“Boy, I sure hope I don’t get pulled over,” I thought to myself. It was 37 degrees outside as I drove down the road. A bit chilly, to say the least. And while I did have a coat on, I wasn’t wearing any pants.
Okay, that may require a little backstory.
A Little Backstory
One hour prior to that, I was at the dry cleaners. I was in the process of dropping off the black slacks I was wearing, which was fine, because I was picking up another pair of black slacks. The plan was to just go into the changing room, swap the pants, and head straight to my next meeting.
However, after pulling on one leg of the pants I was picking up, I realized they hadn’t been hemmed short enough.
At that very moment, I got a text. With my pants half off, I quickly checked it. It was the person I was about to meet with, telling me he had to reschedule.
Suddenly, inspiration struck.
I took the pants back off, threw on my overcoat, gave the shocked lady both pairs of pants, paid her, then quickly walked across the parking lot with no pants on. I proceeded to drive home—about a 30 minute drive—throw on a pair of pants, and head back to the office.
Nobody was the wiser. Except me.
Getting Wiser
Frequently, we run into a set of circumstances and think to ourselves, “There’s no way I can do that.” In reality, it’s a self-limiting belief.
For most of my life, I thought of myself as a night person, not a morning person. Then several years ago, I decided I wanted to become a morning person, because it would give me time to form several good habits that would kick off my day the right way. So for one year solid, I made it a point to go to bed at 9pm, read for an hour, then woke up at 6am. Fast forward a few years, and now I get up at 5am.
Not bad for a night owl!
It doesn’t matter if it’s in business, church, or personal life. If you’re anything like me, you’re not accomplishing everything you could accomplish. You have self-limiting beliefs that aren’t true!
In business, you may claim that you can’t do what Steve Jobs did, because you’re not Steve Jobs. Or maybe in our Christian life, we claim we can’t do what Paul the apostle did, because we haven’t had a “road to Damascus” moment.
But is that really true? Or are we just placing artificial limits on ourselves, limits that God didn’t actually put there?
Of course, that’s a question that you should ask yourself from time to time. The challenge is to actually realize when you’re in a situation like that, and then do something about it.
Something To Ask Yourself
If you catch yourself saying, “I would never do that,” or “I could never do that,” or even putting a label on yourself like “night owl” that limits what you can actually do, ask yourself this question:
Do I really need to be wearing pants right now?