In the pursuit of success there is a parable I always like to use as an example. I call it “The gold prospector”, because in the end we are all looking for gold in our careers, in our lives and in our own happiness, so let’s make sure that what happened to this prospector doesn’t happen to us.
The story goes that in 1849 (during the gold rush), a European merchant heard that the rivers and lands of California held giant gold nuggets, and that with two or three nuggets that size he could become truly rich. The merchant quickly sold all his possessions to seek his fortune in California.
Once settled there, he asked the experts where those giant lumps of gold could be found, and off he went. Day after day the young man went down to the river in search of the mega-nuggets, and day after day he came back empty-handed.
One day he crossed paths with an old prospector heading to the very spot the young man was returning from with nothing. The young man told the old prospector not to bother going to that part of the river, because there was no gold there. He also told him he was tired and worn out from looking for gold and was going back to Europe.
The old prospector, surprised, asked the young man how he could have found no gold when there was gold everywhere. The young man, incredulous, asked the old man to show him where the gold was.
“Everywhere,” the old man repeated, putting his hand into the river and pulling out a stone weighing more than 2 kilos. Stuck to one end of the stone was a tiny golden speck, barely visible to the naked eye.
The young man told the old man that this was a trifle, that it wasn’t what he was looking for, but rather one of the giant nuggets that so many people had found.
The old man put his hand into the river again and pulled out another tiny speck of gold from a stone. This didn’t quite convince the young man, who repeated once more that he was looking for something bigger.
That was when the old man showed him his week’s harvest: a bag full of thousands of tiny specks of gold that, all together, weighed the same as one of the giant nuggets the young man was after. The old man said:
“My friend, it seems to me you’re so busy, so focused and fixed on finding giant nuggets that you’re missing the chance to fill your bag with these precious little specks. In my 30 years I’ve become very rich searching these rivers, and I’ve never found a nugget the size you’re looking for.
I made my fortune by gathering tiny specks, which together are worth more than one giant nugget.”
The moral
Our success doesn’t depend on one giant act, but on many small acts and on keeping them up. People who look for a quick windfall statistically tend to fail, while those who add up small actions and efforts tend to turn them into those giant nuggets.
The same goes for happiness: many people look for that giant nugget in order to be happy, when in fact we can be very happy with all the little specks we find along our way every day.
So life is like that river full of gold. If the giant nugget doesn’t turn up, make it yourself out of small specks. The end result is the same, with the difference that whoever looks for small specks is rewarded every day, while whoever looks for the giant nugget rarely finds it.
Further reading
- The story of the fisherman and the businessman
- An impressive motivational talk by Emilio Duró
- 14 science-backed ways to be happier
Featured image: Webster & Stevens, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
.jpg){kind=link}