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Have you ever come up against a problem that you just
couldn’t solve?
Where it felt like you were simply banging your head
against a brick wall - over and over and over again - without making any
“headway”?
Sure you have.
And can you remember how you finally came up with a
solution? You most likely took a step back and approached the problem from
a different angle, with a new focus which enabled you to find a simple
solution which was there all along.
Consider the lesson of the moth which was
discovered in
Joe
Lake
’s garage one day.
As Joe was preparing to travel to his office, he
opened the garage door and startled a large moth which immediately tried
to escape by flying to the circle-topped window of the door. It tried
frantically to exit through the invisible wall of closed glass.
Joe tried raising the garage door higher in hopes
of aiding it’s escape. That caused it to fly higher and become entangled
in a spider web.
Fearful that it would remain entangled in the
web, Joe took a long-handled broom to assist him in helping the moth
escape the tangled threads.
The moth then returned to furiously pumping his
wings and banging into the glass, which was, in his perspective, the
pathway of escape, but instead, the moth remained captive. By simply
turning his focus to one side, he would have easily exited his prison.
Rather, due to his intent on one direction, he remained confined, captive
and perhaps doomed.
PEOPLE ARE JUST LIKE THE MOTH
People are quite the same as the moth in this
story. Too often we come across individuals who are so sure of them self
that they refuse to change their focus. They would rather continue in one
direction without changing focus or giving consideration to other
alternatives. How often we have witnessed failure, when a simple change of
direction would have resulted in success.
It is very much like the old farmer who had
plowed around a large rock in one of his fields for years. He had broken
several plowshares and a cultivator on it and had grown rather morbid
about the old rock. After breaking another plowshare one day, and
remembering all the trouble the rock had caused him through the years, he
finally decided to do something about it. When he put the crowbar under
the rock, he was surprised to discover that it was only about six inches
thick and that he could break it up easily with a sledgehammer. As he was
carting the pieces away he had to smile, remembering all the trouble that
the rock had caused him over the years and how easy it would have been to
get rid of it sooner.
Next time you find yourself facing a “brick
wall”, before you spend too much time banging your head needlessly
against it, remember the moth banging into the glass. Remember the farmer
who finally decided to put a crowbar under the rock and discovered a
simple solution.
Try to change directions and refocus on the
problem. By approaching the problem from a different direction and
viewpoint, the solution may be easier than you thought. |
