Reflecting on professional development in an age of possibility, Thomas Barlow proposes a counter intuitive solution: “Perhaps living life to the fullest is as much about closing possibilities than creating them.”

I love- love- love- this idea! We all go after things and try to make things happen, but life has a way of sometimes just putting amazing possibilities right in front of our nose!

I can so relate to the excitement of  lot’s of balls in the air, lot’s of things in the works, lot’s of works in progress. I also sometimes feel like there’s too many possibilities going on at once and I am not qualifying, focusing, or finishing some of them. Then, some of those balls  fly away and get lost in the wind.

Do you know your “closing possibilities vs creating new ones ration”? Can you develop better balance between the two?

I am a full throttle, high speed rail kind of DNA person. I love the BIG Picture, and really love making all the parts fit and work together.

I have gotten much better at knowing my limits, threshold and  boundaries with regard to how many possibilities I can be bringing to fruition at a time before starting a new one. For me it’s about time management of them. I limit myself to a few at a time that are right in front of me, with a few off in the distance that move up on the priority list, and I allow for the unexpected!

Especially now, with everyone scurrying to create as many possibilities as they can to make business happen, knowing your “closing possibilities vs creating new ones ratio”  means that you can actually be really happy  by qualifying and closing the best possibilities at the time rather than any possibility.

Fascinating. Love to know what you think about balancing closing possibilities vs creating new ones?

I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist. –Max Lerner

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