Tales My Mother Told Me...Tale 12: "Frog In The Well"

Illustration by Anthony Van Lam

Welcome to tales my mum told to me..

Tale 12 : "The frog in the well"

Also known as:

"Look up to the sky from the bottom of a well"

"The Frog in the Well" is one of the oldest Chinese idiom fables. It comes from a book called "Inquiry into Tao". It was written by Han Yu (768-824) a famous literati during the Tang Dynasty.

The very first time I learnt about this tale was when I was about 6 years old. I can still recall that time when I was young and ignorant. I did not want to learn anything new, I had "the I know syndrome".

So my mum decided to tell me this story, "The Frog in the Well". In fact the original title of the story was called "Look up at the sky from the bottom of a Well".

Here is the story...

Once upon a time, there lived a frog in an abandoned well. He had only seen the sky through the top of the well. Little Frog had never spent a moment of his life outside of the well.  Still he was quite satisfied with his life living inside the well.

One day, the frog saw a sea turtle pass by the well.  The old turtle was from the East Sea and the frog started to brag to the sea turtle with excitement.

The frog said proudly: "Look how comfortable my home is! I love it here! I am living with great ease and enjoying my life and happiness more than those crabs and bugs in the sea".

The frog also invited the sea turtle to come in and said: "Why don't you come into my well for a visit and find out for yourself".

The sea turtle was curious and wanted to check out the inside of the well.  However, the mouth of the well was too small and the turtle could not fit through.

The sea turtle took a few steps backwards and called out to the frog. "Have you ever seen the ocean? I love living in the ocean because I can see the boundless sky".

After hearing that, the frog at the bottom of the well was curious and astonished. He looked up at the sky and said to himself "Isn't the sky as big as the well?  Why did the sea turtle say the sky is boundless?

Albeit, the frog is happy and believed he was the best and smartest creature alive. According to him, the well was his kingdom. He knows only what he knows and assumes the sky is as big as his refuge.

Mum told me this  story because I was young  at the time and to show me that as a person I needed to keep my mind open, and never believe to believe I have learnt all that I needed to know.  Just like the frog in this story, he finally met an old turtle and began to discover more about himself and also a different way of thinking. As a human being some of us whose knowledge is so limited that we has no idea about anything aside from our own world. This idiom serves as a metaphor for proud people with narrow outlooks and limited experiences.

So how do we apply this idiom story to your life and business?

• Hiding inside your surroundings (comfort zone) is one way from stopping you from learning and growing. It prevents you from experiencing anything different, fun, quirky, unique or challenging. Facing your fears can be tricky and if you are conquering your fear you will excel. Isn't this what our life is all about? Your business should not be any different.
• Get yourself uncomfortable by stepping outside your comfort zone. Becoming uncomfortable means challenging your skills. Do activities outside your character or finding answers that question your beliefs! For example, the hottest topic at the moment is Social media. Instead of building up negative connotations about it, how about learning more about how it works and how you can leverage it and apply it to your business.
• Get rid of the "I know" syndrome. All it does is limit your thinking and learning. People will not share their knowledge with you because you have sent out the "I know" signal. Also once you have made up your mind that you know it all, as a person you will not look for things or opportunities to learn and grow.
• Have an open mind. Be a sponge and suck up all the knowledge you have learnt and apply it to your life and business.

So what is the benefit of breaking out of your comfort zone?

• Your Growth- As a person we want to see ourselves advance and grow to the next level. You'll become a better person. Putting yourself on the chorus line will give you new experiences and to learn more about yourself and what you will and won’t do.
• Competence and Confidence- Facing your fears and the unknown will take lots of learning and practicing. This is how you build your competency by training yourself with new experiences, new skills or systems and once you can  understand the whole process you will build up the confidence to apply it into your Business LifeStyle.
• Pride in what you do- Just say you step out of your comfort zone and your experience was a letdown. Do you realise that this is how we learn in life… through experiences? You will feel great as you have now overcome your own fear factor. That is a good reason to celebrate.
• Fun - get some fun and adventure into your life and business. By adding fun activities will spice up your Business LifeStyle so you can never be bored. It breaks up the monotony of your day to day too.

So I hope you enjoyed this last tale of Tales my mum told me volume 1. Each volume has 12 stories. Each story I share with you is from what  my mum told me as I was growing up and how I have applied each of them  in my Business LifeStyle. Now I would like to share these tales with you .

Once again, thanks for visiting our blog and please come back as we will be jammed pack full of business tips to help you move forward with your Business LifeStyle.

More Tales My Mother Told Me...

Volume 1:

Tale 1: "When You Help One, You Help Thousands"

Tale 2: "Your Mind is Powerful"

Tale 3: "The Importance of Self Understanding"

Tale 4: "Being Compassionate"

Tale 5: "Finding the Inner Calmer In You"

Tale 6: "The Magic Pen"

Tale 7: "Here comes the Fair- Weather Friend"

Tale 8: "Confidence & Competence"

Tale 9:"Being Present"

Tale10: "Chicken scratches for what it gets"

Tale 11:"I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done"
Tale 12: "Frog In The Well"

Volume 2:

Tale 1: Pulling Up the seedlings to help them grow
Tale 2: Grind an Iron Pestle into a Needle

Tale 3: Talking about army on paper.

Tale 4: Being Persistent

Tale 5: A Poet’s Writing Skills Decline

Tales My Mother Told Me...Tale 11 "I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done"

Welcome to Tales My Mother Told Me...

Tale 11: "I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done" - Buddha

I always do my best to remember this quote from Buddha, particularly when I get snowed under, or overwhelmed with work.

This quote always brings me back to reality.

Let me tell you why...

Fifteen years ago we owned a small chain of furniture and homeware stores in Sydney.

The business was demanding on many levels, with plenty of pressure. We were constantly busy with co-ordinating the furniture production on the manufacturing side of the business, along with selling the furniture in our retail stores. And then of course, there was the furniture delivery service too.

It was non stop.

We were very lucky to have the support of my parents at the time. Mainly moral support, but they certainly played a critical mentoring role.

My parents, particularly Mum, were great, full of encouragement, and they kept us focused too.

I can clearly remember one particular day. It was a one of those days where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong... You know those days...

On this day we were expecting a huge delivery of furniture from the factory, and of course, it was well and truly late.

Worse, because the factory was rushing to mean the deadline, the entire shipment that arrived was badly finished.

To say that I was very disappointed was an understatement. And stressed!

We were due to commence delivering to our customers within the hour. Our delivery drivers were waiting, and already on the clock.

Looking at the furniture, there were fifteen pieces of furniture that needed to be retouched, I totally lost it...

I started to yell and complain about the state of the furniture. "This is crazy Mum, we have to retouch the lot, all fifteen pieces, and we don't have time!" I yelled. "Look at the dispatch area! It's full of deliveries! We are so far behind with the delivery schedule, we'll never be able to deliver any of this on time!"

In a very calm tone my Mother asked me, "So Son, which piece of furniture shall we get done first?"

Now I know my Mum was deliberately ignoring my yelling, my stress, and my out of control sense of urgency, but that didn't stop my tirade. Everything spilled out at that point. All the things I still needed to do. All the things that were going wrong. All the things that other people had done wrong. All the things that I knew were going to happen now that everything had gone so wrong...

I'm not sure how long I was whinging and complaining for. Quite a while I imagine.

And all through that time my Mum was amazing.

Looking back on that day I can recognise that Mum felt all those stresses and worries too. And on top of that, she was subjected to all of my stresses and fears as well.

But here's the difference...

My Mother chose not to be in the same emotional state that I was in.

This was what she said that brought me back to my senses. "My little one, at this moment don't worry about what has been done. I understand that you are very upset because of what the factory has delivered today. We can deal with the factory latter. What we need to focus on right now is how to get the rest of delivery out to the customers' home. So keep calm, and focus on what really matters... what remains to be done".

