What Does this Make Possible?

Bill Hanson
May 31
4 min read

For years, I carried a small slip of paper in my wallet. It had just one sentence written on it:

“What does this make possible?”

I didn’t reach for it on the good days. I pulled it out when things felt heavy. A case didn’t go as planned. A client was upset. The team was stretched thin, and everyone felt it. You know those days. The ones that follow you home long after the clinic lights are off.

In veterinary medicine, we are trained to notice problems. That is part of what makes us good clinicians. We assess, diagnose, anticipate, and correct. But over time, that same habit of noticing problems can turn inward. A difficult outcome becomes self-doubt. A complaint becomes something we replay for days. We tighten up, second-guess ourselves, and carry the emotional residue into the next appointment, the next conversation, or the drive home.

That small slip of paper in my wallet helped interrupt the pattern. It didn’t make hard things easy, and it certainly didn’t make bad outcomes feel good. But it changed the next question I asked. Instead of staying stuck in frustration, blame, or self-criticism, it nudged me toward curiosity.

“What does this make possible?”

At first, the question can feel a little annoying, especially when you are tired or disappointed. But over time, I came to see its value. It was not asking me to deny what had happened. It was asking me to look more carefully at what might still be available.

A difficult case might make a better approach possible next time. A frustrated client might open the door to a more honest conversation. A short-staffed day might expose a workflow issue everyone had been quietly working around. None of these outcomes was guaranteed, but the question kept me from getting trapped inside the event itself.

And then one day, I found myself handing that slip of paper to someone else.

A team member had just received some difficult feedback. You could see it land immediately. Shoulders tightened. Eyes down. That familiar mixture of embarrassment, frustration, and self-doubt that we all recognize. In that moment, I didn’t offer advice or try to fix it. I simply reached into my wallet, took out the slip of paper, and handed it to her.

She read the question and paused. There was no dramatic breakthrough. No sudden change in mood. But something softened. By then, carrying that question had become a habit for me. I hoped it might become useful for her too. So, I passed it on.

This is not forced positivity. It is not pretending that painful situations are secretly wonderful. Some experiences genuinely hurt. Some failures stay with us. Some conversations do not go the way we hoped. The question does not erase difficulty. It simply asks whether difficulty is the only thing present.

Over time, I found it helpful to think about challenges through three possible gifts.

A gift of knowledge. Something you learn about yourself, others, your patterns, your limits, or your needs.

A gift of power. A chance to strengthen a boundary, develop a skill, respond with courage, or try a different way forward.

A gift of inspiration. A new possibility, perspective, or direction that may never have appeared without the challenge itself.

You do not need to find all three. Often one is enough. But even looking for one changes how you meet the moment.

Writer Shane Parrish has said that the person who approaches a problem as an opportunity has an advantage over the person who sees only the obstacle. I think that is true. Mindset does not change the facts, but it changes what we notice next. When we only see the obstacle, we tend to defend, retreat, or replay. When we stay curious, even briefly, something can begin to move.

That does not mean the answer always comes quickly. There were plenty of days when I looked at that slip of paper and felt nothing but fatigue. No insight. No lesson. Just the weight of the day. But even then, the question mattered because it kept the door slightly open.

Years later, I still think about that small piece of paper because it reminded me that difficult moments are rarely the end of the story. Sometimes they are an invitation to learn something, strengthen something, or see something differently.

So the next time something doesn’t go as planned, maybe pause before deciding what the moment means. Ask yourself:

“What does this make possible? “or “What might I learn here?”

“Where might I need to become stronger?” or “What possibility might I be missing because I am still focused on what went wrong?"

Sometimes the most important shift is not in the event itself, but in the question we are willing to ask ourselves next.

Dr. Bill

Printable Wallet Card

Front

What does this make possible?

Pause

Breathe

Don’t react yet

Look for what might be opening, not just what went wrong.