Written by: Dipo Adebayo
The story of the small hotel manager in a small town.
I once heard the story of a man who managed a small hotel in a small town.
One day, a gentleman visited the hotel asking to spend the night. The hotel manager responded “I’m sorry sir, but all our rooms are booked”.
Seeing the travelers face fall in dismay, he quickly added, “but sir, if you don’t mind, you can have my room”. The gentleman thankfully accepted, and was on his way the next day.
A few years later, the hotel manager got a call from the gentleman. He said, “I just built a chain of hotels around Paris, France. I could think of no better person than you to manage these hotels”
In just a moment, the small hotel manager from the small town became the managing director of one of the largest hotel chains in the world.
Cute story, right? But let’s rewind a bit.
Imagine on that fateful day, when the tired traveler needed a place for the night, the hotel manager was in a foul mood and didn’t treat him that well, thinking, “what does it matter, I hate this job anyway and I’ll leave soon”?
He might have spent the rest of his life running that little hotel in that little town, wondering why fortune never smiled on him.
This is why we often miss opportunities. We all want to succeed. We all want that big break that’ll take us to the “next level”.
However, we often miss how important the current level is to taking us to the next level we want to be.
We resent where we are and treat what has been committed to us sloppily because we think we deserve much better. But if we are aren’t faithful and diligent with little things, who will give us bigger things?
No one likes being stuck in a position they think they have outgrown; we all want to move to higher things.
But progress comes by making a big deal of whatever is committed to us, giving it our best shot, and joyfully learning all we can at every level we find ourselves and when the time and the opportunity is right, finding the courage to launch out of our comfort zones onto higher ground
It’s like birthing a child. Imagine if the child in the mother’s womb got tired of being in the dark, all stuffy and slimy, tired of being curled up, and wanted to free itself and be born before its time?
It will likely die. It’s the nine months in the womb that prepares it to enjoy the “next level” safely.
Because the next level can also mean death.
It’s the same with progress. Where you are holds the seeds of where you want to be. Make the best of it.