On that day she knew what needed to be done to get us out of trouble. She never focused on what had been done, she only saw what really remained to be done. Mum was right about the delivery too. Although our delivery was running late we managed to inform all our customers about the delay and they were quite understanding. And we did complete all the delivery runs on the day, late, but everyone received thier furniture.

So that was my story about the quote. Now I would like to share with you how this quote  has changed my way of thinking, and how I run our business. You can apply these tips into your own business too of course.

Here are some of the tips:

Don't make excuses or keep complaining about things that block the way in your life and business. Instead, find solutions to the problem and fix them.

The amount of time we spent on making excuses, complaining and whinging could better off invested into solving the problem. Whinging and complaining are time wasters, and they definitely won't move you forward to achieve your goals and dreams.

As your own boss no one's there to hold you accountable except yourself. Sometimes it's easy to procrastinate and not to follow through all the important tasks in your business.

So have a list of things to do each day that will keep you on track for what you are trying to achieve.

Set regular purpose goals and review each one regularly.

Plan your 90 days activities planner so you know which task to focus on.

Be honest with yourself by acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses. Know where you are and own the situation. Ask for help too.

Focus on the "NOW". Don't delve on the past. 

Once you do this you will embrace changes to your life and business and will be looking for solutions, or getting people to help you with your business.

Tune in for next week the finale tale  Series 1...  "Frog In The Well"

More Tales My Mother Told Me...

Volume 1:

Tale 1: "When You Help One, You Help Thousands"

Tale 2: "Your Mind is Powerful"

Tale 3: "The Importance of Self Understanding"

Tale 4: "Being Compassionate"

Tale 5: "Finding the Inner Calmer In You"

Tale 6: "The Magic Pen"

Tale 7: "Here comes the Fair- Weather Friend"

Tale 8: "Confidence & Competence"

Tale 9:"Being Present"

Tale10: "Chicken scratches for what it gets"

Tale 11:"I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done"
Tale 12: "Frog In The Well"

Volume 2:

Tale 1: Pulling Up the seedlings to help them grow
Tale 2: Grind an Iron Pestle into a Needle

Tale 3: Talking about army on paper.

Tale 4: Being Persistent

Tale 5: A Poet’s Writing Skills Decline

Tales My Mother Told Me... Tale 10 "Chicken scratches for what it gets"

Rooster, Hen and Chicks

Welcome to tales my Mum told me...

Tale 10: "Chicken Scratches For What It Gets"

This tale took place when I was 12 years old. We were living in a refugee camp on one of the Indonesian islands called Galang after our departure from our homeland Vietnam. I guessed at the time everyone who lived in the camp were all hoping one day their names would be called out through the announcement  so that we could resettle in a  new country like Australia, USA or some other European country. We used to call these countries "The new home of opportunities and freedom". 

While we were in the camp my parents met this little old lady and she was a clairvoyant of some kind and she offered to do a reading on Dad.  This old lady had an old thick book with lots of illustrations just like the one shown here. This book was quite old, and even now, I have not seen anything like it. Mum and Dad called this reading process as "The open book reading". 

How this book worked was that the old lady recited some quotes and she asked Dad for his date of birth and what Dads intention was to find out from the reading. Then she closed the book, asked Dad to close his eyes, to focus and to be present so as to get the connection with the book. He then had to flick through the pages of the book and open it. So when Dad opened the book, it  landed on a double page with a scene of a rooster, a hen and the chicks scratching along the soil for food with a quote "Chicken scratches for what it gets"

So I asked mum "What was the meaning behind the rooster, the hen and the chicks?"

"Well in the illustration, the rooster is your Dad, I am the hen and those little chicks are you and your brothers & sisters” Mum said.

"And...?" I asked anxiously.

"Your dad will take care of us when we settle in Australia and he will provide for us with food and a home just like the rooster did, leading the way and searching for food to take care of its family. The key message from the reading was your dad is a survivor and a hard worker. You can put your dad in any place and he will find ways to earn a living and to support us. We are his main priority. Just like the rooster you can put it in deserted places and he'll use the scratching method to uncover "buried treasures" from the soil such as bugs and small food bits that other chickens may have missed" explained my mother.

