a golf club and when the ball doesn’t fly 250 yards down the middle of the fairway claiming that “this isn’t the game for me I need to check out brain surgery”.

Of course all those examples are ridiculous but are they any more ridiculous than somebody claiming that they cannot change careers, or learn a foreign language, or quit smoking or even programme their TV remote control? I know people that take pride in the fact that they don’t know how to use their PC or set up TiVO! 

I understand that learning new skills can seem harder as we get older but the operative word there is ‘seems’. We get out of the habit of learning and developing our mind but that doesn’t mean its ability is in any way inhibited, just that we need to retrain it. The brain has the capacity up until death to learn new skills and absorb new information if only people would give it the chance.

One tool that I use that can be very powerful is the simple use of the word yet. If you can add that three-letter word to every statement claiming that you cannot do something you will shift the emphasis completely.

I cannot get my handicap under 10 is a statement of fact. I cannot get my handicap under 10 yet, is something altogether different. Firstly, it presupposes that you can actually achieve your goal just that you haven’t got round to it, and secondly it does something called future pacing. It sends you into the future to a time when you are playing to under 10 and allows you to experience that feeling should you so wish.

We are only talking about words here but words are the most powerful tool we have at our disposal. If you can take control of the language you use then you take control of your life and suddenly you can realize that you are a huge resource of untapped potential.

If you really want to get an understanding of what people can really do when they decide to take control of their thoughts check out The Maverick Mindset  by John Eliot, my favorite audio cd on the subject by some way.

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