BUS 110 W8 Reflection

    Overcoming challenges. Ugh. When I read or hear this phrase, I just want to go back to bed and read a good book while ignoring said challenges. Don't get me wrong - I can overcome challenges, I just don' wanna (read that in the most 2-year-old pouty voice you can imagine, complete with foot stomp). 

    The book we are reading these next few weeks is titled, A Field Guide for the Hero's Journey We actually started on chapters 5,6, and 8 so we can read more on overcoming obstacles and facing dragons. There were a few stories that stood out to me, the first being a story about a king who puts a stone in the major road and waits to see how his people deal with it. The whole town spends the day cursing the stone as they worked around it, but in the middle of the night, a young man stops and thinks about how this stone can affect other people and moves the stone away. He is rewarded with a bag of gold for his trouble but continues to work hard for the rest of his life because he enjoys the challenge. 

    I love this story because it is something that I am trying to teach my children - to stop and think about how you can improve the situation for yourself and others. This is such a difficult thing to teach because we are naturally selfish people. To stop and think about how others are affected can feel like a disservice to yourself. What we have to remember is that service blesses those doing the service as well as those who receive the service. 

   I will leave you with this quote by Theodore Roosevelt "It is hard to fail, but it is worse to never have tried to succeed. In this life, we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been some stored up effort in the past." 

    It is worth putting in the effort to overcome the challenge - you can read the book later.