“Our minds are lazier than our bodies.”
– Francois, Duc de La Rochefouchauld, 1613-1680
I’m going to say something obvious, profound and slightly demeaning…
You have a limiting factor in your life that’s holding you back…guaranteed!
A limiting factor may be a habit, a preferred chemical, a physical trait or an attitude or belief that hinders your advancement, your happiness, your future.
Dr. Stephen R. Covey in his classic book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” referred to our unique human endowments. One of those endowments is the fact we are responsible human beings. We have the unique privilege of choosing our response to any given situation. We are Response-Able beings! A dog on the other hand, has no space between stimulus and response. Fight, flight or freeze is the only option if you slap a dog. A human an the other hand can choose a different response, they could fight back, laugh or they could turn the other cheek or simply do nothing at all. Humans have the power to choose if they exercise that endowment. (In general, the younger the person is, the less space there is between stimulus and response. It’s hard for children to step outside the moment.)
Once a year… sometimes more, I check my ruts. I question those activities that I do habitually. One of those ritual activities I have been doing lately is hitting the snooze button. I’m sure I’m not alone but more often than not I hit the snooze button… a couple, few times. This is actually a fairly new rut… I used to never do this. I have friends that “snooze it” for an hour or so. This is a limiting factor. It has absolutely no value. If you can relate with this, starting tomorrow, vow to remove this rut. We have a couple options. 1.) Set your alarm later, the time you actually do get up. But then NO snooze… this will give you an extra 10 minutes to an hour of uninterrupted sleep. 2.) Get up when the alarm first goes off. This will give you time to read or exercise, which is much better use of your time. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve used my “snooze time” to work out. Though I haven’t been perfect nor has it been easy, (a secret is to put the alarm across the room or do what’s in the photo above). I feel more energized than I have felt in several years… I also found that I actually feel less tired throughout the day.
What is one of your limiting factors? Do you spend too much time watching TV or on Facebook? Do you habitually have a weakness for junk food? Procrastination? Do you habitually complain, compare, or are you consistently sad or mad? These are all limiting factors that will hold you back from being the best disciple you can be.
Once we truly get honest with ourselves it will be obvious what the limiting factors are in our lives. It is our job as Prosperous Christians and responseABLE human beings to change these bad ruts and better our lives. It’s actually a command.
To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
-Ephesians 4:42-44
The good news is, most of us are not so far gone that we need professional help to get us out of our ruts. We just need to identify them and then use our unique human endowment and implement our action plan for change.
“Creative thinking may mean simply the realization that there’s no particular virtue in doing things the way they always have been done.”
– Dr. Rudolph Flesch
Each of us already know the right answers for success. We just need to force ourselves to hear the question, renew our minds to the Word and take action!
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what [is] that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
-Romans 12:2
