Welcome to Every Day A New Thought. I'm Thor Challgren. Today we're going to talk about speed bumps, real and imaginary. 

I recently read an article about a street painting experiment in London. The objective was they wanted to slow down traffic, and they didn't want to put in actual speed bumps. So what they did was they painted simulated speed bumps to convince drivers that an actual speed bump lay ahead. And the way they did it was they painted it in a sort of 3d fashion so that it gave you the illusion that there was an actual speed bump. And is similar to maybe you've seen those truck drawings where someone will paint a, like a hole in the sidewalk with someone coming out of it on steps. And from your mind, it looks real, but of course, it's not.

Was this successful? Yes, as it turns out, drivers did slow down. Mostly they think because they were curious what that was they were seeing. And so they didn't know what it was. 

In Canada, they actually took this a step further, they painted a school girl chasing a ball across the street. So when drivers are coming up, they were worried they were going to actually hit a girl. I don't know if this actually was something they carried on because it seems to me like someone would swerve around it or slam on their brakes, and you might actually create accidents. 

But this got me thinking, Do we paint speed bumps? In our own life? Do we paint fake speed bumps? Do we maybe not go out on the road where we want to be going and drive full speed going where we want to go? Because we painted speed bumps that slow us down? 

What kind of speed bumps might we paint, we might do it with doubt where we might think to ourselves, oh, that won't work that thing I want to do. Or maybe judgment where we say someone won't like it. Or they'll think this of me or that of me. Or maybe even failure where we look at something and we say well you don't want this will be just like that time before where it didn't work out. When you say these kinds of things, think about yourself out on the road of life with a paint can and you're painting an image of why something won't work, why you'll be judged why you can't do it. You are in essence painting your own speed bumps on that road that you would otherwise drive smoothly on. 

So think about those speed bumps that you painted, they dry and they end up looking very real to us where we look at that doubt that judgment, that fear of failure. And when we get near it, we take our foot off the gas, or we even come to a stop. 

And if this speed bump that you painted this imaginary speed bump is on a road that you drive every day. That's even worse, because now you're training yourself to believe this because every single day, you see that imaginary speed bump and it causes you to slow down. Or maybe you don't even keep going on that road. Maybe you take a detour on a road. That's not where you want to go. 

So my takeaway for this is next time that you're driving and you see a speed bump, even if it's a real one, ask yourself a simple question. Have I created a speed bump in some area of my life? Think about what you want. Maybe you've painted a speed bump that prevents you from getting to that? 

If so, I want you to imagine heading over to Home Depot where you buy a can of turpentine and then go and take that speed bump off the road so that what is ahead of you is a clear road without any of those things that are gonna cause you to slow down. I want you to get rid of your imaginary speed bumps.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai