The 3 Word Journal

  When things get really hard, I often recall an experience I had while attending college many years ago in Idaho.  Because of a slight money shortage, my roommates and I got jobs in a potato cellar during harvest time.  Our job was to take a large pitch fork and shovel about 35 pounds of potatoes at a time onto a conveyor belt.  What seemed to be a simple task soon became almost overwhelming.  Within 30 minutes we were breathing hard, and within four hours one of my roommates had already quit.  Two days later the rest had quit.  I continued for two reasons.  One was the fact that I was broke!  The other was that across the mounds of potatoes from me was a man about 70 years old working the same job.  The only thing that kept me going the first few days was this man. 

 By the third day my arms were so sore that I could hardly lift them, and my back ached.  But every time I wanted to quit, I looked to the older man’s example and thought, “There is no way I am going to let this old man get the best of me,” and I kept shoveling.  Although he never said a word to me, his example got me through this trial. I soon learned a great lesson from that experience.  I found the more I shoveled those potatoes, the greater my capacity became to accomplish my task. 

 With time I could shovel potatoes for hours without aching all over. In fact, I became so good at my job that I could beat the old man’s production quite easily. The supervisors were so impressed that they gave me a raise, although the pay remained the same.  My raise was from shoveling 35 pounds with a pitch fork to dragging 100-pound sacks from the conveyor belt to the storage rooms.  So, it was a raise in weight instead of in pay.  I quickly found out what real work was. I was amazed how many potatoes we processed and how good I felt about our daily accomplishments. 

Lessons Learned:
• Achievers work long and hard
• Everyone needs an example to follow 
• That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do over time
• Remembering past experiences can help us with present situations
• When things get really hard, most people quit
• I always feel better about myself when I work hard