Stop Telling Yourself It Will Never Happen

When I was a kid in the 90’s, one of my favorite movies was Angels in the Outfield. It's a movie about a boy in foster care who wants to live with his dad so badly, but his dad is a deadbeat who tells him that they'll be a family “when the angels win the pennant”. See, The Angels are basically the worst team in the baseball league, so the father is really saying that they'll be a family when pigs fly. And the kid knows it.

Only, the main character has a younger foster brother who never loses hope, no matter how silly it would seem to keep the hope alive, and so he stays that the Angels will win the pennant. This younger boy has a line that he says over and over again throughout the movie: “It could happen.” Every time an adult or his older brother would condemn the future as known and unchangeable, the little boy would remind them: it could happen.

I won't spoil the movie, although I’m sure the title makes the premise fairly clear, because it's worth a watch. Feel good movies don't seem to appear in theaters as often as they did when I was young. And Danny Glover, who stars in it, is entirely underrated as an actor.

This film, most especially the “hey, it could happen” quote from the younger brother, popped into my head this morning as I finally recognized that I had a voice in my mind (my voice, don't worry) telling me that the future that I am building right now “will never happen”. It’s been there all along, every time I felt my heart yearn to make my income in a different way, in a way more suited to my passions and talents in life. It was there as a lonely young woman, telling me that I would never find love, never get married, never have a family.

That, of course, is the very reason that I know, deeply, that the voice is absolutely wrong. I did find love, I did get married, and it is so much more than what I had even imagined. It didn't just happen, it happened better than what I expected for myself.

So if that could happen, why not more? Now that I have this beautiful, indisputable proof, why am I still listening to that voice that tells me that I'll never make it as a writer? Or that I'll never be able to make money as a baker, even with my 25 years of kaizen in the kitchen? No matter how confident that voice is as it tells me nasty, limiting lies, it doesn't know what the future holds anymore than the rest of my thoughts.

It could happen. That thing that you've wanted so badly for so long, but a voice, internal or external, told you that it was a silly, impossible dream, it’s not impossible. It never was. To quote Frank Herbert (Dune): I must not fear, fear is the mind killer. That is all that voice is, after all; it’s the voice of the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, or even the fear of success talking, not the voice of wisdom.

It could happen. That's my new mantra when it comes to the future I want to have. It's the final, essential, magical step of manifestation; let it go. Visualize, in detail, what you want your life to be, but then let it go of the expectation of the outcome. My mind said “let it go because it will never happen”, but now I'm taking control of my thoughts and beginning the practice of letting it go and thinking “it could happen”. It could happen in a completely different way from what I'm envisioning right now. It could happen just a little, or mostly. It could even happen better than I ever imagined it could.

It could happen. I'm closer to living my very achievable and reasonable dreams than I ever have been before, and so is my husband. He told himself that being a tattoo artist was impossible, or at least far too impractical to do for a living, but now he is three years in and he is building a business from the ground up for the second time (@Mrhaheink is his handle, if you’re interested). That only happened because we finally said “but what if you tried?” instead of accepting the opinion of that pernicious voice that tried to convince us that it would never happen.

Small steps add up. Don't start the journey by looking at the entire staircase, focus on the next step. Don't worry about running the marathon, focus on running around the block. When I was nineteen, I couldn't run a mile; when I was 22, I ran my first half marathon. I started by walking until I was ready to jog, and that’s what I'm doing now. And, as I say often in my life, I'm not special; if I can work toward my dreams, you can too.

It could happen. Tomorrow or ten years from now; it could happen.

Photo: Licking County, Ohio. 2015. Taken a couple minutes after my husband proposed to me!