The Peanut Butter & Jelly Parable

 The lunch whistle blew at the construction site and the workers all gathered together to eat their lunch and share their stories of the day. As the men opened their lunch boxes, one of them said, “ummm, fresh roast beef sandwich today”, another exclaimed “I have a turkey sandwich from the leftover turkey dinner we had last night” and still another bragged about the delicious ham and cheese sandwich he found in his lunch box.  Another worker, who had been listening to all of this, complained, “You guys are lucky, all I ever get is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! I am sick of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! If I open this lunch box today and find another peanut butter and jelly sandwich I am going to scream! He opened his lunch box and screamed as he found yet another peanut butter and jelly sandwich. One of the men said, “hey, if you are so sick of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, why don’t you ask your wife to pack you something else?”  The other man said “Wife? I’m not married, I pack my own lunch”.

I don’t recall the original source of this story, however I do love it. It cleverly illustrates how many people live their life.  Like the man in the story who complained about the lunch that he created, we tend to do the same thing in our own life. We complain about different aspects of our life, yet we don’t do anything to change what we are complaining about! We continue to do the same things that end with the same results, in turn, we act surprised and complain about the results. This by definition is insanity!

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results – Albert Einstein

You hear people living this way all of the time. They say things like:

• - Things never work out for me
• - This always happens to me
• - I never win at anything
• - I never make the right decisions
• - My relationships never work out
• - I always pick the wrong kind of man/woman
• - I never meet the right kind of people
• - I never get promoted
• - I am always over looked
• - I am never appreciated for what I do

The list goes on and on. These thoughts, weather said out loud or not impact our results. We think and say the same things every day, yet we somehow are surprised when the results don’t change!

What are you saying or doing on a repetitive basis that is creating a constant result that you don’t want?

By the way, just because something worked for you in the past, is no indication that it will work for you in the present. Be courageous and try something new. You may be surprised at the results!