The Animals’ School – By George Reavis

A Story About Recognizing Your Strengths

Once upon a time, the animals decided that they should do something meaningful to meet the problems of the new world, so they organized a school.

They adopted an activity curriculum of running, climbing, swimming and flying.  To make it easier to administer, all of the animals took all of the subjects.

The duck was excellent at swimming.  In fact, he was better than his instructor.  However, he made only passing marks in flying and was very poor at running.  Since he was so slow in running, he had to drop his swimming class and do extra running.  This caused his webbed feet to become badly worn, meaning that he dropped to an average mark in swimming.  Fortunately, “average” was acceptable, therefore nobody worried about it – except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of the class in running, but developed a nervous twitch in his leg muscles because he had so much makeup work to do in swimming.

The Will To Fail

I was reading a Norman Vincent Peale book when I happened upon the phrase/concept "The Will To Fail".  The following was retrieved from http://18mind.com/mind/wake_up_and_live_the_will_to_fail on 7/20/13 ... the video of the 1961 Katie Lee song was retrieved the same date on youtube and in about two and a half minutes, with humor, portrays and explains what the concept may look like in action ...

The Will to Fail

December 28, 2008 by gus

FROM the disciples of Schopenhauer and Freud, of Nietzche and Adler, we have all become conversant with such phrases as the Will to Live and the Will to Power. These phrases, representing---sometimes to the verge of overstatement---drives of the organism towards fulfillment and growth, correspond to truths of experience with which each of us is familiar. We have seen children struggle to make themselves and their personalities felt; as young people we have contended for a chance to try our own emerging forces; after long illness we have felt the tide of returning strength in our veins. We know that any average man caught in unfortunate circumstances will put up with poverty, distress, humiliation with conditions which an onlooker will sometimes consider as much worse than death; and that only the presence of a will to continue living can account for the tenacity with which a man in such circumstances clings to the mere right to breathe and exist.

Furthermore, we first experience and then later turn to realize the process of growth in ourselves. The individual, emerges from childhood into adolescence, from adolescence into maturity; and at each of these crisis we find that the activities and interests of the old period are being replaced by those of the new, that Nature is preparing the organism for its new role in the world, is actually reconciling us to the new demands on us by showing us pleasures and rewards in the oncoming state which will replace those we must abandon.

Buckets

What's in your bucket?

What if each day of your life was captured in and represented by a bucket?

What would you find as you walked along a path lined with the buckets of your life? Full buckets or empty buckets? Would they contain contents you'd happily splash on others or sludge you'd rather others not know?

Would you find yourself often eager and excited to sit on the path and spill a bucket before you, lifting each item high, smiling, and holding it close to your heart?

Would you find yourself peering into buckets then looking about hoping no one else could see what you see in there?

Would you find empty buckets?

Would you find buckets overflowing?

Are your days represented by large buckets or small ones?

Are your buckets filled with people or things?

If someone else stumbled upon this path and only knew you by the contents of your buckets what picture would they draw of you?

What are the colors within the buckets? Are there colors at all, or shades? What's on the outside of the buckets, anything? What do the buckets of your life reflect?

It is true, they are your buckets and, in many ways, not there for the evaluation of others, but it is also true they are open for the consideration of all. It is also true that most paths will have some buckets filled and others spilled with both good and bad, sweet and sour, joy and sorrow, triumph and suffering.

There will be buckets empty, too.

What do you find in your buckets as you walk along the path of your life? Contents to share? Contents to hide? Contents you'd forgotten?

The buckets before you as you bend to rest today's bucket in its place on the path ... what of them?

With what do you hope to fill tomorrow's bucket so that one day when you walk this path again you'll find it and hold it with pleasure? What brings you lasting pleasure and how much of it do you find in these buckets?

The path itself, what does it look like? Neat and trimmed, littered and lonely, winding with hills, well lit or dim?

What's in your buckets and where do you keep them and with whom do you share them?

Is this a path that tells your true story, the story you imagined, the story you planned, a story at all?

What's in your buckets?

The Young Boy, The Rattlesnake, The Path, The Journey

Once upon a time there was a young boy, a young Native American Indian boy, and in his tribe the custom was to send the young men out into the wilderness at the age of fifteen to fend for themselves. So, the young man, he set off on his journey, and after thirty days all the men in the tribe would come and find him in the wilderness and bring him back and initiate him into the tribe … into full adulthood.

So, he began to wander in the wilderness and for the first few days there were no problems, there was plenty of food. There were no wild animals, and he found comfortable places to sleep … and everything, for the most part, was fine … but about the sixth or the seventh day food became scarce … and on the eighth day, the young man, he found no food at all and he went to bed hungry that night. On the ninth day he found no food, either, … and the tenth, and the eleventh, and the twelfth, … and on the thirteenth day, when he hadn’t eaten for several days he was starving … and he came to a mountain … and he looked up the mountain and he thought to himself, “Perhaps if I wander up that mountain, somewhere on the mountain, I will find some food”.

So, the boy began to wander up the mountain, and as he wandered up the mountain he discovered a path and he began to follow the path to the top of the mountain.

As he got to the top of the mountain he still had found no food. So, he became a little discouraged and right towards the summit of the mountain a rattlesnake came across the path in front of him. The boy saw the rattlesnake and the rattlesnake saw the boy. They stood head to head and stared at each other for a long moment and then the snake said to the boy,

Resolutions and Resolve

Did you make any resolutions?

Here's a story about a little boy and his dad.

Little boy says "Dad, there were three frogs sitting on a branch in a pond. One decides to jump off. How many are left?"

The father thinks for a moment and says "Two".

The little boy frowns.

"No, you're not listening," he says, "there are three frogs on a branch in a pond, one decides to jump off ... how many are left?"

The father thinks for a moment and smiles, "Oh, I get it. If one jumps off they all fall off ... so zero are left".

The little boy shakes his head, "No," he says "there are three left ... the one only decided, he didn't actually do it".

To what have you resolved?