So how do we apply this quote "Chicken scratches for what it gets" into your business?

Let's have a look at several examples:

Just say if you are a wholesaler of a giftware business and you rely on your sales agents. A good sales agent would regularly visit his or her clients and build the relationship no matter whether the economy is booming or not. Just like a chicken, it needs to do its fair amount of scratching in order to find food to save him and its family from hunger. So in your business, it won't be in good shape if you're not prepared to do the hard yards and generate leads and sales opportunities. You too must do a certain of amount scratching. The more you scratch…the more you get in return.

If the sales agents are not hungry for sales then they will miss the sales opportunity to an active sales agent who is prepared to do a great amount of scratching. This agent will reap the sales and establish a closer relationship with his clients.

The second example is as a business owner you need to maintain a positive mindset with persistence and determination.  Just like the chickens, they are focused, they persevere and are determined. They know that the only way for them to find food is by doing a certain amount of scratching and they won't give up until they find food bits in the soil and if they pay more attention they will find more food than those chickens that were not as determined and focused.

Last example is as a business owner, sometimes we can get too comfortable and complacent. Our business could go into auto pilot where we focus only "in" our business and not doing the strategy planning such as working "on" and "above" our business. 

A business needs to be nurtured and consistently fine tuned. Working "in" your business is a given, this is where you make your products, create new ranges, see clients and generate sales. However working "on" and "above" your business are the two important ingredients that lots of business owners are not doing enough of. Working "on" is where you plan to grow your business and working "above" your business will help you to take your business to the next level. Sometimes we spend too much time working "in" our business and working hard like a donkey that we totally forget the reason why we wanted our own business in the first place. This is how working "above" your business will help you tune into your desire and passion so you can be on track to achieve your dreams and desires.

So my question to you is "Are you doing enough scratching in your business?"

Tune in for next week Tale Eleven...  

"I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done" - Buddha

More Tales My Mother Told Me...

Volume 1:

Tale 1: "When You Help One, You Help Thousands"

Tale 2: "Your Mind is Powerful"

Tale 3: "The Importance of Self Understanding"

Tale 4: "Being Compassionate"

Tale 5: "Finding the Inner Calmer In You"

Tale 6: "The Magic Pen"

Tale 7: "Here comes the Fair- Weather Friend"

Tale 8: "Confidence & Competence"

Tale 9:"Being Present"

Tale10: "Chicken scratches for what it gets"

Tale 11:"I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done"
Tale 12: "Frog In The Well"

Volume 2:

Tale 1: Pulling Up the seedlings to help them grow
Tale 2: Grind an Iron Pestle into a Needle

Tale 3: Talking about army on paper.

Tale 4: Being Persistent

Tale 5: A Poet’s Writing Skills Decline

Tell My Mother Told Me...Tale 9 "Being Present"

Welcome to Tales My Mother Told Me...

Tale 9 : "Being Present"

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, 

concentrate the mind on the present moment".
                                                          - Buddha

This tale came about when I was at a dinner party and it was one of those great dinner parties where you have the opportunity to reconnect with some old friends that you haven't seen for a while.  However, there was one aspect of the party I was quite disappointed at. So I decided to tell mum about it.

"Mum, I have this friend that I find really annoying and others agree too. I have to say he is not a close friend as such but we do meet up from time to time" I said with frustration.

"So what was it that he did that you find annoying?" asked my mum.

"Well, last night I was at a dinner party and  I was chatting with him and he asked me a question and  as I was trying to respond to his question he totally ignored my response and turned his head and started to chat with the other person sitting next to him. It was quite embarrassing and annoying as at the same time the other people at the table also noticed what was going on. One of my friends looked at me and rolled his eyes and said "He does it all the time, when he is not interested in a conversation". The most annoying part was when he decided to resume our conversation he did not bother to apologise and totally ignored the whole thing. Why does he bother asking me if he wasn’t interested?" I asked Mum.

