Imagine you buy a green apple. Can you see it in your mind screen? Fresh, looks tasty and wonderful… Don’t eat it!
Let’s suppose you just forgot it in a bag you seldom use. After many weeks, you get out the bag again
and you find the same apple still there…
What do you see now?
It is probably gone brown and rotten, and you can’t
imagine how you even wanted to eat it!
When something happens, there is a tendency to hold on
to it somewhere in our mind and heart. In
fact, if that is good, just like the example of a green apple, after a time it
becomes bad too and for some reason, people keep going over the same bad
situations again and again, more than with good things.
As time passes by, it poisons the personality and the
mind creates a habit of thinking negatively.
A leader however doesn’t store the ‘apples’ of situations in this
way. How? Although it is not possible, or at least very
difficult, to prevent bad circumstances to take place, leaders approach it
differently.
First of all a leader wouldn’t let an apple like that
remain uneaten. Eat the apple is a metaphor to accept all situations in life and to
deal with them instead of postponing decisions.
Sometimes apples are sweet and you eat them raw, other times you have to
cook them, so they taste better; no matter what, the sooner you deal with it,
the easier it will be, and a leader knows it.
Second, a leader will be able to do something with the
situation, so that acceptance does not turn into a synonym for suffering. To learn lessons, to develop other aspects of
personality and to enjoy positive company are some of the possibilities related
on how to eat the bitter apples life gives us.
Third, a leader will keep his or her heart clean and
open to new experiences, so that no
rotten apples are left in the bag. Many
more things will come in the future and this attitude will help the leader to
be light and to face circumstances in a better way, open to new ‘apples’ yet to
come.
(Excerpt from the book 82 Reasons to be a
Leader)
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