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There’s
a joke that’s been bouncing around on the Internet for the last few
years. It’s about a business
executive vacationing in Mexico. After
spending a day with a fisherman on a small boat, the executive sees that
this fishing operation is grossly underutilized, and proceeds to tell the
fisherman how he can boost productivity with more boats, and lots of
employees. "You can open
a big office and make much more money," he says.
When the fisherman asks what he would do with all the extra money,
the businessman tells him he can take a vacation with his family to a
beautiful tropical village and spend time fishing on a private boat.
To which the fisherman replies "this is how I spend every day
now."
We
have a tendency to create roundabout ways of working towards our goals.
To be fair, sometimes life’s more interesting this way---fishing
365 days a year can bore the crap out of some people.
But when we find ourselves overwhelmed by complexity yet
unfulfilled, there’s the very real option of following the metaphor of
the fisherman and going directly for what we want.
The key to doing this is to focus on aspiring (truly achieving
something) as opposed to acquiring (getting the goods and glory).
The fisherman’s goal is not to gain prestige, or even to catch
fish, it’s to be happy and spend time with his family.
From the purity of his aspiration flows a lifestyle that provides
for his needs on all levels, spiritually, mentally and physically. Each
one of us has this power, and we invoke it by putting our vanity aside
long enough to admit that all that sappy stuff, like happiness and
meaning, is important to us, and then going for it.
Aspiration is the secret shortcut to our desires on a most
fundamental level.
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