If you go to an apple orchard to pick fresh apples, you are looking for the best, tastiest and juiciest apples. To you the value is in the quality of the fruit. To the apple farmer, however, the value is not in the fruit but rather in the roots. The farmer knows that without strong and solid roots, there will be no apples. Often we think the value of our life or business is the ‘fruit’ – the current deal, client, relationship, weight loss, etc., but we forget to really focus on the ‘roots’ of our life and business. The fruit, although tasty, is the result of having a strong foundation and without that foundation no results can be possible or sustainable. This week focus on your roots –

Imagine there is a bank, which credits your account each morning with $86,400. However carries over no balance from day to day, allows you to keep no cash balance, and every evening cancels whatever part of the amount you had failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent every day, of course! Well, everyone has such a bank. Its name is Time. Every morning, this bank credits you 86,400 seconds and every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the records of the day. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the l

A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they were eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging the washing outside. “That laundry is not very clean; she doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.” Her husband looked on, remaining silent. Every time her neighbor hung her washing out to dry, the young woman made the same comments. A month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband, “Look, she’s finally learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this?” The husband replied, “I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.” I love this story as I think it re

A crow lived in the forest and was absolutely satisfied in life. But one day he saw a swan. “This swan is so graceful,” he thought, “This swan must be the happiest bird in the world.” He expressed his thoughts to the swan. “Actually,” the swan replied, “I was feeling that I was the happiest bird around until I saw a parrot, which has two colors. I now think the parrot is the happiest bird in creation.” The crow then approached the parrot. The parrot explained, “I lived a very happy life until I saw a peacock. I have only two colors, but the peacock has multiple colors.” The crow then visited a peacock in the zoo and saw that hundreds of people had gathered to see him. After the people had l

The snake is a very interesting creature. Many are not fond of them, but regardless they are fascinating. One thing about the snake that intrigues me is their ability to grow and shed their skin. For a snake this is not only important, but necessary to survive. Several times a year, the snake must go through this process. It can take days, it can be uncomfortable and I am sure a bit annoying ( ok no snake has ever told me this personally…but I imagine it to be so). Yet if it doesn’t do this, it will die. We also go through this process, however in a different way. Our personal growth and development is much like the snake. In order to expand who we are and become more we must grow pas