Can’t = won’t

My brother noticed a post-it in my office the other day; here it is, cropped and enlarged:

I learned this aphorism many years ago from one of my friends who had just completed an officer’s training course in the Israeli Army.

Suffice it to say, whatever they do to those not-quite teenagers takes them to the limit; too fast, too far, too little sleep, that kind of thing.

Every military does it;

The philosophy – it isn’t that I cannot hold my breath, cope with the cold, the heat, the pain, it is that I will not. I control my experience. I am the captain of my…

These ideas came to me recently when trying to unravel some complicated processes that affect the way people work. We do this that way, we do that, this way, it is so and it has always been.

Let’s do it like this!

We can’t.

It is the same as saying, don’t.

Or, I won’t entertain that altered perspective, that variation in perception.

We do things this way because we have and once, once, when someone did it differently it didn’t work. Fail once, give-up.

That is a self-defeating mantra.

That is what caught-out the Neanderthal’s.

‘We are starving; let’s try vegetables,’

‘The last time it upset my tummy,’ and, the rest is history.

Tolerance of failure is part of this. Do it this way, encounter an obstacle, turn 34 degrees and try again, and again, don’t take adversity personally.

Keep going;

‘I can’t’

No. You choose not to.

Anything is possible.

My brother when teaching classes in Karate used to tell his pupils: ‘Whether you say you can or you can’t you’re right.’

This, the same philosophy flows through.

We are limited by our imagination.

Just as we create our reality.

Heaven or hell are from within.

Sure, if life is shit, life is shit, but, you don’t have to necessarily perceive it one way or another.

There is always tomorrow, a new beginning.

‘Can you walk?’

‘I will keep trying.’

Accepting defeat is embracing failure.

Fall down seven times, get up eight.

Zen and Stoic philosophy coalesce into a sense of being.

Do, do, do!