Carrots, Eggs, and Coffee

I was recently reading two books by my favorite leadership guru, Dr. John C. Maxwell.  The books were, “How High Will You Climb?” and “Sometimes you Win, Sometimes you Learn“.  In one of those books there was a story about two people talking about adversity in their kitchen.  I’ll paraphrase:

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They put on three pots of water and starting them boiling.  The boiling water is adversity.

Into one pot they put carrots, the next eggs, the next some coffee grounds.  After talking for a few minutes they took these things out of the water to see how adversity affected them.

The carrots had lost their crunch and gone soft.  They fell apart when squeezed.

The eggs had turned hard.  The outer shell cracked under pressure and became sharp and spiky.

The coffee changed the water around it into a delicious and energizing drink.

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People are the same way in adversity.  Some go soft and are easily squished, others become hard and spiky towards others.  But some embrace their circumstances and change them into something better.

I must confess I am an egg more often than I am coffee, but reading Dr. Maxwell’s thoughts is causing me to pause and evaluate my responses to adversity this week.