One of the important meals of the day is starting off with a healthy breakfast. Well, this is relevant because some will swear by a good lunch or a balanced dinner too. But for today, let’s do breakfast. What’s your ideal breakfast? Tea or coffee? Or maybe you are not a hot beverage person so the fresh juice or yoghurt kind of person. Some people like their cup with bread, cake, bacon or eggs. We all have our preferences towards this and I bet each one of us stands by our preferences. How does a combination of potatoes, coffee and eggs sound like?
A story is told of a girl who was feeling down in the dumps and her father, a chef by profession, picked this up. He asked her what was wrong and she said that she was feeling pressed and pressured by life. He told her to join him in the kitchen to help out with breakfast preparation. Her father went on to boil water in three different pots and to each one added a potato, egg and coffee. This entire time the girl is curious as to what her dad is up to, but just followed instructions as she was told. She set the breakfast table with the plates and cutlery then joined her father over the cooker. He’d finished boiling the different stuff and asked her what she noticed in each pot, from before the food and coffee were boiled and afterwards.
In the first pot was the potato after it had boiled. The potato went in strong, hard and unrelenting, but in boiling water, it became soft and weak. We at times go into certain situations like the potato knowing that we have a stiff upper lip as they say. But the hard and challenging times often try us. They soften us a bit to the point we may become soft. Being soft is not a weakness. I look at it as an awareness of the situation around us. For example, failure in a project you are working on is not the end of a journey. Instead, it’s a tangent or caveat you can make on execution as you learn from your mistakes and how to mitigate the situation the next time. But, to be honest, more often than not we let those situations make us feel weak and vulnerable to a point that we will not ever dare try again. Discouragement follows when we believe that we have failed. However, failure is simply not getting the desired result. Consider it as feedback on the actions undertaken. When such an instance occurs, one ought to explore a different route to get to their destination.
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.”
Henry Ford
On the flip side, we have the second pot with the egg that was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its yolky interior until it was put in the boiling water. Once the water boiled enough, the inside of the egg became hard. Hard times also have the ability to close us off from society. Just in the same way one may feel vulnerable and too timid to attempt something they have tried and failed, one would harden at the thought of putting themselves out there. It probably is the other extreme where you close off and know that your dreams are not valid anymore and you should probably just pack up and just go with the flow – roll in the punches as they come and keep strong. One key thing is to always remember why you started. It is easy to be consumed by misery and lose hope in the face of adversity. However, challenges are temporary whereas your success will have a lasting impact on your life. When you recall your motivation, it helps you persist for longer. It keeps you on your toes and even perhaps brightens your day. Having a reason to live or living for a reason; either way, you have a heartbeat that keeps you alive and eager for the next. Do not let the situation around you rob you of that.
The final pot had the coffee beans that were brewed in the hot water. They changed the water and created something new. It was no longer transparent but turned black. It influenced the surroundings. On top of that, filled the kitchen with a sweet aroma. The coffee blended with the water and made itself and the water different. Back to living for a reason; we each have our own mantras and beliefs to life but one thing or two that you could always ask yourself is – how does this make me better? How does this make them better? Our skills, capabilities, talents, hobbies and the whole cart are not just for personal gratification but also to put a smile on another person’s face. We have a bigger on the people around us than we think. You being held back by circumstance could rob yourself of contentment and another joy of being a beneficiary of how you could help them.
In life, things happen around us, and things happen to us. The only thing that truly matters is your choice of how you react to it and what you make of it. Learn, adapt and choose to make the best of each experience. “When a problem stares you in the face, which one would you like to be; the potato, coffee or the egg?”
“In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, oh, I’m going to reveal my weaknesses, you say, wow, here’s a chance to grow.”
Carol S. Dweck
Tonerre's Word 