There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village.
As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish.
The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?”
The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”
“Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.
“This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said.
The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?”
The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”
The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman.
“I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”
The fisherman continues, “And after that?”
The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.”
The fisherman asks, “And after that?”
The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!”
The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”
Story By: Heinrich Boll
Lets face. . . you’ll never have enough.
Enough money, time, energy, sleep, vacations. . . the list can go on and on. We work our tails off for the eventual prize for that one day we can finally sit back and say, “Now I have enough”.
So we sacrifice. We grind. We hustle. In our minds we convince ourselves if we can reach our goals, the finish line, then we can be happy. So we delay our happiness, we hold it back until we reach the destination. But inevitably as we get closer to the finish, we push it out further. We now see the original destination as an easy target, we add more tasks to our list and say, “If I can only get to that finish line, then I can relax and be happy”.
This is an endless cycle. One that you should are aware of. Stop and appreciate the now. Appreciate the hurdles you’ve overcome, the adversity, the minor wins – because that is something to celebrate.
BE HAPPY.
Brian is considered one of the Nations Top Youth Speakers and is the founder of Think Kindness. He has spoken to over 600,000 students across the country, documented over 1.5 million acts of kindness, traveled to Africa 14 times, is the author of KINDNESS NINJA and is the executive producer of the Inspire Hope Film. Brian currently travels the country inspiring kindness in schools across America.