How come some people are successful and some are not? What can we learn? What wisdom can we gather that will help us reach our goals instead of giving up? Why do we give up on something we really want? We were determined to make it but we fell short. What happened? Perhaps this short story can help us figure it out…
The Frogs and the Tower
There once was a bunch of tiny frogs…
… who arranged a running competition. The goal was to reach the top of a very high tower. A big crowd had gathered around the tower to see the race and cheer on the contestants…
The race began…
Honestly, no-one in crowd really believed that the tiny frogs would reach the top of the tower. You heard statements such as:
“Oh, WAY too difficult!!”
“They will NEVER make it to the top”.
“Not a chance that they will succeed. The tower is too high!”
The tiny frogs began collapsing. One by one…
… Except for those who in a fresh tempo were climbing higher and higher…
The crowd continued to yell
“It is too difficult!!! No one will make it!”
More tiny frogs got tired and gave up…
…But ONE continued higher and higher and higher…
This one wouldn’t give up!
At the end, everyone else had given up climbing the tower. Except for the one tiny frog who, after a big effort, was the only one who reached the top!
THEN all of the other tiny frogs naturally wanted to know how this one frog managed to do it?
A contestant asked the tiny frog how the one who succeeded had found the strength to reach the goal?
It turned out…
That the winner was deaf.
The Negative Words
If we want to be successful at reaching our goals, we have to stop listening to the negative words we hear that says we can’t make it. The words that drill their way into our head and tell us we will fail. But who’s yelling those words? It could be other people, like in this short story, but sometimes we even tell ourselves these self-defeating words. We tell ourselves we’re not smart enough, determined enough, or strong enough to make it to the end. When things don’t go our way we start to hear these negative words that take the wind out of our sales. Then when things don’t go according to plan, we start to believe these words. And it’s when we believe these words that we fall short, give up, and call it quits.
The Takeaway
If we’re going to be successful, we have to be deaf to the negative words that drag us down. We have to replace the negativity with positivity. We have to understand that we will try some things, and we will fail at some things. It doesn’t mean we give up. It doesn’t mean we can’t make it. It doesn’t mean we’re not worthy. It means we’re learning, we’re figuring it out, we’re on the right path. So, don’t listen to the negative words. Don’t say the negative words to yourself. Believe that you can reach your goals. There will be failures along the way, but it’s not truly a failure until we give up. Even the best of the best don’t easily reach the finish line.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Thomas Edison when questioned by a reporter on how it felt to fail a 1,000 times before he invented the light bulb. His response,
“I didn’t fail. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”