Thursday, September 29, 2011

It's All About Doing What it Takes to Increase Your Quality of Life



An unemployed man is desperate to support his family of a wife and three kids. He applies for a janitor's job at a large firm and easily passes an aptitude test.

The human resources manager tells him, 'You will be hired at minimum wage of $5.35 an hour. Let me have your e-mail address so that we can get you in the loop. Our system will automatically e-mail you all the forms and advise you when to start and where to report on your first day.' Taken aback, the man protests that he is poor and has neither a computer nor an e-mail address.

To this the manager replies, 'You must understand that to a company like ours that means that you virtually do not exist. Without an e-mail address you can hardly expect to be employed by a high-tech firm. So, Good Day.'

Stunned, the man leaves not knowing where to turn and having $10 in his wallet, he walks past a farmers' market and sees a stand selling 25 lb. crates of beautiful red tomatoes. He buys a crate, carries it to a busy corner and displays the tomatoes. In less than 2 hours he sells all the tomatoes and makes 100% profit. Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost $100 and arrives home that night with several bags of groceries for his family.

During the night he decides to repeat the tomato business the next day. By the end of the week he is getting up early every day and working into the night. He multiplies his profits quickly.

Early in the second week he acquires a cart to transport several boxes of tomatoes at a time, but before a month is up he sells the cart to buy a broken-down pickup truck.

At the end of a year he owns three old trucks. His two sons have left their neighborhood gangs to help him with the tomato business, his wife is buying the tomatoes, and his daughter is taking night courses at the community college so she can keep books for him.

By the end of the second year he has a dozen very nice used trucks and employs fifteen previously unemployed people, all selling tomatoes. He continues to work hard.


Time passes and at the end of the fifth year he owns a fleet of nice trucks and a warehouse that his wife supervises, plus two tomato farms that the boys manage. The tomato company's payroll has put hundreds of homeless and jobless people to work. His daughter reports that the business grossed over one million dollars.


Planning for the future, he decides to buy some life insurance.


Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances. Then the adviser asks him for his e-mail address in order to send the final documents electronically.


When the man replies that he doesn't have time to mess with a computer and has no e-mail address, the insurance man is stunned, 'What, you don't have e-mail? No computer? No Internet? Just think where you would be today if you'd had all of that five years ago!'


"Ha!", snorts the man. "If I'd had email five years ago I would be sweeping floors at a hi-tech firm and making $5.35 an hour."









Monday, September 19, 2011

The Black Door



Several generations ago, during on of the most turbulent of the desert wars in the Middle East, a spy was captured and sentenced to death by a general of the Persian army. The general, a man of intelligence and compassion, had adopted a strange and unusual custom in such cases. He permitted the condemned person to make a choice.

The Prisoner could either face the firing squad or pass through the Black Door.

As the moment of the execution drew near, the general ordered the spy to be brought before him for a short final interview. The primary purpose of which was to receive the answer of the doomed man to the query: "What shall it be - the firing squad or the Black Door?"

This was not an easy decision and the prisoner hesitated, but soon made it known that he much preferred the firing squad to the unknown horrors that might wait for him behind the ominous and mysterious door. Not long thereafter a volley of shots in the courtyard announced that the grim sentence had been fulfilled.

The general, staring at his bots, turned to his aide and said, "You see how it is with men; they will always prefer the know way of the unknown. It is characteristic of people to be afraid of the undefined. Yet I gave him his choice."

"What lies beyond the Black Door?" asked the aide.

"Freedom," replied the general, "and I've known only a few men brave enough to take it."