Hello there, Alex here again.
You know as I was saying earlier I’ve got a whole bunch of wisdom from beyond the grave and my dear daddy told me another story and I thought this was pretty amazing.
And the story he told me, first of all, here’s a question for you. How many of you would like to get along with everybody? And I said this to a group of students one time and three, four hands went up. And then I said, how many of you would like to get everything you ever wanted in life? And all the hands went up. And my comment to them was, in order for you to do that you need to learn to get along with people.
So here’s a little story that really impacted me. There was this little boy who used to get angry all the time. He used to get very, very angry and his father didn’t know what to do with him. So one day he came in with a bag of nails and a hammer and he said to his son, son, I want you to take this bag of nails and every time you get angry you need to hammer the nails into this fence in the backyard, the wooden fence.
So the first day the son went out there and he hammered 13 nails into the wall, to the fence. And the next day he hammered in 10 of them and so on and so on, and every day there was less and less.
Eventually the whole bag of nails was gone, because the father said, when you learn not to be angry anymore, that’s when you’re finished with all the nails.
So the son came back and a month went by and he said to his dad, dad, I’m so excited, I learned not to be angry anymore. I think I’m cured, I think I’m feeling better, I think I can get along with people and I’m very excited. And the father said, that’s fantastic, son, but I just want you to do something else. What I’d like you to do is I’d like you to take the hammer and go out there. And what I want you to do is for every day you continue to not be angry, I want you to pull one nail out of the fence.
So quite a bit of time went by and every day the son wasn’t angry, he went out there pulled one nail out. Finally, he came back and he said, daddy, daddy, I think it’s fantastic. I am no longer angry, I learned to control my temper and it’s all done. And the father said, well son, I want to show you something.
And his father walked the son up to the fence and as the son looked at the fence, there were all these holes in the fence and the father said, you know son, sometimes when we get angry we say things or we do things that hurt other people. And even though we think we took it back or we controlled it or we took care of it, it still leaves an impression like the holes that are in that fence and you can never take them back. So son, be careful of what you say and how you treat people because it’s going to be making an impact and you just can’t cover it up, you can’t get rid of it.
So when he told me that story, I started to understand about my temperament, I started to understand how I interact and treat people. And you know something? It helped me over the years because I think about that message, I’ve been thinking about that message for over 60 years, because that’s when I heard it, about 60 years ago. And the impact it made for me and it helped me.
I hope that it’s gonna help you to control your temper, your attitude, control the interaction with people and you become a more effective communicator so that you can actually succeed in a high level and build a really good network of people that you get along with.
Anyways, that’s some more wisdom from beyond the grave from my great daddy. Thanks, looking forward to talking to you again.
