Carrots, Eggs or Coffee Beans… by Ela Erozan Gürsel

Carrots, Eggs or Coffee BeansWe are all back to work after a 9 day Eid holiday. Most of us are struggling to get adapted to our routine week schedule and workload. You might have been willing to remain in the flip flops that you wore at the beach last week and resist wearing the shoes of a corporate professional. Yes, change is tough… especially from leisure to hard work.

Let’s take a few moments to read a motivational story that might help us to get into the mood for this shoe change.

Imagine you have 3 pots with boiling water.

In the first pot, you put some carrots, in the second, a few eggs, and in the third, some coffee beans. You will boil all three pots for 15 minutes and take them out of water. Do you observe any change? What happened?

The carrots went in hard but they softened.

The eggs went in soft but they became hard inside.

The coffee beans have disappeared but the water has the color and the strong smell of coffee.

We can now make a comparison of these pots and boiling water with the problems we deal in life.

Life is not always easy or comfortable. We cope with difficulties, sicknesses, and failures many times. Although we cannot always prevent problems from occurring, we can decide on how to react to them and adopt a constructive approach. In other words, we can make the choice on whether we would like to be carrots, eggs or coffee beans.

We can choose to be carrots – We can soften and weaken with the difficulties we face despite our initial strong appearance. This will be misleading for people who trust us. They had given us responsibilities believing that we would complete them. Because we lose our perseverance along the way, we show that we’re not as strong as we appear.

We can choose to be eggs – As the problems arise, we can harden and become merciless. Although our nature is soft, we can be harsh and hard hearted towards others due to the hostile environment we belong to.
Finally, we can be coffee beans – Just as the coffee beans change the color of the water, we can impact our immediate environment. We can solve the problems, work towards healing diseases, act positive and enthusiastic in order to improve our surroundings. We can learn new things, acquire new skills and meet new people. As a coffee bean, one can more easily adopt to the changing environment and take part in this transformation.

Who do you want to be when things don’t go as planned?

Although you might have acted like carrots or eggs before, it is never too late to turn into coffee beans!


elaerozangurselEla Erozan Gürsel writes a weekly column named “Değişim Yelpazesi ” on global business trends for Dünya Gazetesi on behalf of Datassist for almost two years. Her feature topics include: green energy; climate change; impacts of financial crisis on companies, sectors and regions; innovative technologies in sciences, human resources and management; social networks transforming business and politics; changing dynamics of marketing and branding.

 

She also writes articles for international magazines published in Singapore.

Prior to her writing career, she worked at Datassist as a Project Manager in a project that combines human resources and mobile communications with the aim to connect blue-collar workers and employers through mobile phones. Before engaging in this exciting project, she was in pharmaceutical sales working for a multinational company. She graduated from American University, Washington, DC, majoring in International Studies with a concentration on International Business and Europe. She worked in Washington D.C. as an Account Manager at a boutique telemarketing firm that specializes in fund raising and publication renewals. She speaks Turkish, English, French, and Spanish. She currently resides in Singapore with her husband.

 

 

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