It is said that if you put a frog in cold water and gradually heat the water the frog will stay in the container and boiled to death. If you put a frog into hot water straight away it will jump straight out. The reason given is that the frog cannot detect the slow change in the temperature. (I’ve never tested this.)
If you take a few minutes right now to look at some aspects of your life, relationship, health, finances are there situations that have taken you over so slowly that you haven’t noticed the process. If you had no personal history and had the shock of suddenly arriving in the life you now lead what are the situations you are in that you would welcome and what are the ones you would jump away from.
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The carpenter, who has always had a great reputation, decides to retire. Boss asks him to build one more house. Reluctantly, he does.
Heart not in it, does sloppy job cos he wants to finish. Goes to boss, I’m done! Great. Let’s go see the house. They do. Boss says, „To thank you for all these years of great work, we’d like to give you this house. Here are the keys“. i.e. always do your best.
A woman goes to see the Doctor, lifts up her right arm and says, „Every time I do that it hurts“. The Doctor replies „So don’t do it then“ (Tommy Cooper)
He had finally achieved all his goals, not surprising, he had devoted almost all his time to them.
He had the job and the income he wanted, the level of fitness he desired and an apartment in the best part of town.
It had all been worthtwhile, the personal sacrifices, the postponement of pleasure. At last he could look forward to enjoying life.
He was so busy looking forward he did not see the truck that hit him from behind.
His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer.
One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry
for help coming from a nearby bog.
He dropped his tools and ran to the bog.There, mired to his waist in
black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free
himself.
Farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and
terrifying death.
The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman’s sparse
surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced
himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved.
„I want to repay you,“ said the nobleman. „You saved my son’s life.“
“No, I can’t accept payment for what I did,“ the Scottish farmer
replied waving off the offer.
At that moment, the farmer’s own son came to the door of the family hovel.
„Is that your son?'“the nobleman asked.
„Yes,“ the farmer replied proudly.
„I’ll make you a deal. Let me provide him with the level of
education my own son will enjoy. If the lad is anything like his
father, he’ll no doubt grow to be a man we both will be proud of“.
And that he did. Farmer Fleming’s son attended the very best schools
and in time, graduated from St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School in
London , and went on to become known throughout the world as the
noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.
Years afterward, the same nobleman’s son who was saved from the bog
was stricken with pneumonia. What saved his life this time?
Penicillin. And the name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill
… His son’s name? Sir Winston Churchill.
Imagine you’re in a tug of war with some huge anxiety (depression etc) monster. You’ve got one end of the rope, and the monster has the other end. In between you, there’s a huge bottomless pit. You’re pulling backward as hard as you can, but the monster keeps on pulling you ever closer to the pit. What’s the best thing to do in that situation?
Pulling harder comes naturally, but the harder you pull, the harder the monster pulls. You’re stuck. What do you need to do?
Dropping the rope means the monster’s still there, but you’re no longer tied up in a struggle with it. Now you can do something more useful.
Now how do you do a hard piece of work?
Bert and Lance planted a garden in Michigan for me, and I paid for the garden produce the same price I paid at the vegetable stand . . .
That’s how they got their spending money— they WORKED for it. I had a potato patch. Thirty rows —LONG rows—you know how potatoes are planted, they’re planted in hills . . . one potato, one potato, one potato . . . and you hoe the dirt UP around the base of the plant, and the potato will form underground. Thirty long rows, and to HOE them is a great big job.
How can you get two little boys to hoe a great big field?
You have them hoe row by row and the field is STILL as big …
Have them hoe a diagonal line, from here to here, and hoe a diagonal line here and across and down the middle and kept cutting that field down into little pieces, and making more and more designs, and it’s FUN to make designs.
They transferred hard work into play.
