Which are you? The carrot, egg, or coffee bean?

There’s a story told in John Maxwell’s book, “Sometimes You Win-Sometimes You Learn,” of a daughter complaining to her dad about how tough & unfair Life is.

She’s sharing with him how difficult things are for her & while she’s ranting, her dad walks over to the stove & puts 3 pots on the burner each filled with water.

In the 1rst pot he slices up carrots…

In the 2nd pot he puts a few eggs in…

And in the 3rd pot, he puts in a handful of coffee beans.

While the pots simmer, he continues to listen to his daughter, nodding attentively, but never says anything.

As she runs out of steam & grows quiet, her dad walks her over to the stove & asks her, “What do you see?” “Umm carrots, eggs, & coffee,” she answers back curiously.

Then he tells her to handle each one. The boiled carrots squish in her hand; the eggs are hard-boiled beneath its thin shell; & the coffee smells rich & bold.

“The carrot, egg, & coffee bean were all subjected to the same thing,” he says, “But each one reacted differently. The carrot became soft and falls apart easily; the eggs became hard; but the coffee bean transformed the water into something rich & flavorful.”

The dad looked at his daughter and asks, “So which are you? The carrot, egg, or coffee bean?”

Will you be subjected to adversity and become soft…will you let adversity harden & deaden you to a beautiful world that still exists? Or will you be like that coffee bean, where the hot waters of adversity only release & reveal your inner boldness- where you transform the whole look in the pot?

We don’t get to choose most of our adversities & even if we did, we’d only pick the adversity that offered a little discomfort & maybe…just maybe a pinch of momentary pain.

It’d be like picking between having a shot or open heart surgery- we don’t like either, but we’ll take the needle over the scalpel any day. We’d rather flinch & move on with life, than to have our lives ripped open where it hurts to even breathe.

But if you didn’t have levels of adversity, you’d never radically change.

Sure, you may scoot over a little in life, but you damn sure aren’t about to raise your hand to get knocked the f*ck out.

So Life kicks us out of our nest of normal & makes us change & it’s in the pain, where we will find the most change. I’ve found change fighting through low self-esteem, bankruptcy, obesity, divorce, & demotion-none of those would I have chosen, but I had to choose what I was going to do about it.

In those moments I had to choose to be the carrot, egg, or coffee bean.

So which are you?

Tony Robins asks people “What’s the difference between a lottery winner & a paraplegic?”

The lottery winner hopes his life will get better while the paraplegic fights to make his life better.

The paraplegic fights to regain his independence-things he could once do in minutes now take hours. What starts as learning how to breath, bathe, dress, & eat independently, transform into driving, climbing mountains, & speaking to the world.

Like the paraplegic, we choose our If response.

So when adversity finds you…you choose. If this is what I’m going through, what do I choose to be? The carrot, egg, or the coffee bean?

Stay in The Sales 💪ife.