“The obstacle in Our Path”

In ancient times, a King had a boulder placed on a roadway. Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock. Some of the king's wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked around it.

Many loudly blamed the King for not keeping the roads clear, but none did anything about getting the stone out of the way.

Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. After the peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been.

The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the King indicating that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway.

The peasant learned what many of us never understand!

Moral: Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.

“Success breeds Success”

There was a farmer who grew superior quality, award-winning corn in his farm. Each year, he entered his corn in the state fair where it won honors and Prizes.

One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he grew his corn. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors. "How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?" The reporter asked. "Why brother"

'' The farmer replied, "Didn't you know? The wind picks up pollen grains from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior, sub-standard and poor quality corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I have to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors to grow good corns."

The farmer gave a superb insight into the connectedness of life. His corn cannot improve unless his neighbor's corn also improves.

So it is in the other dimensions and areas of life! Those who choose to be in harmony must help their neighbors and colleagues to be at peace. Those who choose to live well must help others live well. The value of a life is not measured by how long one lived it is measured by how many lives it touches………….

Lessons to Learn from This Story:

Success does not happen in isolation, it is most often a participatory and collective process. So share the good practices, ideas and new knowledge with your family, friends, team members and neighbors and all.. As they say: "Success breeds Success”.

“Be true to yourself and never cheat God”

There was a student who was very weak in academics. His struggle was particularly with Mathematics. He struggled to reach class tenth but failed to clear the final board examination, Mathematics being the bottleneck.

He was totally shattered for his poor show and decided to give it a best shot in the upcoming supplementary examinations to be held four months from then.

Being extremely god fearing in nature he prayed to god and promised god that he would donate food to twenty five people if he passed the exam.

The next few months he was extremely focused and invested his best efforts in cracking the examination.

The big day had arrived. He had prepared extremely well for the exam. The examination started, credit to his hard work, he was able to answer all the questions at lightning fast time and was left with two hours before he could submit his answer scripts. He was confident of a perfect 100.

With a decent two hours on hand, the student started calculating the cost of the committed donation that he promised to god when he would pass the examination.

His calculations started he calculated the expenses for donation to 25 people. At the end of it he thought that it was quite a significant amount that he should be spending from already a meager pocket money. He convinced himself that it was his hard work that helped him get through the trouble, divine element was very limited.

He kept on borrowing additional sheets for calculations, the number came down from 25..20..18..15..10..5… and then finally to just one, that too he decided that he would donate a very simple and a plain vegetarian meal with no sweets and starters.

By then he had exhausted almost equal number of answer sheets for calculating, meanwhile the time was up and the invigilator started snatching away papers in hurry with force, this student was the last one to have submitted his papers. With a great feel of achievement and content he tucked the bunch of papers in his bag and jumped out with a feel of achievement.

Results were declared and to his astonishment he had failed the exam yet again, he broke into tears and started cursing god for his yet another failure. Back home disgusted he wanted to tear all his calculation sheets to protest against god’s mercilessness and tore open his bag furiously, when he opened his bag he was shocked and just stood speechless. He submitted his calculation papers and brought home his answer sheets.

Lessons to Learn from This Story:

Be true to yourself and never try to cheat God!

Other reads:

The Saint’s wisdom

Don’t quit, keep playing

First be a believer, then be an achiever

Never let others make a slave of you

Team work can work wonders

Gratitude unfolded

Judge Yourself