I found this on G+ this morning, and it made me laugh out loud. It was this discovery of a well-worn blonde joke, likely told millions of times but just discovered by me, that led me to this conclusion:

When you think you can’t do something, you haven’t thought about it long enough.

This is a variation of a Malcolm Gladwell theory – he believes if  we had 10,000 hours to do anything, we’d be a legend, a phenom…a world beater.

I cannot possibly source the original author of this blonde joke, so I will risk litigation and remix it for you. I’m sharing this joke to make this point:

We say reinvention is not possible. We make excuses as to why we cannot do something. We can. We can do it. The knowledge is sitting right under our noses.

We can.

Now, a tale of saving money on parking.

A blonde walked into a bank in San Francisco’s Financial District and asked for a loan officer. She said she was going to Europe on business for two weeks and needed to borrow $5,000. The bank officer said the bank would need some kind of security for the loan, so our girl handed over the keys to a new Bentley. The car was parked on the street in front of the bank. She had the title and everything checked out. The bank agreed to accept the car as collateral for the loan.

The blonde left the bank with her cash. The bankers couldn’t understand why she used $250,000 Bentley as collateral against a $5,000 loan. An employee of the bank drove Blondie’s car into the bank’s underground garage.

Two weeks later, the blonde returned from her trip, walked to the bank and repaid the $5,000 and the interest, which came to $15.41. The loan officer said,  “ We were very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely; but we are a little puzzled. We did a background check and discovered you are a multimillionaire. Why would you bother to borrow $5,000?”

Blondie smiled. ”Where else in San Francisco can I park my car for two weeks for only 15 bucks and expect it to be there when I return?”

John Scott is the career services manager, national online learning coordinator and a media instructor at the School of Multimedia Communications, Academy of Art University, San Francisco. He also counsels clients and groups on the art of reinvention. His debut book Broken Glass and Barbed Wire will be released soon. Follow John on Twitter @johnscottsf.