Once upon a time a
crow was flying around on an unusually hot summer day looking for water. He
comes across a pitcher of water on the back porch of a house, but when he tries
to stick his beak in he can't reach the water. He tries and tries, slowly getting
more dehydrated. He is about to give up and accept his fate when he has an
idea: he begins dropping small pebbles in the pitcher until the water level
rises to the point where he can now reach it.
The Lesson: Where
there's a will, there's a way. Persistence is the key to solving any problem
you have because eventually, even if the situation seems horrible, you will
find a solution. Your new idea might not be as bad as you think it is. Just keep plugging away.
Now let’s move on out
to the other side of the farm for another one of my favorite stories about persistence.
It is an ole one but well worth repeating.
Once upon another
time….J
there was a donkey….a simple, stupid,
stubborn old donkey and even the farmer who owned it didn’t really like him.
The farmer owned a
large farm and one day he heard in the distance the loud, distinctive braying of
the donkey. He wondered what the stupid
donkey had done now, so he looked all over his farm until at last he found the
animal at the bottom of an old abandoned well.
The angry farmer
called his neighbors and asked them each to bring a shovel. He’d had enough of the stupid donkey, so he
had decided to bury it in the well.
All of his friends
came over and together they started to shovel dirt into the hole. At first, the donkey protested loudly,
braying with all of his might, but after about 10 minutes, he stopped.
The farmers kept
shoveling……
After a while,
someone decided to have a look into the well to see what had happened to the
donkey. What he saw astonished him.
Instead of being
buried, the donkey would shake the incoming dirt off his back and then step up
on the new mound.
Now the mission
changed and the farmers went from trying to bury the donkey to trying to save
him, shoveling more and more dirt into the abandoned well until the donkey reached
the top and stepped out.
Upon his release, the
farmers all dropped their shovels and applauded the old stubborn donkey with a
newfound admiration.
The Lesson: There are
times in life/business when it seems as though we are that donkey. Trapped and feeling as though life is trying to
bury us. Don’t go under, shake it off
and continue to find a way to overcome your challenges one at a time until you
too emerge successful.
Take care, stay
inspired, and keep at it.
