What do the radio, television, the car, the airplane, the train, the electric bulb, space travel, telephone, the computer and the internet, have in common? These are all things that were once thought impossible but are now so common place that we are surprised that people once thought they were impossible. Now we take a lot of things for granted but not too many centuries ago, whole generations thought that the car and the train were impossible inventions. Experts asserted with all the authority they could muster that if the human being travelled on anything that moved faster than 10miles per hour, he would go mad. Today, there are trains doing 200miles per hour and the passengers are not going mad. We take the aeroplane for granted now but earlier generations were convinced that it was impossible for man to fly; again experts affirmed that if God had wanted man to fly he would have given us wings. Thank God the wright brothers did not listen to the experts. The telephone has become so commonplace that we do not pause to consider that generations were convinced that it was impossible for two people to converse through a wire many miles apart. These days we don't even need wires to transmit the messages. And we have even gone beyond just conversation on the phone. We send pictures and even money through the mobile phone. The computer was believed to be impossible and when the inventors again defied popular wisdom the invention was dismissed as useless. Today, we cannot think of life without computers which are becoming smarter, more sophisticated and more powerful but extremely easy to use. Now this is my point: If generations were convinced that the car, radio, television, aeroplane, space travel and computers were impossible but today we see them as everyday things, then it stands to reason that there are things we are convinced are impossible in our generation that future generation will come to find as common place and routine. Any time I am caught up in traffic, I dream of a car that can fly. Today it may seem like science fiction but I believe that a future generation will have nothing but cars that fly. There was a period of my life when I was addicted to the TV series “Star Trek,” the next generation I was fascinated by the way people moved from one place to another. They called it beaming. The person touches a button on his chest and he disappears and reappears at where he wants to be. Applying that technology, tro-tro stations and taxi ranks would become obsolete because people can just sit in their homes and beam themselves to wherever they want to be. Today, it is impossible but tomorrow, who knows? A generation will come and take it for granted and cars will only be mentioned in old history books and stored in museums. What is impossible for one generation becomes common place for another generation. From this reality, I conclude that the word impossible does not exist. Where it exists, it is only evidence of ignorance and limited knowledge. But the impossible does not become possible or common place automatically. Cars did not just appear all of a sudden. Television and radio sets did not appear from nowhere. What was impossible became possible through the faith, hard work and sacrifice of people who refused to believe that what they imagined was impossible no matter what the experts said. People worked hard to push the frontiers of the impossible back. The lesson is clear. Whatever we see as impossible in our lives today, we can make possible if we discover what made the celebrated inventors turn impossibilities into common place things. I want to share with you seven ways to turn your impossible into possible. 1. Dare to believe that it is possible Making the impossible possible always begins with the mind. Believe that it is possible. Believe that you can turn your situation around; believe that you can master that subject. 2. Overcome failure as many times as it takes The invention of the electric bulb came on the back of ten thousand failed experiments. There is no invention that came without multiple failures. So, if you want to turn impossibility into possibility, don't let failure stop you. Fail a thousand times but get busy to try a thousand and one times. 3. Learn from your mistakes Those who never make mistakes are those who never try hard enough. If you are trying hard, you will make mistakes but the lessons in your mistakes hold the key to accomplishment. 4. Learn to deal with ridicule Don’t expect cheers but jeers, only don't let them discourage you. The wright brothers who invented the aeroplane were ridiculed as demon possessed for daring to believe that man can fly. Other inventors like Stephenson were all ridiculed but they persevered and succeeded. 5. Commit totally to your dream Sacrifice everything for it. That is how the inventors turned the impossible into the possible. They sacrificed everything for whatever they were working on. To turn your impossibilities into possibilities, you have to commit totally to it and sacrifice everything for it. 6. Ignore the naysayers and the so-called experts who say it cannot be done If the wright brothers had listened to the experts, there would have been no aeroplanes. If George Stephenson had listened to the experts, the train would have been working only in the mines carrying ore. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of people who will give you solid reasons why some things are impossible. Ignore them. They don't know what they are talking about. 7. Pursue your passion Pursue the things that interest you and make you alive. That is what I discover about all the great inventors. They were pursuing the things they loved. Thomas Edison who invented thousands of things and who worked hard to invent the electric bulb on the back of thousands of failures once said, “I have never worked a day in my life. I have only had fun.” Pursue your passion and you will not only turn the impossible into possible but it will not feel like work. Now the last word on the impossible: Take another look at the word. IMPOSSIBLE is the word POSSIBLE with the letters “I” and “m” in front of it. Now take the “I” “m” and put an apostrophe between them. What you get is I'M. So the word IMPOSSIBLE really means I (A)M POSSIBLE-my dreams are possible; my aspirations are possible, my hopes are possible, my faith is possible, everything that seem impossible in my life is possible.

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