These Four Words Can Change The Way You Approach Every Impossible Task When a door closes, this is the question that opens a window.

You've hit a wall. Maybe it's an idea that won't work. A pursuit you were rejected from. An effort that failed. Now you feel stuck and frustrated.

I've felt it too — but I learned four simple words that help me move past it. I think they can help you too.

To appreciate them, I'm going to take you back in time. The year is 2005. Kara Goldin and her husband Theo were making a lightly flavored, all-natural beverage in their kitchen. They called it Hint Water, and they thought it had potential.

But when they tried to mass-produce the drink, they hit a problem. Kara writes about this in her book, called Undaunted. Her husband tried to find a manufacturer for the drink, but everyone said it was impossible: They couldn't make the drink without preservatives or other chemicals, because it wouldn't have the shelf life for national distribution.

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"Well, what can we do?" Kara asked Theo.

"We can have a product with a very short shelf life that we deliver locally out of our Jeep in a limited area in San Francisco," Theo replied.

"Perfect, that's what we'll do," Kara said. "We'll find out what people think of the product and if it's worth trying to solve this problem."

This little scene made a big impact on me. I loved Kara's reaction. Theo tells her what they can't do, and Kara asks what they can do.

I've since gotten to know Kara, and we've talked about this. That question — What can we do? — has become a mantra of hers. She calls upon it when hitting a wall, or when someone says something is impossible.

I wondered: Why is this such a powerful reframe? Then I realized: It's because when we want something, we almost immediately limit our imaginations.

Think of something you want right now. Maybe it's a certain kind of growth. Or a particular job. Maybe it's being recognized for an achievement, or connecting deeply with another person.

I bet you have an idea of how to get that — first I'll do this, then that, and so on. That's your action-oriented, entrepreneurial self at work. But there's a problem: When we imagine how we'll get something, we start to think that's the only way to get it.

If our original idea doesn't work out, we assume we're out of luck. Our way became the only way, and now the only way is no way.

The antidote to that is Kara's question: "What can we do?"

No matter the challenge you're facing, there is an answer to that question. You can do something. It doesn't mean you'll always reach your goal exactly as you defined it, but it does mean you can find some action to take — a way to move forward, or at least to move, because movement is the most important thing. No discovery happens by standing still.

In fact, I recently used this question to help my wife!

My wife, Jennifer Miller, is a journalist and author of five books (including one with me). A few years ago, she met a former inmate with an incredible story — a captivating, true-crime tale, that was also a powerful story of redemption. She spent years earning this person's and their family's trust, wrote a book proposal, shopped it around to all the major publishers, and…nobody wanted it.

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Jen was crushed. The rejection stung, of course, but she was also in a kind of mourning: If she couldn't sell the book, she figured, then she could never tell this story.

But as we talked about it, Kara's words came to me. OK, Jen can't tell this story in a book. So what can she do? Well, she could tell it in some other form.

"What about a podcast?" I asked. Jen had never worked in podcasting, but she liked the idea. She threw herself into learning the market and meeting the players — and after a year of hard work, she just signed a contract with a major production company and one of the world's largest podcast distributors.

Now she's making the thing many people said she couldn't make. Because they were wrong. There is always something you can do.