Measuring Each Time
A Thought for Sunday Reflection
“The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.”
―George Bernard Shaw from, Man and Superman
It was an opportunity of a lifetime. As THE featured keynote speaker, I’d been invited to speak at AT&T’s National Business-to Business conference.
A flight to New York City and a limousine ride were only weeks away.
Then it hit me.
Months before, my doctor gave me some bad news. Some, who’s kidding who, he gave me an encyclopedia set of bad news.
Hypertension and the highest triglyceride number he’d ever seen, to name a few.
I made some changes, like eliminating sweetened sodas and upping my exercise.
Three months and minus forty pounds later, my numbers were in the normal range.
This brings me back to the speech in NY.
“I haven’t tried on my suit in a while,” I told my wife.
It was like a circus tent, and with the speech two weeks away, we headed out to buy a new suit.
“It fits perfectly.”
The tailor was amazed, the suit fit perfectly right off the rack.
“The only thing you need is to hem the pants, and I can have that done for you in a couple of days. You’re lucky; significant tailoring is taking nearly three weeks.”
We change in ways we often miss.
In one part of this story, I was changing in ways I hadn’t noticed, and need to stop that change.
On the other, I improved and wasn’t that person any longer.
It is good to check in every so often.
Or, as Shaw admonishes, measure every time.
I have not had a suit tailored in some time but the best ones do well to measure and even allow for some movement in the waist ;) Measure twice and cut once from a carpenters point of view is a similar assessment to make sure to get it right! After awhile like with our lives we tend to make less mistakes and more successes when we plan and expect a certain outcome, not complacent but excellence in nature and purpose!