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Let me distract you for a moment and
tell you four short stories.
These are old stories – familiar stories.
The people and the circumstances differ
slightly for everyone who tells them, but
the core lessons remain the same.
I hope the twist we’ve put on them here
inspires you to think differently….
Story #1: All the Difference in The
World
Every Sunday morning I take a light jog
around a park near my home. There’s a
lake located in one corner of the park.
Each time I jog by this lake, I see the
same elderly woman sitting at the
water’s edge with a small metal cage
sitting beside her.
This past Sunday my curiosity got the
best of me, so I stopped jogging and
walked over to her. As I got closer, I
realized that the metal cage was in fact
a small trap. There were three turtles,
unharmed, slowly walking around the
base of the trap. She had a fourth turtle
in her lap that she was carefully
scrubbing with a spongy brush.
“Hello,” I said. “I see you here every
Sunday morning. If you don’t mind my
nosiness, I’d love to know what you’re
doing with these turtles.”
She smiled. “I’m cleaning off their
shells,” she replied. “Anything on a
turtle’s shell, like algae or scum, reduces
the turtle’s ability to absorb heat and
impedes its ability to swim. It can also
corrode and weaken the shell over time.”
“Wow! That’s really nice of you!” I
exclaimed.
She went on: “I spend a couple of hours
each Sunday morning, relaxing by this
lake and helping these little guys out.
It’s my own strange way of making a
difference.”
“But don’t most freshwater turtles live
their whole lives with algae and scum
hanging from their shells?” I asked.
“Yep, sadly, they do,” she replied.
I scratched my head. “Well then, don’t
you think your time could be better
spent? I mean, I think your efforts are
kind and all, but there are fresh water
turtles living in lakes all around the
world. And 99% of these turtles don’t
have kind people like you to help them
clean off their shells. So, no offense…
but how exactly are your localized efforts
here truly making a difference?”
The woman giggled aloud. She then
looked down at the turtle in her lap,
scrubbed off the last piece of algae from
its shell, and said, “Sweetie, if this little
guy could talk, he’d tell you I just made
all the difference in the world.”
The moral: You can change the world –
maybe not all at once, but one person,
one animal, and one good deed at a
time. Wake up every morning and
pretend like what you do makes a
difference. It does. (Read 29 Gifts.)
Story #2: The Weight of the Glass
Once upon a time a psychology professor
walked around on a stage while teaching
stress management principles to an
auditorium filled with students. As she
raised a glass of water, everyone
expected they’d be asked the typical
“glass half empty or glass half full”
question. Instead, with a smile on her
face, the professor asked, “How heavy is
this glass of water I’m holding?”
Students shouted out answers ranging
from eight ounces to a couple pounds.
She replied, “From my perspective, the
absolute weight of this glass doesn’t
matter. It all depends on how long I hold
it. If I hold it for a minute or two, it’s
fairly light. If I hold it for an hour
straight, its weight might make my arm
ache a little. If I hold it for a day
straight, my arm will likely cramp up and
feel completely numb and paralyzed,
forcing me to drop the glass to the
floor. In each case, the weight of the
glass doesn’t change, but the longer I
hold it, the heavier it feels to me.”
As the class shook their heads in
agreement, she continued, “Your stresses
and worries in life are very much like this
glass of water. Think about them for a
while and nothing happens. Think about
them a bit longer and you begin to ache
a little. Think about them all day long,
and you will feel completely numb and
paralyzed – incapable of doing anything
else until you drop them.”
The moral: It’s important to remember
to let go of your stresses and worries.
No matter what happens during the day,
as early in the evening as you can, put
all your burdens down. Don’t carry them
through the night and into the next day
with you. If you still feel the weight of
yesterday’s stress, it’s a strong sign that
it’s time to put the glass down. (Angel
and I discuss this process of letting go in
the Adversity and Self-Love chapters of
1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful
People Do Differently .)
Story #3: Shark Bait
During a research experiment a marine
biologist placed a shark into a large
holding tank and then released several
small bait fish into the tank.
As you would expect, the shark quickly
swam around the tank, attacked and ate
the smaller fish.
The marine biologist then inserted a
strong piece of clear fiberglass into the
tank, creating two separate partitions.
She then put the shark on one side of
the fiberglass and a new set of bait fish
on the other.
Again, the shark quickly attacked. This
time, however, the shark slammed into
the fiberglass divider and bounced off.
Undeterred, the shark kept repeating this
behavior every few minutes to no avail.
Meanwhile, the bait fish swam around
unharmed in the second partition.
Eventually, about an hour into the
experiment, the shark gave up.
This experiment was repeated several
dozen times over the next few weeks.
Each time, the shark got less aggressive
and made fewer attempts to attack the
bait fish, until eventually the shark got
tired of hitting the fiberglass divider and
simply stopped attacking altogether.
The marine biologist then removed the
fiberglass divider, but the shark didn’t
attack. The shark was trained to believe
a barrier existed between it and the bait
fish, so the bait fish swam wherever they
wished, free from harm.
The moral: Many of us, after
experiencing setbacks and failures,
emotionally give up and stop trying. Like
the shark in the story, we believe that
because we were unsuccessful in the
past, we will always be unsuccessful. In
other words, we continue to see a barrier
in our heads, even when no ‘real’ barrier
exists between where we are and where
we want to go. (Read The Road Less
Traveled.)
Story #4: Being and Breathing
One warm evening many years ago…
After spending nearly every waking
minute with Angel for eight straight days,
I knew that I had to tell her just one
thing. So late at night, just before she
fell asleep, I whispered it in her ear. She
smiled – the kind of smile that makes
me smile back –and she said, “When I’m
seventy-five and I think about my life and
what it was like to be young, I hope that
I can remember this very moment.”
A few seconds later she closed her eyes
and fell asleep. The room was peaceful
– almost silent. All I could hear was the
soft purr of her breathing. I stayed
awake thinking about the time we’d
spent together and all the choices in our
lives that made this moment possible.
And at some point, I realized that it
didn’t matter what we’d done or where
we’d gone. Nor did the future hold any
significance.
All that mattered was the serenity of the
moment.
Just being with her and breathing with
her.
The moral: We must not allow the clock,
the calendar, and external pressures to
rule our lives and blind us to the fact
that each individual moment of our lives
is a beautiful mystery and a miracle –
especially those moments we spend in
the presence of a loved one.
Your turn…
How do you think differently today than
you once did? What life experience or
realization brought on a significant
change in your way of thinking?