Mum smiled and said "Sometimes people live with an absent mind and they are not present even when they are there with you but their minds have drifted to another place. Many people live their whole lives lost in thoughts of the yesterday and the tomorrow, the true meaning is we should live in the present moment everyday, this is where everything happens. Yesterday was the past, tomorrow is only a promise, today is when you can do something about it in order to have a brighter future. So, take action and be present and live in the present moment".

So you ask, what does being present have to do with running your business?

In fact, it has everything to do with it. Being present means being fully conscious of what's going on around you so you are able to participate in the opportunities that are presented to you. If you are not being present in what you do, you are not focused or clear with what you are attempting to achieve.

Sometimes, we are not present because we're not in it. We keep thinking of the past, what we should have done and so forth... or dreaming about future, like dreamers do. We put ourselves to believe that tomorrow's the day when we'll shine, be richer, be healthier and in a great loving relationship. All these are only wishes, all these will only come true if we  take  accountability and take action today. Today is the key to change, not yesterday nor tomorrow.

Being present takes lots of focus and practice. To do this you need to be engaged in that moment at that point in time and also by  really listening to your surroundings. If you are engaged in a conversation with someone, you need to be focused and be present and listening to what they saying. This is particularly hard when you are not present, your mind will fall in a trend of thoughts about other things such as what to wear for a special dinner or all the tasks you have yet to finish.

Does this sound familiar to you?

Are the thoughts that are running through your mind distract you and create a distance from the present situation? I have to say, guilty as charged!  What I am now trying to do is to be more aware so that I can be more “present” in each and every moment. Remember being present will take sometime to master, however, if there is a will then there is always a way!

Below are some tips to help you in being present in your business:

• Be the observer and look outside of your world. Invest in business books and read them to stimulate your mind and get inspired with new ideas.
• Listen to business audios, chat with like minded business owners, join business network groups to exchange ideas and build connections.
• Open your mind to the universe, let your thoughts flow and be less judgmental and this is how you can find inspirational sparks and great ideas.
• Taking time out of your business will do wonders. It will give you a fresh perspective to life and business. People who adopt this are much more focused and present in their business.
• "Me time" and "Refresh" are the best ways to relax your mind and rejuvenate your soul. Take time out for the gym, participate in yoga and meditation sessions will also help you in being present. Do whatever you feel will calm your mind and relax your body. We are all different so find an activity that will relax you and help find the inner peace in you.
• Cleanse your mind to gain new ideas that allow you and your creative business to grow  and for you to be present and engaged in your business.
• If you are present, you are constantly focusing on your sales and marketing leads and       continually developing new products, services and innovation ideas to growth your business
• When you find your mind distracted and puts you in the future or the past mode, just refocus your awareness back to the present. Really experience how you feel and what's happening around you, without judgment. If we can treasure each moment, your life will be abundant, no matter what you have accomplished.

Being present and achieving results in your business is so rewarding, not just financially but for your soul as well 

So are you present in your business?

Tune in for next week tale Ten...  "Chicken Scratches for What it gets "

More Tales My Mother Told Me...

Volume 1:

Tale 1: "When You Help One, You Help Thousands"

Tale 2: "Your Mind is Powerful"

Tale 3: "The Importance of Self Understanding"

Tale 4: "Being Compassionate"

Tale 5: "Finding the Inner Calmer In You"

Tale 6: "The Magic Pen"

Tale 7: "Here comes the Fair- Weather Friend"

Tale 8: "Confidence & Competence"

Tale 9:"Being Present"

Tale10: "Chicken scratches for what it gets"

Tale 11:"I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done"
Tale 12: "Frog In The Well"

Volume 2:

Tale 1: Pulling Up the seedlings to help them grow
Tale 2: Grind an Iron Pestle into a Needle

Tale 3: Talking about army on paper.

Tale 4: Being Persistent

Tale 5: A Poet’s Writing Skills Decline