This week’s Monday Morning Message from Wm. H. Danforth, founder of Ralston Purina:
What is the Monday Morning Message?

One of the essentials to continued growth is the avoidance of Ruts. Ruts make for stupidity. Ruts tend to make a person uninteresting, dull and slow. Ruts can be avoided by a deliberate planning of one’s life, particularly for its free time. Spend your evenings deliberately, perhaps once a week, in doing something different. If you have not been familiar with music, deliberately cultivate a taste for it; if you know nothing about baseball, go with a fan; if you read a certain daily paper every day, change to another daily for a week—jolt your mental machinery a little. If you always spend your vacation at the same place, spend it differently. Go to the mountains and rough it. Have your own boy or girl or some other fellow’s kid in the party. If your reading is mainly novels, try biography. If you have set habits about your smoking, swear off at least one month during the year.

New ideas, new friends, new ways of doing things—all help to get you out of your Rut. Top persons like you don’t belong in any Ruts. What Rut are you going to try to get out of this week?

It is easy to do the same things over and over, until we are stuck in a rut of our own making.

Maybe you have heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

If you want your life to be better, start by doing something different. Mr. Danforth’s above suggestions are a good start. Whenever you find yourself stuck in a rut, make a choice to do something new. Turn off the television and take up a new hobby, talk to new people, join a club, do to an event, start volunteering…anything to get out of your rut.

You will find you have more creativity and more energy when you take on new challenges. You will also have more fun!