The whole brain tattoo I’m trying to deconstruct here is, make your “I can” larger than your IQ.
I remember being in Prague and I asked someone on the phone… Again, and I spent a lot of time in hotels and I said, “Is it possible to do this?” And here was the reply on the other end of the phone, I think it was someone from the front desk or maybe it was room service, and I try to eat as clean as possible, so probably it was a request, “Could I have olive oil and fresh lemon or lemon as the salad dressing?”
And here’s the reply, just to really lovingly and respectfully and hopefully fluently and elegantly bring this leadership insight home to you. I said, “Is this possible?” And his reply was, “Anything is possible.”
It’s really easy to get seduced and stuck into a mindset of can’t. If someone says, “Let’s start anew business,” someone says, “Here’s a great poetic project that if we release it to the world will help us own our marketplace.”
And it sounds very obvious, again, but ask yourself this. Is your default reply a symptom of a mindset of can’t, or do you have a mentality of possibility? When someone says, “Here, read this book,” do you shift into can’t or can?
When someone says, “Hey, you know what? I’m amped to run a marathon.” You’ll go, “I can’t.”
Is that your default setting in your neurobiological hardwiring? Or do you go, “Absolutely,” or, “I’d love to do this.” It’s really, really important, and that is one of the core distinctions of leadership, isn’t it? It’s victimhood or leadership. And I respectfully suggest to you every single day, “We don’t only have an opportunity to show leadership without a title, we have a responsibility to do so.”