“Life is 10% what happens to you, but 90% how you react to what happens to you.” (Charles Swindoll)
Once upon a time in a small Italian town, a daughter complained to her father that her life was miserable.
Click here to listen to the 2-minute audio version of this article
She was tired of fighting and struggling all the time. It seemed like life was one problem after the next.
The next day her father, who was a chef, took her to the kitchen. He boiled three pots of water. He placed potatoes in one, eggs in another, and ground coffee beans in the third.
Of course, the daughter waited impatiently, wondering what he was doing.
After twenty minutes he took out the potatoes and put them in a bowl. He repeated this with the eggs. Finally, he ladled the coffee out placing it in a cup.
Turning to his daughter, he asked. ‘What do you see?’
‘Potatoes, eggs, and coffee,’ she replied.
‘Look closer,’ he said, ‘and touch the potatoes.’ She did and noted that they were soft. He asked her to take an egg and break it; pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg.
Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. Its rich aroma brought a smile to her face.
‘Father, what does this mean?’ she asked. He explained that the potatoes, the eggs, and coffee beans had each faced the same adversity– the boiling water.
However, each one reacted differently:
The potato went in strong, hard, and unrelenting, but the boiling water made it soft and weak.
The egg was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its liquid interior. But once placed in boiling water, the inside of the egg became hard.
However, the ground coffee beans were unique. After they were exposed to the boiling water, they changed the water and created something new and wonderful.
‘Which are you,’ the chef asked his daughter. ‘When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a potato, an egg, or a coffee bean? ‘
The moral of the story is we normally have to change our mindset in order to change our life. In fact, our mindset will oftentimes determine how we approach the situations and circumstances that come our way.
We can’t always control what happens to us but we can control how we react to those things.
Another way to look at it: Are you a thermometer that only reflects the environment around you, or are you a thermostat, which has a profound effect on the environment?