It doesn’t take us even two seconds to pronounce the word “impossible”, but this little word is enough to destroy our entire life. Most of you know about the famous scientist Thomas Edison and he don’t even need any introduction.

Well, one day Edison’s teacher gave a letter to Edison’s mother, which brought tears to her eyes. When Edison asked what is written in the letter, his mother replied, “It said that your son is very intelligent and there is no teacher in our school to teach him, so you teach him at home.”

A few years later, after a thousand attempts, when Edison invented the bulb and achieved many more successes, one day when he was going through the old things in his house, he found that same old letter. The letter read, “Your son is stupid and there are no teachers in our school to teach him.”

If Edison had read this letter in his childhood, he would have thought he is not good enough and can’t do anything hence the whole world would not have known him today the way he is known.

Encouragement, appreciation and good comments give positive energy to people even if they are not good in anything, they get boosted with confidence and eventually get success. However, negative comments break confidence and usually people end up hopeless.

There would be many more talented people in the world like Edison who could not explore their talent just because of the negative words they might have heard in their life, like ‘it is impossible’, ‘too difficult’, ‘he/she can’t do it’ and, etc.

The word impossible is very negative, it gives hopelessness and people unconsciously get the notion that trying for something is futile. For instance, a circus elephant when he is a calf is tied with the chains; he tries to break away but fails, so he gets the idea that it is impossible to break the chain, thus stays there. But as he grows older and becomes a mighty animal, with his power he can break many chains in just a minute, yet he stays in his place with a single rope or chain and never even tries, because he thinks it’s impossible.

No doubt, all the successful people in the world today have never taken people’s negative words seriously and have never given up their hopes. Roger Bannister (British athlete) is one of many such people. In 1903, Herry Endruce, who was the coach of the British Olympic team, gave a statement that it is impossible to cross one mile in four minutes. Roger Bannister was sure about himself, so he did not take the coach’s words seriously and made a world record by covering the distance of four mile within three minutes and 59.4 seconds, in 1954. He proved that everything is possible if you believe in yourself.

Impossible is nothing but just the name of the lock in our thoughts, because if anything in the world would really be impossible, then physicist Stephen Hawking, whose entire body is paralysed, would not be the greatest scientist of modern times.

Similarly, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates (Co-founder Microsoft), were college dropouts, they would not be inventors, entrepreneurs and billionaires today.

Moreover, Mr Bean star Rowan Atkinson would not be able to make the whole world laugh despite having a speech disorder (he stutters). Arunima Sinha (mountain climber) who did not have a foot would not be the first female amputee to scale Mount Everest and Mount Vinsion.

All these people are those who did not made their weakness an excuse. If you go to any loser, they will have a list of excuses for the failure of their life. On the other hand, if you go to a winner, they will have a thousand reasons to shatter their confidence, but there will be only one reason to uplift them and they will focus it.

Ups and downs are part of life, but we should not be afraid of them and should never give up. If someone else can succeed then so can we, because God who has created them has created us as well. So we should stop thinking about all these negative things. Remember, our thinking effects our actions, if you really want to do something, then remove words like ‘impossible’, ‘difficult’ and ‘I can’t’ from your lives forever, believe me friends, you can be the most successful person in this world.

Published in Dawn, Young World, November 14th, 2020