Wood Chopping Challenge

Two neighbors lived near each other in the mountains. They were quite competitive and always testing each other’s strength. One day, the first neighbor challenged the second to see who could chop the most wood in three hours. The second neighbor agreed to the challenge. The first man started out strong. As he chopped away, the second man chopped for about a half hour and then sat down for ten minutes under the shade of a large tree. The first man could not believe his neighbor’s laziness. To his surprise, the second man continued to take these ten-minute breaks each hour for the duration of the contest. Finally the three hours passed.

Not having paused to take even a single break, the first neighbor was sure victory was his. To his dismay, he found that the second neighbor had chopped twice as much wood as he had! In disbelief, he said, ‘‘That’s impossible! You took a break every hour.’’ Without batting an eye, the second man replied, ‘‘I wasn’t resting; I was sharpening my axe.’’

Sharpen you Axe!

If we don’t take the time to develop and fine tune our core qualities , we will always lose in the end. As in sharpening the axe, we may not see the instant short-term gain from working on our core qualities, but the long-term benefits are huge. We know we should sharpen the axe, i.e., work on these skills, but who has the time, energy, desire, or focus? If you don’t sharpen your axe, it will become dull and useless. When we master these core qualities, our axes are sharp, and we develop strength at a much faster rate.

Sharpen the Axe means preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have--you. It means having a balanced program for self-renewal in the four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual. Here are some examples of activities:

Physical: Proper eating, exercising, and resting

Social/Emotional: Making social and meaningful connections with others

Mental: Learning, reading, writing, and teaching

Spiritual: Spending time in nature, prayer, music, art, or service

As you renew yourself in each of the four areas, you create growth and change in your life. Sharpening the Axe keeps you fresh, energetic and capable. You increase your capacity to produce and handle the challenges around you. Without this renewal, the body becomes weak, the mind slow, the emotions raw, the spirit low. Not a pretty picture, is it?

Life is a like the above Wood Chopping Challenge that goes on for decades. Living a life in balance means taking the necessary time to renew yourself. It's all up to you. You can renew yourself through regular learning, exercise and relaxation. Or you can totally burn yourself out by overdoing everything. You have a choice to renew yourself and experience the vibrant energy or procrastinate and miss out the benefits of good health and exercise. Do you want to keep your curiosity up and keep learning new things keep yourself updated or be happy with what you learned years ago? The choice is yours.

The principle of Sharpening Your Axe emphasizes the need for recharging your battery. It could be your skills/ knowledge that are useful at work or your fitness routine or your prayer/meditation session.
Being busy with chopping the tree doesn't help in long term. Do you have time for those self renewal activities?