Yes, I’m an Internet Marketer, but I’m also a human being. Every now and then, I bring you motivational stories that I have heard. This one is a lesson in life, taken from my church magazine.

A daughter complained to her father about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of all the fighting and struggling. It seemed as though in solving one problem, two more would arise.

Her father, who was a chef, took her into the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed them all on a hot gas stove. Soon the pots of water came to the boil.

In one, he placed carrots. In the second, he placed eggs and in the third, he placed ground coffee beans.

He left them to sit and boil, without saying a word. The daughter impatiently waited, wondering what on earth he was doing. About twenty minutes later, he turned of the stoves.

He fished the carrots out of the first pot and placed them in a bowl. Then he pulled out the eggs and placed them in another bowl. Finally, he ladled out the coffee and poured it into a cup.

Turning to his daughter, he asked “Darling, what do you see here?”

“Carrots, eggs and coffee,” replied the daughter, impatiently.

He brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noticed that they were soft. He then asked her to take an egg and break it open. After peeling off the shell, she observed that the egg was hard boiled. Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. She smiled as she tasted it’s rich aroma. She turned to him and asked humbly “What does this mean, Father?”

He explained that each of them had faced exactly the same adversity – boiling water, but each had reacted differently. The carrots went in strong, hard and unrelenting, but after being subjected to the boiling water, they softened and became weak.

The egg had been fragile. It’s thin outer shell had protected it’s liquid interior, but after sitting in the boiling water, the insides had become hardened.

However, the ground coffee beans were unique. After they had gone in to the boiling water, they had actually changed the water.

“Which one are you?” asked the father. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?”

Which one are you?

Are you the carrot, that seems hard, but with pain and adversity, do you wilt and become soft and lose your strength?

Are you the egg, which starts off with a fragile, changeable heart, but after the effects of adversity, the heart becomes hard and stiff? Your exterior shell looks the same, but you become tough and hard on the inside.

Or, are you the coffee bean? The bean changes the hot water, the very thing that is bringing the pain. When the water reaches it’s peak temperature, it just tastes better.

If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and make the things around you better too. When people talk about you, do your praises to the Lord increase? When the hour is the darkest and the trials are the greatest, does your worship elevate to the next level?

How do you handle adversity? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?

Please God, let me be a coffee bean!

In closing, there was a very gracious old lady, who was mailing an old family bible to her brother in another part of the country. “Is there anything breakable in here” asks the postal clerk. “Only the ten commandments,” answered the old lady.

When you feel you are wasting your time and not getting anywhere in life, it often helps to hear a story like this. It seems to motivate you and give you new purpose and that is what it really is. Attitude! With the right attitude, we can do anything we want to do!

Derek Robson has been a successful Internet marketer since 2003. He has a vision of empowering all fellow marketers particularly Southrn Africans and other non U.S folk, to have equal opportunity and success on the internet, by finding solutions to the many obstacles facing them. He is a syndicated article writer. He and his wife Sally, have started a string of sites, resources, courses and articles, as part of Dersalsites. For informative articles on Internet marketing, South African online business, list building, affiliate marketing, article marketing, blogging, seo, the law of attraction, rugby and other general topics, such as gardening and fitness, visit Derek and Sally at their blog, part of http://dersalsites.com/