Each January, the American supercoach Michael Neill runs a 90 day program called Creating the Impossible (CTI for short).
Participants pick an “impossible” project (Michael describes it as a goal which makes you gasp, grin or giggle and which hard work alone will never be enough to pull off). Then they’re guided in the art of
making that impossible dream a reality.
I signed up to CTI in 2023.
It literally changed my life.
I know that might sound like an outrageous, unbelievable claim. But the principles I learnt during CTI opened up a completely new world for me. Before the program, I took life very seriously. I was a chronic overthinker and spent most of my time worrying about things which never seemed to happen. But after CTI 2023, I saw exactly how I’d been creating that mess myself and how life doesn’t happen to me but instead comes from me.
Ostensibly not what the program was all about, but there you go. Even Lauren said she saw a big shift in me after CTI.
My love for CTI is why I promoted it as an affiliate in this newsletter last year.
And while I’m not promoting it this year, what I AM doing is taking part in CTI all over again.
We’ve just come to the part of the program where Michael has asked everyone to “book your Sailing to Bombay”.
This phrase comes from a Scottish explorer called W.H. Murray who was part of an Everest expedition in 1951. The way the story goes is that Murray and his team were stuck for months with no funding, no permission to climb Everest and no idea who’d even be part of the expedition.
Everyone was twiddling their thumbs back at home.
That’s when Murray decided to take the bull by the horns:
Despite no funding and no permits to climb the mountain, he booked the
group’s tickets to sail to Bombay.
In his own words:
"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. In all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth
the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material
assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way”
Michael has invited us all to book our Sailing to Bombay too.
So this is me booking my one way ticket to Bombay right here, right now:
For my 2026 CTI project, I’ll create a new position for myself at work where all I do is coach.
I have no idea how this will happen. New roles aren’t created willy-nilly in big corporates like mine. Especially roles which have nothing
to do with banking.
And yet I feel strangely optimistic about this. I can’t help thinking that as & when more senior bods realise how bloody good this approach is not just for helping colleagues be more effective in their jobs but also juicing up the bottom line (kerchinnggg!), they’ll sit up and take notice.
You heard it here first.
No doubt I’ll be writing more about it in this newsletter over the next few weeks.
In
the meantime, if you have a big, bold, impossible dream that you’d like to bring to life, I can help with that too.
If I had to boil coaching right down to its core, it’s supporting people to create the things they want to create.
Most of the time I write about how to find less stress and more joy at work and in life. And that’s because all I wanted in my 20s and early 30s was to be less stressed about my job.
But now I’ve turned that corner and my stress, worry and anxiety are on the wane, I’ve stopped asking myself what I want less of and started asking
myself what I want more of.
In particular, what else would make me gasp, grin or giggle and be so ridiculously, impossibly cool if it came into my life that I might as well just go for it?
I’d like to invite you to ask
that same question.
What dreams, goals, ambitions or impossible projects would you love to make happen in YOUR life?
If you’d like a helping hand with those:
https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com
To fulfilment,
Tom