There is an old story of a boilermaker who was hired to fix a huge steamship boiler system that was not working well. After listening to the engineer’s description of the problems and asking a few questions, he went to the boiler room. He looked at the maze of twisting pipes, listened to the thump of the boiler and the hiss of escaping steam for a few minutes, and felt some pipes with his hands. Then he hummed softly to himself, reached into his overalls and took out a small hammer, and tapped a bright red valve, once. Immediately the entire system began working perfectly, and the boilermaker went home. When the steamship owner received a bill for $1,000 he complained that the boilermaker had only been in the engine room for fifteen minutes, and requested an itemized bill. This is what the boilermaker sent him:
For tapping with hammer: $ .50
For knowing where to tap: 999.50
Total: $1,000.00
One evening as the Buddhist priest, Shichiri Kojun, was reciting his sutras, a man with a knife crept up behind him.“Give me your money!“ the man threatened. Without turning his head, Shichiri answered, „Do not disturb me. You will find the money in the cupboard near the wall.“ And then he resumed his recitation. A few moments later, Shichiri paused and called: „Don’t take it all, though. I need to pay my taxes tomorrow.“ The man returned a few coins to the cupboard and started towards the door. As he opened it, he heard Shichiri say, „Thank a person when you receive a gift.“ The man called over his shoulder, „You are thanked,“ and he fled into the dark night. Within a few weeks, the man was arrested for theft. At his trial, Shichiri appeared with many others who claimed that the man had stolen from them. When it was Shichiri’s turn to testify, he was asked if the accused man had stolen anything. Shichiri replied, „No. He entered my house. He asked me for money. I told him that it was in my cupboard. He took some. And then he thanked me for it.“ When the man finished his prison term, he went to Shichiri and became his disciple.
We learn so much a a conscious level and then we forget what we learn and use the skill. You see, Erickson had a terrific advantage over others, he had polio, and he was totally paralysed and the inflammation was so great that he had a sensory paralysis, too. Luckily, however, he could still move his eyes and his hearing was undisturbed.
He got very lonely lying in bed, unable to move anything except his eyeballs. He was quarantined on the farm with 7 sisters, one brother, two parents, and a practical nurse. So how could he entertain himself?
He started to watch people and their environment. He soon learned that his sisters could say „no“ when they mean „yes.“ And they could say „yes“ and mean „no“ at the same time. They could offer another sister an apple and yet hold it back. And Erickson decided to begin to pay great attention to nonverbal language and body language.
He had a baby sister who had begun to learn to crawl. Now he couldn’t walk – he couldn’t even crawl. So you can imagine the intensity with which he watched his baby sister grow from crawling to learning how to stand up. And you don’t even know how you learned to stand up. You don’t even know how you walked. You can think that you can walk in a straight line for six blocks – with no pedestrian or vehicular traffic. You don’t know that you couldn’t walk in a straight line at a steady pace!
You don’t know what you do when you walk. You don’t know how you learned to stand up. You learned by reaching up your hand and pulling yourself up. That put pressure on your hands— and, by accident, you discovered that you could put weight on your feet. That’s an awfully complicated thing because your knees would give way—and, when your knees would keep straight, your hips would give way. Then you got your feet crossed. And you couldn’t stand up because both your knees and your hips would give way. Your feet were crossed—and you soon learned to get a wide brace—and you pull yourself up and you have the job of learning how to keep your knees straight—one at a time and as soon as you learn that, you have to learn how to give your attention to keep your hips straight. Then you found out that you had to learn to give your attention to keep your hips straight and knees straight at the same time and feet far apart! Now finally you could stand having your feet far apart, resting on your hands.
Then came the lesson in three stages. You distribute your weight on your one hand and your two feet, this hand not supporting you at all. Honestly hard work-allowing you to learn to stand up straight, your hips straight, knees straight, feet far apart, this hand [right hand] pressing down hard. Then you discover how to alter your body balance. You alter your body balance by turning your head, turning your body. You have to learn to coordinate all alterations of your body balance when you move your hand, your head, your shoulder, your body—and then you have to learn it all over again with the other hand. Then comes the terribly hard job of learning to have both hands up and moving your hands in all directions and to depend upon the two solid bases of your feet, far apart. And keeping your hips straight —your knees straight and keeping your mind’s attention so divided that you can attend to your knees, your hips, your left arm, your right arm, your head, your body. And finally, when you had enough skill, you tried balancing on one foot. That was a hell of a job!
How do you hold your entire body keeping your hips straight, your knees straight and feeling hand movement, head movement, body movement? And then you put your one foot ahead and alter your body’s center of gravity! Your knees bent—and you sat down! You got up again and tried it again. Finally you learned how to move one foot ahead and took a step and it seemed to be good. So you repeated it—it seemed so good. Then the third step —with the same foot—and you toppled! It took you a long time to alternate right left, right left, right left. Now you could swing your arms, turn your head, look right and left, and walk along, never paying a bit of attention to keeping your knees straight, hips straight.