There’s an Aesop fable that I repeat over and over again — in business and in life. It goes like this:
A poor widow had one solitary sheep. At shearing time, wishing to take his fleece and to avoid expense, she sheared him herself but used the shears so unskillfully that with the fleece she sheared the flesh.
The sheep, writhing in pain, said, “Why do you hurt me so? What weight can my blood add to the wool? If you want my flesh, there is the butcher, who will kill me in an instant; but if you want my fleece and wool, there is the shearer, who will shear and not hurt me.
What does this mean for you and me? In an effort to do everything ourselves, we can end up worse off — and so can others.
Where are you skimping in your life, thinking it’s for the best? Are you doing all the housecleaning and missing Saturday mornings with your kids or friends, even though a weekly housekeeper is well within your budget? Do you take the cheapest flight possible and struggle through 14 hours to get to a location that you could’ve made in six for your short vacation—and end up arriving stressed and tired?
If you’re starting a business, are you patching together free information on the internet instead of investing in a course, coach, or mentor who will show you the way step-by-step?
In life, you pay one of two ways: financially or with your time and energy. You can always make more money, but you don’t get more time.
Think: Are you really gaining by skimping on something? Spending is saving sometimes.
Excerpted from the book Let It Be Easy . Copyright ©2021 by Susie Moore. Printed with permission from New World Library.
