The Easy School of Hard Knocks

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Dan Gable in 1966 decided that he wanted to win the 1972 Olympic Games. So, he started training. He trained at least once a day, and usually twice a day, and he had very injured knees. One doctor said, “Dan, if you keep wrestling, you might be crippled for the rest of your life.” Dan Gable kept wrestling. He found that wrestling on one leg made him a better wrestler than wrestling on two legs. 

                          Las Wednesday, he talked about the year before the Olympics, he entered the biggest wrestling tournament in the world. Tbilisi is the capital in Georgia, and back at that time, it was still part of the Soviet Union.

                          So, they had this wrestling tournament, and Dan Gable won his weight class, and was given the Outstanding Wrestler Award. Now, wresting line Russia is huge, and at the end of their tournaments which are several day affairs, they had this banquet with 10,000 people where they honored all the champions, and they especially honored Dan Gable.

                          So, Dan Gable after he got all his awards, he went back to his table, and the head of the Russian Wrestling Federation is talking in Russian, and every once in a while he heard, “Goble, Goble, Goble.” He said to his buddy next to him who spoke Russian, “Is he talking about me?” He said, “Yes, he is.” He said, “What’s he saying?” He said, “I’ll tell you when he’s done.”

                          So, when the Head of the Russian Wrestling Federation was done, Gable’s friend said, “He said that between now and the 1972 Olympics, they’re going to every state in the Soviet Union, they are going to every school, they are going to every wrestling club, and they are going to find a person to beat the American Dan Gable in the 1972 Olympics.” 

                          Last week, Dan Gable said something awesome. He said, “When he told me that sentence, all of a sudden, I got this excitement in my body. I said, ‘I’m taking it to the next level.’”

                          Now, when I told this story to my class a couple of days ago, this kid put his hand up, he said, “Hey, Doctor Gilbert, there have been other Americans who have won gold medals in wrestling. Why you making such a big deal about Dan Gable?” I said, “You’re right. There are others wrestlers who have won more than one gold medal in Olympics, but Dan Gable did something that nobody in the history of the world ever did.”

                          When Dan Gable won his Olympic gold medal in 1972, nobody even scored one point on him. He shut out each and every one of his opponents. That would be the equivalent to a pitcher pitching three no-hitters in the World Series. So, Dan Gable shut out each and every one of them. 

                          Now, in the ramp up to the 1972 Olympics, he trained for six years, and somebody said, “What motivated you?” He said, “I knew I had to beat a Russian

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One day this expert was speaking to a group of business students and, to drive home a point, used an illustration I’m sure those students will never forget. After I share it with you, you’ll never forget it either.

As this man stood in front of the group of high-powered over-achievers he said, "Okay, time for a quiz." Then he pulled out a one-gallon, wide-mouthed mason jar and set it on a table in front of him. Then he produced about a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, into the jar.

When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, "Is this jar full?" Everyone in the class said, "Yes." Then he said, "Really?" He reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. Then he dumped some gravel in and shook the jar causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the spaces between the big rocks.

Then he smiled and asked the group once more, "Is the jar full?" By this time the class was onto him. "Probably not," one of them answered. "Good!" he replied. And he reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in and it went into all the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more he asked the question, "Is this jar full?"

"No!" the class shouted. Once again he said, "Good!" Then he grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it in until the jar was filled to the brim. Then he looked up at the class and asked, "What is the point of this illustration?"

One eager beaver raised his hand and said, "The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard, you can always fit some more things into it!"

"No," the speaker replied, "that’s not the point. The truth this illustration teaches us is: If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all."

What are the big rocks in your life? A project that you want to accomplish? Time with your loved ones? Your faith, your education, your finances? A cause? Teaching or mentoring others? Remember to put these Big Rocks in first or you’ll never get them in at all.

Once upon a time there was a seed buried in the mud.

It was in dark blackness. It was cold and wet. It shivered. It was just plain no fun.

It was icky. It was dirty. It was muddy. It was mucky. It was stuck in the mud.

How it got there is a little 3 sentence story.

One nice breezy Fall day, it had fallen on the ground. Then it rained a little. And a deer came along and stepped on it and pushed it deep in the mud.

Life just wasn't fair. It was all alone. If only it had fallen like the other seeds in the grass, or on the log over there, or at least not been stepped on.

But what the little seed did not see was

the mouse that ate the seeds in the grass

and the bird that ate the seeds on the log

and the chipmunk that gathered the seeds on the ground to store and eat all winter long.

It couldn't see this because it was stuck in the mud. It didn't know how lucky it was.

Now besides being squished tight in the mud, it was also locked in it's shell. It tried to get out of it's terrible predicament, but the Fall days got shorter and shorter. It got colder and colder too. It had no strength to get out of its shell. The mud was frozen solid, the deep snow covered it. It went through a terribly cold and dark winter.

Finally, after what seemed forever, slowly the days grew a little longer, a little warmer. The seed had work to do. It began to grow.

The water in the mud had softened its shell. Still, how hard it was to get out of its shell ! It had to exert energy like never before. It struggled and struggled. Finally it broke free.

Then it used more energy to go not up, but down, struggling to send a tiny little root through that compacted mud -- that terribly icky place. It needed something to tightly hold on to, because........

...now it had to struggle yet again with great effort to send a tiny little shoot to the light above -- through all that icky mud. Finally it was free. It reached the warm sunlight.

You would think its troubles were over. Not so fast. In a whole year it grew only a few inches, while the other plants grew by leaps and bounds, as if to mock the little seed. Every fall it lost its leaves. In winter it barely survived, covered with snow. And as it got a little taller, it had to go through windstorms and blizzards.

But one thing was peculiar. Even while it slowly grew up to the sunny blue sky, it never forgot its roots. It had the wisdom to keep growing its roots deeper and deeper in the mud.

In fact, it used every wind storm, every blizzard, every shaking, every vibration to wiggle its roots deeper and deeper into the black icky mud.

It knew the importance of a solid foundation, because it always remembered where it came from, how it had been protected and helped by the mud.

The years rolled on, and the seasons too. Each summer it so slowly but surely grew. Each winter it became a little tougher and stronger. It had little joys and little sorrows throughout its life like all of us do.

Then came the fiercest of all storms. The wind blew so violently this way and that. Trees all around were dashed to the ground, broken, uprooted, a jangled mess.

After the devastation, the sun shone once again. To be sure, it didn't look so pretty, some leaves were missing, in fact, quite a few, but that would soon be remedied.

Because it hadn't forgotten its roots as a seed in the mud, it stood there in all its glory. It had become the mighty oak tree.

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