Shake It Off and Step Up!

Have you ever felt like you’re trapped in a well and life is just shoveling dirt on top of you? So did this donkey, but he just shook it off and stepped up!

Once upon a time, there was a donkey.

It was a stupid, stubborn old donkey and even the farmer who owned it didn’t like him.

The farmer owned a large property and one day he heard in the distance the loud, distinctive “eye-ore, eye-ore” of the donkey.  He wondered what the stupid donkey had done now, so he looked all over his property until at last he found the animal at the bottom of an old abandoned well.

Exasperated, the farmer rang his neighbors and asked them each to bring a shovel.  He’d had enough of the stupid donkey, so he had decided to bury it in the well.

All of his friends came over and together they started to shovel dirt into the well.  At first, the donkey protested loudly, braying with all of his might, but after about 10 minutes, he stopped.

The farmers kept shoveling.

After a while, someone decided to have a look into the well to see what had happened to the donkey.  What he saw astonished him.

Instead of being buried, the donkey would shake off the incoming dirt, standing on the ever-increasing mound.

Now the mission changed and the farmers went from trying to bury the donkey to trying to save him, shoveling more and more dirt into the abandoned well until the donkey jumped out of the top victorious.

Upon his release, the farmers all dropped their shovels and applauded the old stubborn beast with a newfound admiration.

Life is always going to shovel dirt on you at some point. You may feel like you’re at the bottom of a well and it’s coming quicker than you know what to do. Taking real action and shaking the “dirt” off is the first step towards moving on. Learn from the “dirt” and use it as stepping stones to bigger and better things.

Don’t just take it and get buried, shake it off and STEP UP!

What are you going to shake off and use as stepping stones in the coming year? Leave a comment below.