Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences:

What becomes possible when we stop treating the limits we have placed around ourselves as permanent? Your Mars Project invites you to think further than you have ever thought and do more than you have ever done, guided by your own definition of prosperity.

---

In Psychogenesis, Jack Ensign Addington shares what he identifies as Socrates’ definition of man:

Man—the centre of a circle without a circumference.

It is a powerful image.

We stand at the centre of our lives, yet there is no predetermined boundary defining how far we may develop, create, contribute or reach. The circumference appears when we draw it ourselves.

1. Sometimes we draw it from fear.
2. Sometimes from an earlier experience that convinced us we were not capable of more.
3. Sometimes we accept a boundary handed to us by family, culture, circumstance or other people’s expectations.

After living within it for long enough, we may stop recognizing it as a line we literally drew around ourselves and begin treating it as something that’s fixed…immovable even…in our lives.

Addington’s argument goes considerably further than encouraging us to think positively.

If man stands at the centre of a circle without a circumference, possibility is not limited by the conditions presently surrounding him. The boundary is created in the mind.

He underscores that whatever we can conceive
of, believe in and confidently expect must become
our experience.

From this perspective, our present resources, responsibilities, health, timing and circumstances do not determine how far possibility extends. They describe where we are now. Once we treat them as proof of where we can go, we draw a circumference around ourselves.

We may not yet know the route, the timing or where the necessary resources will come from. Our inability to see those things today does not make the possibility itself unavailable.

The first boundary to erase is therefore the one that prevents us from conceiving of more by asking:

What is my Mars Project?

Your Mars Project is the undertaking that represents the furthest reach of what you can presently imagine for yourself.

It may be a business you want to build, a body of work you want to create, a contribution you want to make or a different way of arranging your life. It may ask you to move beyond what is familiar and release ideas about yourself that have kept your thinking small.

It does not have to impress anyone else.

The ambition of your Mars Project cannot be measured by its size in another person’s eyes.

Its significance lies in how far it takes you beyond the circumference you have drawn around your own life.

This is also why each person’s measure of prosperity must be particular to that person.

For one person, prosperity may mean building a large and influential company. For another, it may mean earning enough to control their time. It may mean financial security, creative freedom, meaningful work, greater contribution, the ability to care for family or the freedom to live at a gentler pace.

We lose our bearings when we use another person’s measure of prosperity to define our destination.

We may pursue scale because scale is admired. We may pursue visibility because visibility is rewarded. We may pursue more because we have never stopped to decide what enough would mean for us.

That can take us a considerable distance without bringing us any closer to the life we want.

Your Mars Project must come from your own centre.

It asks you to imagine beyond what you have already experienced and beyond what your present circumstances appear to support. It asks what you could create if you removed the circumference of self-imposed limitation.

This does not require you to know exactly how you will get there. The route may emerge only after you have allowed yourself to stretch your imagination.

First, you must be able to conceive of it. Then you must believe that it belongs within the realm of possibility for you. And eventually, you must learn to expect it with enough confidence to begin living and deciding from that expectation.

Your Mars may be further than you have permitted yourself to imagine. It may also be closer, quieter and more personal than the version of success you have been encouraged to pursue.

The measure is yours to define, the circumference is yours to erase, and the Mars Project is yours to choose.

Strategic Reflection Prompt

What is my Mars Project?

Describe the undertaking you would pursue if you removed the circumference of self-imposed limitation. Then ask yourself:

• What does prosperity mean specifically to me?
• What have I never allowed myself to conceive of?
• Which boundaries have I mistaken for facts?
• What would I pursue if my present circumstances did not define my future?
• Can I believe in this possibility?
• What would change if I confidently expected it to become part of my experience?

Begin today with the possibility you have been reluctant to imagine fully.

About Giselle

Most costly decisions begin with a wrong read of the situation.

I’m Giselle Hudson — The Pre-Fixer. I help leaders see the real problem before they act, in my writing and in my work. I don’t fix; I pre-fix. Most advisers jump to solutions before they’ve found the real problem. I find it first — the part that isn’t fully visible yet. Once we see that clearly, everything else falls into place, and confident, right action can follow.

Through my daily Strategic Alignment Journal, I explore leadership, decision-making, and the patterns that shape organizations — helping leaders make sense of complexity before they commit significant time and money to the wrong thing.

What’s the one thing about your business that frustrates you most — the thing that, despite your best efforts, you can’t seem to resolve?