The Poodle and The Bulldog

Hi friends,

Its been pretty eventful during these past few weeks that I’ve been away. Many daunting issues came up but with sheer toughness and a conviction that I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me, I turned them around to be a piece of cake.

I won’t go into the real story now but I want to share with you all, the mindset with which I confronted the issues. The events remind me of the story of a poodle and a bulldog that got into an argument. They squabbled ceaselessly about which of them possessed superior strength and mental acumen until they decided to go into a contest. The competition was to test which of them could more speedily open their owner’s front door and get in.

And so they set out to execute this task. The bulldog went first. He stood on his two hind legs and leveraged on his size to place his fore limbs on the door handle and pulled and pulled. He did this for several hours but clumsily, his forelimbs would always slip off at the last moment and he would begin afresh. At long last, he gave up.

Very quickly, the dainty poodle scampered over to the door and scratched discreetly on the door. Moments later, the door opened and the owner of the dogs came out, bent down and scooped the poodle into her arms. When she straightened up, she beckoned on the bulldog to come on and step into the house too. Take a few seconds and imagine the smirk of satisfaction on the poodle’s dogface as she gloated in her triumph over the bulldog.

I took away several lessons from this simple story but the most profound is that physical size and strength are not always synonymous. Especially in this age and time, those who emerge tops are not usually defined by their physical strength but by their intellectual prowess. Others lessons are delineated below:

-    Always have the intellectual humility to bow to superior arguments.

-    Know your competitor’s weaknesses and capitalize on them.

-    The size of your head has nothing to do with neither the size nor the capacity of your brain. Your intellectual agility depends on how well you exercise your brain (by the way, human brains are similar in size and potentiality according to Dr Benjamin Carson).

-    Win the heart of your boss. Always deliver.

-    Build and nurture relationships. You will need them someday. The poodle sure knew how to do this.

-    Challenges are just that – challenges. Don’t fall back, give in or surrender to opposition when your self esteem is on the line.

In all, I’d say that the poodle had some balls. Interestingly, I found some other more poetic synonyms of balls. Take a look.

v       Chutzpah

v       Temerity

v       Impetus

v       Effrontery

v       Guts

v       Audaciousness

v       Audacity

v       Nerve

v       Impudence

v       Cheek

Incorporate some audaciousness in your dealings this week and tell me about it in the box below.

xoxo

abydarl