What We Miss When We're Complaining
This story may be old, but the message is so relevant!
Posted by Jay Shetty on Saturday, September 29, 2018
Transcript:
There was once a very wealthy and curious king. He placed a boulder on a very popular path in his kingdom and hid nearby to see how people dealt with this new challenge. As many people would be walking along this path and coming across the boulder, they would complain about the king and how he’d behaved by leaving this there on this path. Some even criticized him for not caring about his citizens.
Then on man came across this boulder, and he saw it and thought, “Why don’t I move this out of the way? This is causing so much pain and stress to my fellow villagers. I should move this away.” He started to push the boulder. It took a lot of pressure. It took a lot of strain. But after much effort, he managed to move it away from the path.
As he was about to walk on, he saw a small bag that had been laid underneath the boulder. He went closer to it and looked inside. The bag was full of gold coins. The king at this moment revealed himself, approached this gentleman and said, “You’re the person I’ve been looking for.” The man was actually confused. He said, “What is it that I’ve done?”
He said, “You were the only person in the kingdom to choose to move this boulder out of the way. And there’s a very important lesson here. Because you chose to do this, you’ve shown that any obstacle can turn into an opportunity for growth, learning, and success.”
Often all of us are greeted in life by boulders on our path, whether it’s in our careers, whether it’s in our relationships. And what we need to remind ourselves at that point is that we can either be like the people who complained and criticized, or be like this one person who decided to move the boulder and see every point of adversity as an opportunity for growth.
