Everything is Figureoutable summary

Despite what some self-help guides would have us believe, no amount of positive thinking can make our difficulties magically disappear.

That being said, negative thinking can make our problems seem unsolvable, which can lead us to self-defeating passivity. As clichéd as it might sound, we really do need to believe in ourselves and our ability to overcome our challenges if we want to achieve anything. After all, why would we attempt to accomplish something if we didn’t think it was possible for us to accomplish it? By telling ourselves it can’t be done, we’re essentially giving up before we’ve even tried.

From thinking we’ll never have enough talent to “make it” to assuming there are just not enough opportunities out there anymore, all of us have a variety of self-limiting beliefs about our abilities and the world around us. In theory, we could try to identify all of them at once and then replace each of them with a self-empowering belief – but that would be a pretty arduous, time-consuming task.

Fortunately, there’s a more practical way of doing this. We can simply adopt the belief that “everything is figureoutable.” It’s the ultimate self-empowering belief, and it provides a universal antidote to all of our self-limiting beliefs.

Before we continue with our quest to vanquish our self-limiting beliefs, let’s take a step back and ask a question that gets to the heart of the problem: Why do we become beholden to these beliefs in the first place?

Well, if we’re being honest with ourselves, the truth is that our self-limiting beliefs are often just a convenient way to justify or conceal the fact that we simply don’t want to do something, for one reason or another. Maybe it’s too much work. Maybe we don’t want it enough. Maybe we’re too scared. Whatever the case, the motivation to act just isn’t there – not yet, at least.

There are many excuses we make about why we “can’t” do things, but there are three that are especially common. Let’s take a look at them and pull them apart one by one.

The first is “I don’t have enough time.” Most of us have pretty packed schedules, so this seems like a plausible excuse. But here’s a simple thought experiment that quickly reveals its flimsiness. Imagine that your doctor told you that you had a fatal disease, and the only way to cure it was to sit still and do nothing for two hours per day.

Now that we’ve dispensed with the excuses of a lack of time, money and know-how, let’s look at another one of the main obstacles that we often allow to hold us back: fear.

Whether it’s starting a business or learning to ride a motorcycle, there comes a point with any new endeavor where we need to put ourselves out there and take a plunge into uncharted waters. That’s an inherently scary thing to do, so it’s perfectly normal to feel fear in the face of it. But we don’t have to let that fear control us. In fact, instead of allowing it to hold us back, we can even harness it to impel us forward.

Whenever we have an important decision to make, it’s all too easy to find reasons to doubt ourselves and hesitate. The result: indecision – one of the biggest obstacles in the way of achieving our goals.

We can waste an incredible amount of time and energy just wondering, “Can I do this? Should I do this?” Marie herself spent years fretting about whether she could or should pursue her dream of becoming a dancer before she finally decided to go for it. If we’re not careful, years can turn into a lifetime, as indecisiveness turns into permanent paralysis.

The last obstacle we’re going to remove from our path is one that’s closely related to fear and indecisiveness: the idea that you have to wait until you’re ready before you take action.

At first glance, this seems like a logical notion; of course you want to be ready before you pursue something, right? But here’s the problem: if by being “ready” you mean being 100 percent prepared with all of the skills, knowledge, confidence and motivation you need to succeed, well, you’ll never be ready in that sense. That’s because the only way to acquire those ingredients of success is by engaging in the task at hand.