What’s your impossible in your own life, right now? Not the dream you had in high school or something you keep saving for “someday,” but something meaningful you would like to explore at this point in your life.
Now imagine having people around you who will take that question seriously. People willing to listen, share what they have learned, and help you consider possibilities you might not yet see.
That is what makes the opportunity at the Cathedral Catholic Dons Business Institute so meaningful to me. Students can explore their possibilities with deans, teachers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, and their opportunity is a reminder to keep asking the question in our own lives today.
An invitation, not another assignment
On August 22, I had the opportunity to give a 10-minute opening at the Cathedral Catholic Dons Business Institute. About 50 students, freshmen through seniors, had come to learn business, with a lineup of speakers beginning with Brian Tietje, PhD, Dean of the University of San Diego’s Knauss School of Business.
I found myself more nervous than I expected. I usually speak without notes or PowerPoint, hoping something I share will be useful to at least one person. But these students were serious. Focused. Ready to learn.
I began by asking whether they knew how incredible and extraordinary they were. Then I moved toward the question I wanted them to consider: “What’s your impossible?”
For a moment, they seemed to freeze, and I lost my train of thought. I wondered whether some were thinking, “Is this another thing I have to think about or worry about?”
I don’t know what was going through their minds. But these students already have so much expected of them, and the last thing I wanted was to add another demand.
I wanted to offer an invitation. A chance to explore something meaningful without needing an answer, a plan, or a promise to achieve it that night.
A question worth keeping
Cara Leo and Pierce Millar, co-leaders of the Dons Business Institute Student Council, shared their perspectives on the question.
Cara captured that invitation beautifully: “To me, ‘What’s your impossible?’ means thinking about what I want to accomplish without letting the idea of what’s realistic determine my goals.”
Pierce offered a faith-centered perspective: “Our impossible can always become possible through the work of God.”
Those reflections bring me back to our own lives right now. What might we be ready to explore, and who could help us think it through? These students have an opportunity to learn from people who can share not just their successes, but their doubts, mistakes, and lessons. We can seek that kind of guidance, too.
You don’t need someone to hand you a finished roadmap. Sometimes you need someone willing to take your question seriously and help you find a place to begin.
That need doesn’t disappear when we graduate. We go to work, build families, run businesses, and become responsible for more people and more decisions. It can become easier to manage what is in front of us than to ask what else might be possible.
Our impossible doesn’t have to be a company or a career milestone. It might be repairing a relationship, changing direction, helping someone, or finally making room for work that matters to us.
What guides you toward it?
That brings me to the second part of the question: What hierarchy guides your decisions as you pursue your impossible?
Is it family, work, friends, and everything else? Is there another order that grounds you when the decisions get difficult?
For me, it is God first. Then family, friends, work, and everything else.
That hierarchy has significantly changed my life. When I approach the question through faith, what I can imagine expands. I find more joy in the process, too.
I fully understand that this isn’t everyone’s path. I’m not offering my hierarchy as a requirement for anyone else. I’m sharing what has served me, with the hope that it might help someone consider what guides them.
Looking back at that room, I am grateful those students have an opportunity to explore their possibilities with people willing to invest in them. I hope they feel supported, not pressured, by the question.
And I hope we give ourselves that same opportunity in the lives we are living now. We don’t need to return to high school or wait for a new chapter to ask what matters to us today.
So, what’s your impossible, right now? What hierarchy will guide you, and who could help you explore it?
You don’t have to have the answer today. But perhaps it’s worth giving yourself permission to ask.
For more information on the Dons Business Institute, please visit their website at https://cathedralcatholicdbi.org/
