Mindset story: A full bag of big problems and an opportunity to switch it

There was once a rich man who, every night before going to sleep, prayed the same prayer to his God. In his prayer, he would say, “God, please do this one favor for me, at least this one. I have been asking you for this my whole life. Everyone knows that I am the most unhappy man on earth. Why have you made my life full of problems? I am ready to exchange my problems with anybody else, anybody will do. I’m not asking to live my life without problems, I just can’t deal with these no more. It is unfair that I have such big problems to solve, and so many of them, while others have such easy ones and only a few. Can’t you give me only this single opportunity to exchange all of my problems with somebody else? I believe I am not asking for too much!”

And finally, one night, while everyone in the town including the rich man were asleep God appeared in all of their dreams at once and gave the following instructions, “Gather all of your miseries and big problems into one bag and bring the bag to the temple hall.” At first, no one believed what has happened. But slowly everyone’s mindset shifted from this is not possible too “what if it’s true.” Soon everyone in town started packing their problems into the biggest bag they could find and carried them to the temple hall.

The rich man was so happy that this day had finally come. He rushed with filling his bag and started to walk towards the hall with the biggest smile he had for a long time. While walking towards the temple hall he noticed that everyone else in his town was either filling a bag or already had a full bag and was walking towards the temple. He was a bit surprised that everyone else thought they had big problems worth exchanging too. By the time he reaches the hall, he became very afraid, because he saw people are carrying bigger bags than he was. And these were the people that he had always seen smiling in beautiful clothes and always saying nice things to each other.

The rich man slowly became a little hesitant about whether to or not to go and exchange the bag. But then again he has been praying for his whole life for this opportunity so he decided to continue and see what happens. When he enters the hall he heard a voice saying to put his bag down in the center as everyone else did. And when he did so he heard the voice again, but this time the voice told him to take a look around and to choose one bag. But once he would pick the new bag there would be no turning back. Everyone stood still and carefully looked around to inspect the size of other bags.

And then a miracle happened. Instead of taking a different bag, everyone rushed to their own. Without thinking too much the rich man also rushes towards his own bag, afraid that somebody else would take it. To his own surprise, he didn’t take advantage of his wish that came true. When walking back home he thought why he reacted the way he did. And the answer surprised him. The truth was that his big problems weren’t actually that big, and he actually knew how to deal with them. While on the other hand, he didn’t have the slightest clue how to deal with the problems of other people.