This evening I went online and the leading story on my yahoo home page was “Pain Street USA: ’08 housing outlook”. It was just another of those doom and gloom real estate stories that we have all heard 1000 times before. As a real estate salesperson, I realize that these articles and news stories can really play a number on our mindset. I mean if they keep dishing it out, then some of us might actually start to believe that we are limited by the market. We might believe that our income can not grow because of this market we have.
I’ve got to admit that after reading this one particular article I actually began to doubt myself for about 30 or 40 seconds. Fortunately, I quickly remembered a story once told by Earl Nightingale titled “Pumpkin in a Jug”. As soon as recalled that story I re-comitted to myself that I would never allow the media to be my jug and I would never allow outside influences determine my level of success or my level of failure.
For those of you that have never read the story, here it is:
“Pumpkin In a Jug” retold by Earl Nightingale
In the fall when the leaves are turning, a chill is in the air and roadside merchants offer fall apples, squash and pumpkins, I am reminded of the farmer who was walking through his pumpkin patch early in the growing season, and while walking near the road that ran by his farm, he found a one-gallon glass jug that some motorist had tossed into his field. He stood looking at the jug for a few moments, and then for no particularly good reason, he poked a small pumpkin into the jug without damaging the vine.
Later when the pumpkins were full grown and were being picked and stacked, he came across the jug again, this time completely filled with the pumpkin he’d poked inside. The pumpkin had filled the jug completely, and had stopped growing; it was the size and shape of the jug. The farmer took that pumpkin in the jug home and put it on his front porch as a curiosity.
A few days later their son and his wife came to the farm for dinner. They examined the pumpkin in the jug, and after looking at it in silence for a while, the son asked if he could take it to the local college where he taught psychology. “Sure, take it,” his father said. “But what are you going to do with it?” “I’m going to show it to my class and remind them that that’s what happens to things that get poked into pre-determined spaces. That pumpkin, never got the chance to reach its full growth, whatever that might have been, because it had been poked into pre-determined limit. Someone had decided what the shape and size of that pumpkin was going to be, and it didn’t have any choice in the matter. I want my students to learn a lesson from that pumpkin in a jug. We cannot outgrow the limitations we place on ourselves, or the limits determined by others – if we go along with them – so I want them to understand that if they find themselves, as adults, living in cramped circumstances in their work or any other area of their lives, it was they who did the poking – it’s their responsibility. That pumpkin is a good argument for the importance of education.”
Neither the farmer nor his wife had looked at the pumpkin in the jug in just that way, but they thought it could provide a good example. And it did. After the story got out just about every student in the university came to take a look at it and retell the story the young assistant professor had told. And I suppose most of them realized then that if we wind up in spaces too small – if we don’t grow to our full stature – it’s because we made the decision to stop and not grow any further – it was our decision. It was because we poked ourselves into a predetermined space. People are responsible for their own lives. If they have the power to limit their growth in someway, they also have the power to break through those limitations and grow again. It takes courage to chart our own courses and choose the higher plateaus of achievement and reward. Courage is what keeps us moving ahead in spite of despair. If you feel you are being held back in life – – why don’t you let go of yourself? Don’t be like the farmer who poked a sprouting pumpkin into a one gallon jug – – after it filled the jug, it couldn’t grow any more. Almost all of our limitations are self-imposed. And most of us have a tendency to poke ourselves into jugs that are too small.
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