The other day I was reminded of a story and it's one of my favorites. Many of you have probably heard it before, but I want you to really think about how it relates to your life. Here it goes..... Once upon a time there was a farmer who had a deep well that no longer had any water and had long dried up. One day his donkey, (very clumsy donkey), managed to fall into the well. The farmer got the whole community to come together to think of ways to get the donkey out, but none of them could come up with anything. So they figured they might as well put the donkey out of his misery and bury it in the well, rather than let it starve and suffer. So the entire village grabbed shovels and started to throw dirt into the well. Dirt load after dirt load went into the well. After the dust settled, the farmer looked down into the well to see if the donkey had been buried and to his surprise, the donkey was perfectly fine. Not only that, the donkey was actually half way up the well! How did this happen? Turns out, as people shoveled dirt onto the donkey's back, he would simply shake it off. As he continued to shake, the dirt would settle to the well floor, which allowed the donkey to take a step up. Up and up he went with each shake of more dirt. The farmer and the community continued to dump in more dirt and sure enough, the donkey continued to get closer to the surface. Eventually, the donkey was able to step out of the well. So what's the moral of the story? The donkey could have just laid down, let himself be buried, and accepted his fate. But even though there was a heavy load on his back, he not only had the physical strength to temporarily carry the
weight, he had the mental strength to not let himself give up and continued to push until he reached his goal. There will be many times in our health and fitness journey where it feels as though the load we carry around is too much. Our body is tired, our mind is telling us to give up, but how you deal with these struggles is what will lead you to success or not. Will you lay down and let the dirt bury you, or will you stay strong, brush that dirt off, and continue to the top?