When Martin Luther King Jr. accepted the ministerial call from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, he was just twenty-five years old.<\/p>\n\n
That was 1954. What King accomplished over the next decade would radically reshape American society and provide an example and inspiration for us today. So what was his secret?<\/p>\n
A year after he arrived in Montgomery, Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a public bus, and King led the Montgomery bus boycott<\/a> to end segregation. The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the boycotters in 1956.<\/p>\n A year later in 1957 King formed and led the Southern Christian Leaders Conference, which helped organize the burgeoning civil rights movement. He also spoke before his first national audience<\/a> and made the cover of Time<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n But that was only the beginning. King\u2019s organizing and protest work continued in the late fifties and early sixties with sit-ins and protests, culminating in the events of 1963.<\/p>\n In April King was arrested in Birmingham for disobeying a ban on demonstrations. When he came under fire from local ministers, he responded with one of his most important and memorable works, \u201cLetter from a Birmingham Jail<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n A few months later, he led the March on Washington, attended by over 200,000 people. 1963 was the hundred year anniversary of Lincoln\u2019s Emancipation Proclamation, and King gave his stirring \u201cI Have a Dream<\/a>\u201d speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.<\/p>\n The demonstration galvanized nationwide support for civil rights. Earlier that summer President John F. Kennedy introduced the nation\u2019s most sweeping civil rights legislation<\/a> to date, and the impact of the march and King\u2019s advocacy was instrumental in its passage in 1964.<\/p>\n If that wasn\u2019t enough, Time<\/em> picked King as its man of the year, and the Nobel committee made him the youngest-ever recipient of the Peace Prize.<\/p>\n All in ten years!<\/em> He was just thirty-five years old, and there was more work to do, but he\u2019d already turned the world upside down. How did he do it?<\/p>\n King\u2019s critics in Birmingham thought his actions were \u201cunwise and untimely,\u201d that they violated \u201ccommon sense.\u201d But unlike King, these ministers were laboring under a limiting belief.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what I mean: They held an idea about the world that limited their range of possibilities. Instead of seeing King\u2019s actions as paving the way for change, they saw them as counterproductive. But this is just one of a million examples in life where \u201ccommon sense\u201d is just another way of saying \u201cwidely held misunderstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n A limiting belief doesn\u2019t change reality. It just limits what we\u2019ll make of it. It\u2019s a misunderstanding of the present that shortchanges our future.<\/p>\n King was surrounded by limiting beliefs like these:<\/p>\n And there were many, many others shared by white and black people, in and outside the movement. The difference between King and others was that he didn\u2019t fall prey to their limiting beliefs. He didn\u2019t cut off his options and limit his potential with negative thinking.<\/p>\n Instead of limiting beliefs, King embraced liberating truths. He believed that the times called for urgent action. He believed that nonviolent demonstrations were necessary and effective. He believed that racial reconciliation was a real hope and that hearts\u2014and the whole society\u2014could really change.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d was all about. He could see it, regardless of what some people said or believed. He could visualize the victory and knew in his bones that he would someday realize it as well. Those liberating truths freed him to act with determination.<\/p>\n Early in his ministry in Montgomery, during the final difficult months of the bus boycott in 1956, King preached a sermon<\/a> to encourage his congregation to live hopeful lives of creative action.<\/p>\n \u201cLord, help me to accept my tools,\u201d he told them to pray. \u201cHowever dull they are, help me to accept them. And then Lord, after I have accepted my tools, then help me to set out and do what I can do with my tools.\u201d<\/p>\n To show how powerful our humble tools can be, King pointed to the example of Moses, who shed his limiting beliefs with God\u2019s help and led his people to freedom.<\/p>\n We have the right tools to create the kind of change the world needs. King\u2019s example shows us that. \u201cThere is no deficit in human resources,\u201d he once said<\/a>; \u201cthe deficit is in human will.\u201d<\/p>\n\t\tAvoiding the Trap of Limiting Beliefs<\/h3>\n
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We Have the Right Tools for the Job<\/h3>\n