Are We Like Otis the Drunk?

Perhaps you remember the show Mayberry, RFD, starring Andy Griffith, and the very young future director and actor Ron Howard as a boy named Opie. The show also featured the comic genius Don Knotts as the deputy.

Otis was the town drunk, who would stumble into the sheriff’s office at night and go more or less straight to the key on the wall. He would unlock the cell door, go inside, turn the key to lock the door, and then reach through the bars to hang the key on a hook. Yes, that’s right, he locked himself in jail every night. The key was within easy reach, but he was locked in his cell, where he slept it off.

Are you and I like Otis the Drunk? We find ourselves “locked” in prison and don’t see any way out. I believe that our limiting beliefs keep us trapped. We keep repeating the same behavior, acting stupid due to impaired thinking, and feeling trapped because we can’t envision other options.

How many of these beliefs do you hold? It’s time to reexamine them.

1. You need to get a good job and become a model employee.
2. You need to work 40 hours or more a week.
3. You need to work 50 weeks a year.
4. You work until you retire at 65.
5. You must go out on dates in order to have sex.
6. Everybody gets married.
7. Everybody should have kids.
8. You should only have one woman at a time.

I just finished “The Four-Hour Workweek,” by Tim Ferriss, which is absolutely mind boggling, or as Chaz Michael Michaels says, “mind bottling.” Ferris destroys the first four myths, and has the audacity to suggest that your life shouldn’t be about a 40 year grind, but your goal should be to do little, but productive, work so that you are financially free and can go wherever you want to.

Poverty begins with a mindset concerning what is possible. When you begin to expand your possibilities, you can begin to envision your way out of jail, whether that jail means being trapped in a lousy marriage, a miserable job, or a rat trap of a town.