Impossible is Nothing

Sometime in the early-mid 2000s, my father adopted a habit of saying “impossible is nothing,” which he claimed was the official slogan of the US Marine Corps. Since this was before we defaulted to Googling ridiculous claims, I generally accepted that saying as a fact and it’s been a kind of mental reference point ever since. A brief Google search revealed that the phrase was actually an internet meme in 2006 that later became an Adidas slogan so…neither here nor there.

With my dad, the “impossible is nothing” mindset was always applied to the sheer ability of the human will to execute a difficult task - that of course you can accomplish anything that you need to do. The 100 question problem set is completely doable, you just need your entire Saturday morning. The 3500 words at the end of Gruber’s SAT prep book is of course memorizable, if you devote enough time to it. You can definitely learn the basics of Calculus at age 11 if someone sat down with you and showed you how it worked (and then you practiced what they taught you in the 100 question problem set).

This mantra really resonated because it came from my dad - a man who did not have the opportunity to go to high school but taught himself enough concepts to to get accepted into the top aerospace engineering college in China before advancing to other top engineering programs for Masters & PhD. The idea that one could do anything has since always existed in our family vernacular, well before we had an internet meme to describe it.

By the time I went to Princeton, my dad had imprinted the “impossible is nothing” mentality deep in my subconscious. In college, I quickly understood that there were truly no limits in the tasks that the human willpower can accomplish. Papers that were blank at 12am became fully formed thoughts by 6am. My senior thesis, which was nary an idea on February 1, became a fully researched 90 page book by April 12 (I got an A). This saying that my dad probably took from the internet morphed into this grotesque expectation that between now and when something needs to be completed, it will be completed, that no task is impossible.

At Princeton I also learned that this concept that “impossible is nothing” didn’t just apply to tasks. Early in college, we were introduced to the idea of neuroplasticity - that your brain can rewire and reorganize throughout your life as you learned new skills. What was more important than the existence of neuroplasticity was the belief in neuroplasticity - that people who believed that their brains were plastic & malleable were more likely to learn new skills and concepts.

This potent combination of ideas - that no task was impossible to accomplish and no idea was impossible to learn - formed the core of my belief that really anything is possible. And my first foray into the workplace - in the strange world of management consulting in the 2010s - reinforced that idea. During those days, they really did throw 22 year olds with no professional experience into the deep end of any topic and expected them to become experts. And I experienced firsthand that I could become knowledgeable and operate in any possible topic - from pharmaceutical sales & marketing, to managing logistics transportation and warehousing operations, to enforcing compliance with US sanctions & counterterrorism laws at multinational banks, etc. etc.

This set me down a whirlwind professional path - I started advising executives more than twice my age at 25. I became an expert in global supply chain management at 26, where I regularly engaged with executives whose decisions moved the economies of entire countries. I moved to Europe to run the attempted merger of two business units in an $8bn global conglomerate when I was 27. I became the interim global chief marketing officer of a major American fashion brand at 31. These opportunities all emerged because of amazing luck, but I was able to seize the opportunities because I truly believed that impossible is nothing.

In my professional life, I am constantly surrounded by people are held back by their internal belief of what isn’t possible - people whose first response to anything is “no” or “not possible.” These people spend their entire careers toiling up a corporate ladder thinking they’re doing the right things, missing unique chances and prime opportunities for truly extraordinary experience, simply because their default is “no, that’s impossible.” And I sit in meetings or casual interactions with these seemingly smart and creative individuals and I’m saddened by the limits of their own imagination and their own wills

Of course, I know that belief alone isn’t enough - to achieve our goals we have to be able to work hard, be tenacious, know what we want and be able to plan how we get there. But the belief that impossible is nothing is the necessary first step. Plenty of people work hard, plenty of people can make a good plan or set a good goal - but without the belief that they can achieve anything, they will always be held back by their own imaginary limitations.