What is personal development? Is it a successive addition to ourselves, or is it possible to first get to know ourselves well, and then purify ourselves of what is not ours or what does not serve us? And only in the next step, creating yourself by adding and integrating new elements.
Let's listen to the parable about the sculptor and how he extracted an angel from a shapeless block. Let's see what reflections it will bring us in the field of personal development.
A parable about the sculptor
While passing through the city, a young boy heard loud sounds, something like clicking, rumbling, and chipping. Curious, he followed the sounds and found a man striking a huge shapeless stone with a chisel and a hammer.
The boy paused for a moment, he wanted to ask the worker what he was doing, but he was so focused and so busy with his work that he didn't even pay attention to him.
The boy left, but he did not stop thinking about what he saw, so after a few days, he returned to the same place.
When he entered, he saw a beautiful angel instead of a shapeless stone. He stared and was amazed he could not believe it...
"How did you know there was an angel in that marble piece?" he asked the man with the chisel.
The man turned, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “There is an angel in all of us. All we have to do is take a hammer, and chisel, and chip off all those little pieces that don't look like an angel.
What other moral comes from the parable of the sculptor?
Rumi, the famous poet, and thinker, put it this way:
Always remember that you are braver than you think, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think, and twice as beautiful as you ever imagined. Yesterday I was smart, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am smart, so I am changing myself.
And I would add these words at the end:
Don't ask what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you happy. And do it.
Because what the world needs most is... happy people.
See also other coaching parables and stories: