“A man and his grandson are walking along a beach. Because of the change in tides, they find before them thousands of starfish that have washed up on shore. Since it was early in the day and the Sun was not yet high the grandfather realises, if the starfish stay on the beach, they will certainly die.
The grandfather begins picking up starfish one by one and throwing them into the ocean.
The grandson looks down the entire beach and says, “Grandpa, there are thousands of them! How can you even make a difference?!”
The grandfather picks up a starfish, shows it to his grandson.
“Today, for this starfish, I’m making all the difference” and throws it into the water.”
I simply LOVE this story! At the same time It is so simple and so powerful. I saw several different versions of it, but in essence they are all similar.
And like any parable or nice story, each person tends to take its own set of lessons or insights and I want to share mine with you.
The dynamic of life is in general much more complex than we normally think. We have constant ups and downs and our attitude tends to be directly affected by each of these moments.
We, human beings, tend to find justifications for anything we want to do or simply to avoid to do. Overall, we are quite good doing that!
We tend to use the “big picture” to undermine smaller actions. We, like the grandson from the story, tend to look to the whole extension of the beaches in front of us, where we see the overwhelming amount of tasks ahead and use it to justify doing nothing since we believe it will not make any difference.
I remember when a friend of mine told me how he spent small amount of time in a regular base teaching and advising a member of his team that use to have a good level of commitment, but no experience. After years, my friend was able to assume a higher position in the organization and one of the key enabling factors that allowed him to move upwards was the fact that he had someone fully capable to replace him! One starfish per day!
And what about that new language? Why not a couple of words a day? That book you want to write for years? Why not a page per day? Those ‘extra kilos’ you want to lose? Why not few grams per day?
This list can go on and on….
And here is where my insight lays down: We must monitor ourselves, especially our ‘decision process’ in order to avoid to be uniquely driven by the big picture.
Sometimes, if not most of it, we can see that it is possible to save several ‘starfishes’. Make some difference. And that can trigger more actions.
That can change someone's life, someone’s day or a project milestone.
Or it can simply allow you to take another step towards something such as learning a new language or a new skill. Despite how apparently ‘small’ that action may looks like when observed individually.
We may not change the whole situation, but it is important to make some difference even if that does not seem much at the first place. And that small change of attitude can be a ‘starfish’ in your own life and start to make the whole difference in the long run!
One ‘starfish’ at a time!
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