The first of these 3 stories is about "The Muddy Road" - 2 monks are walking and one stops to help a lady out of the mud. So he carries her to safety and puts her down and continues on his way. The other monk is worked up that he did that since they are not supposed to be around females, let alone touch one. The one who helped the lady mentions that he left her back there, why is he still worried about her? Carrying on a worry, burden, etc., does not good for our future. That enables us to keep having that one event cause us more problems than it originally did back when it happened. I know we need to learn from this mistake, maybe even remember some moments of it so we can learn and get better. I also try to let it go. I'm not always successful with that, but I know I need to.
The second story is titled "The Two Wolves" where a grandfather is telling the story to his grandson on how we all have 2 Wolves inside of us.. the good one and the bad one. The one that wins is the one we feed the most! The negative or positive voices we have... that's the key. We all battle with trying to do the right things in our life and we can be our own worst critic for sure. But it is shown over and over again which ever "voice" we let drive us, the one we "feed" the most is the one that will control our thoughts, etc. The key is WE have choice.
The final of the 3 stories is "The Farmer's Fortune" - so many things happen to this farmer and his son, and every time a neighbor says to him "that's too bad that happened..." or "isn't it fortunate that that happened...". The farmer responds the same each time... "perhaps" is all he says. He doesn't pile on in misery & complaining when things are not going well, nor does he get all fired up when things are great. He stays even keeled... no emotional swings or reactions... that's a great message for all of us. It's far more important as to what our reaction is compared to what actually happened to us. We never know the next door to open tomorrow no matter what we went through today.
This was a good and quick exercise to try. Click on the file link above and see what you can get out of these stories as far as perspective goes. Then let me know your thoughts. :-)