A small town Chamber of Commerce invited a speaker to address it's annual dinner. The community's economy was bad, people were discouraged and they wanted the motivational speaker to give them a boost.
During the presentation, the speaker took a large piece of paper and made a small black dot at the center with a marking pen. Then she held the paper up before the group and asked them what they saw.
"I see a black dot," a person quickly replied.
"Okay, what else do you see?'
Everybody looked and many joined in agreement, "A black dot."
"That's good. Do any of you see anything else?" the speaker asked.
After a few minutes of silence, many people in the audience shook their heads and a few answered, "No!"
"What about a sheet of paper?" Asked the speaker. "I'm sure all of you can see the paper, am I right? But you all have chosen to overlook it.'
The audience was stunned and some felt embarrassed.
"In life, we also tend to overlook and take for granted many wonderful things that we have or memorable events. We spend too much time focusing our attention and energy on small, dot-like failures and disappointments. The so called 'problems' that we have are usually like the black dot on the paper. They are small and insignificant if we can widen our horizon and look at the whole picture."
Examine yourself and how you see things. Are you one of the people who focuses your attention and energy on dot-like problems?