It’s the New Year. Phew! We’re now a couple of weeks into this first month of 2013 and after the initial rush of Happy New Year’s, some of the Christmas sparkle has started to fade. January – one long post-Christmas hangover, but seemingly not, at least, the home of the most depressing day of the year.

New Year is the traditional time for setting resolutions. Maybe you prefer to set intentions, or goals. But I’m betting you already know what your impossible is. You know, that dream, the one that seems so intangible, so far off, and yet so inherently attractive to you, you know in your gut or your heart that you have to realise it, if you could only let yourself.

“If you could only let yourself.” Because often when we allow ourselves to think of these  dreams, when they sneak and filter their way into our conscious, what is our usual reaction? We shut them away, file them away… “that’s impossible!” “I’ll never be able to change my career / live in a treehouse / find a way to combine my passion with earning a living.” Cynicism, skepticism, the inner critic, “Reality” – whatever you want to call it, it pops up to make sure we shelve those dreams for another day.

I looked up Cynicism in the thesaurus. I found Sentimentality. I looked up Cynical in the thesaurus, and I found Naive. These words conjure up a sense of being disconnected from reality, daydreaming, not to be taken seriously. My inner critic started to have a field day. I needed to find some different words…

I moved on. I looked up Skepticism in the thesaurus. And now I found Believing, Devotion, Undoubting. And I realised that I often suspend my disbelief – whenever I watch a film. And it’s so easy! So these are words that I choose for 2013. Believing, Devotion, Undoubting. What is more real than knowing what I’m aiming for, and how I can share it and let others in, and believing in it? Let this year be a year of possibilities… and the action steps that accompany them.

If you’d like to get started setting your intentions or goals for 2013, here are some great resources:

1. Try a “Year in Review” of 2012 using this great post from Jenn Lee
2. There’s an alternative, more left-brain approach to reviewing and planning in this extensive post from The Art of Non-Conformity’s Chris Guillebeau
3. If you like to be walked and talked through the steps, try this New Year’s Ritual from Andrea Scher of Superhero Journal

If you want to invest in your dreams this year, check out Andrea Scher’s Mondo Beyondo class – it’s all about dreaming big! Maybe see you over there…

What’s your impossible for 2013? How will you give yourself permission to suspend your disbelief? And what is your first smallest step to turning your impossible into possible? Please share in the comments below!

1) Find someone who has something “impossible” that they want to achieve – “Aaran can’t cycle.” Pair them up with someone passionate about the thing they want to achieve (meet both Aaran and cycling fanatic Ruth)

2) Set about making the impossible possible – so that you can turn the phrase “Aaran can’t cycle” into “Aaran can cycle!”

3) Build momentum, recruit other cycling fanatics including Clive and Angela, and create a whole movement of people interested in creating cycling opportunities for everyone – and win a Cambridge Evening News Community Support Award for your efforts

4) Receive an invite from the Mayor of Cambridge to attend a very special event at which you will be presented to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

5) Find and dust off your best frock / suit / Sunday Best and turn up at Cambridge Guildhall at the appointed time – and make sure someone records what happens

And there you have it… Making your impossible possible. Who knows where it might lead?

When was the last time you did something impossible?

My thank you letter to you

When was the last time you wrote a hand written letter to someone? The last time you wrote a love letter? Truly thanked someone for the role that they have played in your life? This week we present you with a challenge. In fact, one of our favourite bloggers, Scott Dinsmore over at Live Your Legend presents you with a challenge. He calls it, ‘The Gratitude Challenge’. It’s Thanksgiving over in America, and while not everyone in the world celebrates it, the idea of thanking people couldn’t fit better with You Can’s core belief that surrounding yourself with incredible, supportive people makes living life your way a heck of a lot easier.

So, are you in? 

How many hand written notes of thanks can you write in one week?

Head on over to the Live Your Legend blog, check out the TED video he recommends on hand written letters, join in their discussion, and be inspired by how many notes others are writing by looking at the comments. And do tell us what you are up to and how many notes you have challenged yourself to write this week by commenting below.

Me? I will write 5 notes this week, plus the one to all of you above.

Small firm from Teesside, UK, creates fuel from water and air… sounds too good to be true?

Air Fuel Synthesis, based in Stockton on Tees, was featured on the BBC website last week because it has found a way to convert carbon dioxide and water into a hydrocarbon fuel. And the process is carbon neutral. And they’ve already used the fuel to run a small motorised scooter. Pretty amazing huh? There are still tests to be done to check the energy efficiency of the process and to seewhat happens when production is scaled up. But we think it’s pretty amazing that they got this far.

