Rebuilding Series: Life Runaway Out of Control? Add Some Stopping Power. By Marshall Lestz
Rebuilding Series: Life Runaway Out of Control? Add Some Stopping Power. By Marshall Lestz
Good Morning Everybody,
When my wife and I were driving thru the mountains last week on the way from Denver to Breckenridge, my wife pointed out something I was unfamiliar with. It’s called a “runaway truck ramp,” and as the name suggests, it’s for 18-wheelers that are going downhill too fast and can’t stop. The one we saw was an off-ramp that leads up a steep incline that’s covered with loose gravel. The combination of the friction created by the gravel and the gravitational pull from the big incline eventually stops the speeding trucks.
I couldn’t help but think that these ramps are a great “Rebuilder analogy.”
Sometimes a negative habit or behavior can start controlling us more than we control it. Immediately stopping would be great, but we know that slamming on the brakes often doesn’t produce the best results. But coming to a gradual controlled stop is likely our best bet for long term success.
So like that runaway truck ramp, we need to create some friction. You know, in the business world they always talk about reducing friction in order to make everything flow more smoothly. We need to do the exact opposite! Now’s our chance to be as inefficient as possible! We need to mess things up…make things clunky. Activate our Gilligan gene! The habit we’re trying to break is too easy for us to do right now. We’re chugging full speed down a mountain. We need to throw a little “gravel” into our routine, so to speak.
As an example, let’s say that we don’t like how much time we waste on the phone. (I know, crazy thought, totally hypothetical. J) So we need to create some friction…make it more inconvenient to use the phone. For starters, we could make it a goal to stop walking around with it in our hands! Instead, we could keep it buried in a pocket or at the bottom of your purse. And when we sit down with it, put it out of arm’s reach…like far enough away so you have to scoot out of your chair to get it. There are a zillion different things we could do to create friction, and that goes for any of the habits we’re trying to correct.
The new year will be here before we know it. So let’s put a couple goals in place to make our lives more difficult! You know what I mean– let’s add some friction to one or two of our habits to make them more difficult to continue. Just like that runaway truck, sometimes an uphill battle can be just what we need.
Have an empowering day everybody,
Marshall
Keep on Building!