Engineers can prove that a bumblebee, with its heavy body and little bitty wings, can't fly. But nobody tells the bumblebees ... and they fly just fine.

This saying has been around since at least 1951, when it was quoted from a sign in a General Motors factory, and it grew out of a 1930s story about an engineer whose quick calculation seemed to prove a bumblebee couldn’t fly. It is often credited to coaches and business leaders, Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman among them, but no one person coined it. The science is a myth, too: researchers explained how bees fly in the 1990s.

The saying works as a symbol for breaking limits. Conventional wisdom often declares what can’t be done, but discovery belongs to those who try anyway. The bumblebee, indifferent to equations, flies because it never learned it shouldn’t.

Its lesson endures: don’t wait for permission to attempt the improbable.

When journaling, consider a project or goal you’ve dismissed as unrealistic. Who decided it was impossible — and what if they were wrong? Each small act of belief, like each wingbeat of the bumblebee, can lift you farther than logic predicts.