It's a Little Known Fact...
- Andrew Todd Smith
- Jul 27, 2016
- 5 min read
Today, I am going to inspire you to take action and do something you’ve never done before or inspire you to just simply look at things from a different perspective.
Cliff Clavin was a fictional Boston postal worker and barfly on the greatest television show ever made - Cheers!
Cliff was infamously known for being a know-it-all and full of useless trivial information.
In fact one episode, even featured him as a contestant on Jeopardy.
“Ehh, Normie, it’s a little known fact that they did a study between postal workers and chimpanzees. They proved chimps were 32% slower. Of course, they were better with public relations,” Cliff once said.
In honor of him, I am going to enlighten you with a few little known facts. I tell you these things not to bombard your brain up with useless data and information, but rather to raise your awareness that things are not always as they seem.
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change” Dr. Wayne Dyer
I researched the following statistics on the internet, so they must be true. ;)
Did you know that you are more likely to get killed by a falling coconut (approximately 150 deaths annually) than eaten by a shark?
10-13 people die each year trying to release their stuck snacks out of a vending machine only to have it topple over and crush them.
The US averages one shark-attack fatality every two years. Meanwhile, in the coastal U.S. states alone, lightning strikes and kills more than 37 people each year.
You are 3 x more likely to die scuba diving than you are skydiving.
Think football is dangerous? Twice as many people die as a result of a champagne cork than playing HS or College football each year.
This is going to blow your mind!
Wolves get a bad rap. From the Little Red Riding Hood to the Three Little Pigs, even Beauty and the Beast, wolves are constantly made out to be ferocious animals that attack and kill men, women and children. They even go as far as to dress him up in grandmas clothes and turn the poor little wolf into a transvestite in Little Red Riding Hood.
Did you know approximately 894 people die as a result of being bitten by a sheep in the US each year? Yet, it’s a little known fact that there has never been a documented case of a wolf killing a human in North America. Wolf in sheep clothing? Pfffff!! Really? Who comes up with this stuff? Sheep in sheets clothing is more like it! Grey lives matter!
But, you’ll never guess what kills more people than lions, tigers and bears combined. That hungry, hungry hippo! They kill approximately 3000 people each year. I’ll bet Ms. Gayla Peevey would think twice about wanting that hippopotamus for Christmas.
Annually, over 37,500 people die in the US as a result of a car or motorcycle accident - very close to the number of individuals killed by a gun, but I’m not going to start a petition to control either, as I don’t believe either are responsible for those deaths.
It’s said that over 2/3rds of the gun related deaths are suicide related, but are we going to outlaw guns because people make bad decisions? If so, when do we start regulating rope?
In the US, dogs are considered man’s best friend but did you know they kill 3 1/2 times more people than venomous snakes!
Now, I’m not advocating that you trade in your Golden Retriever for a Copperhead, but some of these statistics are quite shocking.
But the real shocker here is that mosquitos, on average they typically kill between 800,000-1,000,000 people annually by spreading malaria and other deadly diseases.
In the Parable of the Talents, a very wealthy man was going away on a trip. He called his three servants together and told them that he would be gone for a long time and that he was leaving them in charge of all of his wealth. He divided up his wealth and gave it to the three servants.
To the first servant, he gave five talents. To the second servant, he gave two talents. Not as much as the first servant received, but still a large sum of money. To the third servant, he only gave one talent because he was less confident in his abilities.
The first servant took the five talents his master had given him and invested them and earned an additional five more talents. The second also invested his two talents and earned two more talents. The third servant took the one talent his master had entrusted him with and buried it in the ground for safe keeping.
When the master returned, he was very pleased when the first two servants told him that they had doubled his money. "Well done," he said. "Because you had been faithful with what I have given you, I will give you much more.”
He asked the third servant what he did with the one talent he gave to him.
The third servant said to the master, "I knew that you were a hard man and I was afraid, so I went out and hid your treasure in the ground so that it would be safe.”
The master was angry. "You are a wicked and lazy servant. You could have at least put my money in the bank where it would earn interest." He then took the one talent from the lazy servant and gave it to the one who had ten talents.
What is the difference between planting and burying something?
Most of it is in the expectations.
When you bury something you are hiding something, like a pirate would bury his treasure or a dog would bury a bone or you are burying someone or something that you never plan on seeing ever again like when you bury the dead.
Now what makes planting something different from burying something? Generally when you plant something you have high expectations, like a farmer planting his crops. If there was no expectation that those crops would come to fruition then it is very unlikely that the farmer would have spent any time planting them at all.
A seed can be stored for a period of time, but unless that seed is planted it in fertile soil, has adequate sunlight and is watered, it will never grow and become all that God intended it to become.
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”
― Cynthia Occelli
The potential of the seed is only unlocked once it has been planted.
Some people stay in their comfort zone during times of adversity. They play it safe, their potential stays locked on the inside and they don’t grow.
Now take a moment to clear your mind and write down a talent that perhaps you may be burying. What is the one thing that if you could accomplish without any chance of failing and where money is not an obstacle what would you do? Anything in the world! Stretch your mind!
Is it to reconnect with estranged family member?
Run a marathon?
Learn to fly a plane?
Write a NY Times bestseller?
Climb Mount Everest?
Forgive someone?
Write it down as if you are planting it in fertile soil. Water it daily and plant it in a place that has adequate sunshine.
Today, make the commitment to make it happen. Release any thoughts that you could fail, and flush all the excuses and objections down the toilet. Do it today!
“The pain of discipline weighs ounces, whereas the pain of regret weighs tons.” Jim Rohn
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