How do you respond if someone tells you a problem is unsolvable?

George Dantzig’s story gets told to illustrate a mindset here.

Whilst on his doctoral programme he got to a class late. He saw that the professor had written two problems on the whiteboard. He thought they were homework, so he noted them down in his notebook and took them home.

He found trying to solve them incredibly difficult. But he refused to give up. He spent hours in the library, studying through reference books, and finally submitted answers a few days later.

One version goes that, in the next class, when the professor did not ask anything about the homework, he was surprised. He stood up and asked, "Sir, why did you not ask anything about the assignment given in the last lecture?"

The professor replied, "Assignments? I just wrote them as examples of two of the most famous unsolved problems in statistics."

George was astonished and said, "But I solved one of them! I even wrote four papers on it." His achievement was later recognized, and all four of his papers are still on display at Columbia University.

Wikipedia reports that he solved both problems, but the most important thing about this story is that he didn't hear that "there are no solutions to these problems." He simply recognized that these were difficult questions that needed to be solved, and something in him, passion or curiosity, made him try wholeheartedly to solve them—and he succeeded.

This story reminds us – we listen too often to those who say you can't do something. We learn norms in society or, worse, people seek to impose their limitations on us.

Everyone has the choice to decide how far they want to stretch themselves. One mindset can hold us back, in our comfort bubble; one can take us forwards to reach high-performance goals. We can each develop the strengths we need to reach our goals, the power to overcome obstacles, and the courage to achieve our dreams.

We start with belief in ourselves and taking responsibility for exactly where we want to go. We explore mindset, behaviour and habits.

You can talk to me 1-2-1 here to map out your high-performance journey.

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