Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?

Let’s find out!

I had the opportunity to interview Canadian Real Estate personality, Russell Westcott in a recent episode of the Real Estate Investors’ Club Podcast. With twenty plus years experience in investing and in motivating and coaching others, this master of sound-bites and West Coast wisdom has some great nuggets for both the more- and less experienced.

I’m going to share one really meaningful one here.

(For the rest, you’ll have to actually watch or listen to the episode!)

Russell relates a little fable to make his point.

The story begins with a teenage boy who’s down about the vicissitudes of life in the COVID moment. He comes into his mom’s kitchen shoulders slumped and begins complaining about the slings and arrows he’s facing.

His mother tells him: “Son, I’m going to show you something. Get three pots of water.”

The woman puts the three pots of water on the stove.

Once they’re boiling, she instructs her son:

“Go get me some carrots, some eggs and some coffee beans.”

The boy does this, and she has him throw each ingredient in a separate pot of boiling water.

After ten minutes, the woman says: “Let’s see what happened to what’s in the pots!”

First, they look at the carrots.

“They went in hard, now they’re all soft and mushy,” says the boy.

“What about the eggs?” asks his mother.

“They went in soft on the inside, and they came out hard.”

“Now what about the coffee beans?” she asks.

“Oh coffee!” exclaims the boy. “I love coffee.”

“You see?” says his mother. “The coffee beans changed the environment. The other two let hot water change them! All three had the same stimulus: boiling water. But only the coffee beans changed the state of the water, instead of being changed.”

Concludes Russell: “Every day, you have a choice. You can let the pressure make you hard. You can let the pressure make you soft. Or you can change the environment. You choose what you want to be – a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean!”

For the rest of the interview, click here to Watch  or listen to the episode.