They made the front page on the Independent and the Material World programme on Radio 4 will be re-broadcast today at 9pm. Makes you think doesn’t it… is it really impossible to create a future where we’re not dependent on fossil fuels?

So… what’s your impossible? And isn’t it about time you got started on it?

Nothing can measure someone’s potential. It’s impossible to tell what people are capable of once they catch fire

Carole Dweck

Here at The You Can Hub, we love upcycling. Didn’t we mention that already? Our friends over at Recreations Up are constantly wowing us with pretty and useful things they make from other people’s rubbish – so much so that when I got married, I chose them to make all of the decorations. Interest in upcycling is growing, but we think it’s more than just a trend, and it turns out someone else agrees – as Poor Pitiful Pearl says, it’s a lifestyle!

Shauna, the lady behind Poor Pitiful Pearl, was interviewed by Etsy about how she got started, and we noticed just a few aspects to her story that sounded familiar:

• desire for change often comes out of a crisis – in Shauna’s case, the loss of a close friend. Maybe this is just another type of upcycling – creating something positive out of a difficult experience!
• whatever change it is you’re trying to make, the most important thing to do is Just Start
• Shauna’s interest in working towards balance and flexibility
• wanting to make a difference – which Shauna does through choosing to donate 10% of sales to charity
• embracing imperfect beauty

We find these themes are coming up again and again for us, and people around us. Which of these themes resonate with you? What changes have you made that were inspired by a crisis?

This great piece in the Guardian talks about all the things we’re finding at You Can Bike Too:

• how incredibly flexible the bike is when it comes to catering for all kinds of abilities in fact, we have found that our bikes are great for people who just aren’t that confident about cycling
• trikes work really well for those whose balance makes using a traditional bike difficult
• riders with disabilities and able bodied cyclists can and often do ride together at club and coaching sessions

It’s great to see our supporter Ian Tierney quoted in the article too! Without Wheels for All Cycling Projects, we wouldn’t have come this far. Don’t forget you can come and try these bikes for yourselves! There are two options:

– Weekend family sessions for mums and dads to cycle with their kids – see here for full details

– Week-day adult sessions for any individuals who wants to give cycling a go – see here for full details

We look forward to seeing you there! And we’re pleased to report that so far, these sessions have been rain-free – though it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

We think it’s great that the paralympics are having such a positive effect and getting more people interested in cycling. How have the paralympics influenced your view of the world? What did you learn?

Are you Old School Resilient…

• Maintain privacy at all times
• Don’t accept help, and certainly don’t ask for it
• Stay unemotional at all costs
• Be resolute
• Show self-restraint

I can’t express the emotion that this video evokes in me. The name Gen Why says it all. We are a generation that questions the world. That asks why things have to be the way they are. As the video says, “it is foolish to assume that my generation is apathetic and lathargic.”

Read further down Gen Why’s Story page and you will see that they started from a discussion over coffee (like us! Though it was tea…) about generational theory, where every four generations a ‘hero generation’ is born. Is that us? Is that what we are doing now? With all the negative press that the young ones get these days, is it the younger generation who are in fact inspiring the ones before…saying it doesn’t have to be this way?

“But I can change the world and I refuse to believe that I am a part of the lost generation.”

Sentences are impossible: Raw. Passion. Commitment. Determination. Sacrifices.

Discuss…

… and see more of the amazing Mickey Smith here. #feelthelove

“We are going to make an invisible bike helmet.”

Think about the reaction in the room when someone first said this out loud. What do you think this was?

– “Sure, go for it!”

– “Hey, where do I make my investment?”

– “Sign me up for your first product launch!”

Somehow, I don’t think this was the first reaction…

Take a look at this movie, which I found over on Brene Brown’s blog, Ordinary Courage:

This is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen, watching this story unfold before my eyes, and having my breath taken away at the end. The courage and determination of these women is exemplary and inspirational all at the same time.

“Easy, only took us seven years!”

“We’ve been good at raising venture capital. Ten million dollars”

“Once a man wanted to tell a story about female managers. Get a rooster, and there will be order!”

“If people say it’s impossible, then we have to prove them wrong”

“Creating an invisible bicycle helmet, people said it was impossible. If we can do that, we can do anything”

These are all incredible statements, in their own way, and spoken with such assurance and humility. How would you motivate yourself to achieve “the impossible”?

When was the last time someone told you, “that’s impossible!”? What did you do?

I can’t wait until my breath is taken away like this again! If you have any similarly inspiring stories of the impossible becoming possible, please post them here.