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Eating a hamburger at the wrong time could be dangerous

Francisco Miraval

I recently heard the story of a man in Denver who was about to eat a one-dollar hamburger when he got a phone call. He decided to first eat the hamburger and then return the call.

After eating the hamburger, he listened to the voice mail and he heard the familiar voice of his business partner telling him he was needed to seal an important deal. He immediately called his office, only to be told that because he didn’t answer the call, the opportunity went to somebody else.

So, the decision to eat a one-dollar hamburger costed this man (a real person, by the way) a business deal which could have brought to him at least $50,000 immediately. In other words, eating a one-dollar hamburger meant losing 50,000 hamburgers.

Obviously, there are many ways to understand this story. However, regardless of how we decide to understand it, it is clear that the story teaches us that sometimes we are so focused on the small things in front of us that we don’t see bigger, better opportunities.

In other words, we are so focused on satisfying our desires and on getting instant gratification that we are blinded to a world much bigger than the world we are trapped when we only think and see a small hamburger in front of us.

It is also clear that the hamburger could be replaced by any other object, be it totally inexpensive or very expensive, because any object has the potential of distracting us from something bigger, deeper, and potentially even more significant.

I think one of the lessons we can learn from the story of a man who lost $50,000 for eating a hamburger at the wrong time is that, regardless of whatever we may be doing, we should always keep an open mind and remain alert to new opportunities which, as many opportunities, will come to us only once.

I am not say we should neglect our personal, family, or social life to answer call. What I am saying is that we need to keep our priorities in order, so we could develop an expanded awareness to intuitively know what to do and what not to do when we need to make a decision.

If our whole world is just a hamburger (or a house, a church, a community, a country), then we are still thinking small thoughts and, as a consequence, we will miss many good opportunities.

If, contrary to that, we want not only to create opportunities, but also to take advantage of them, we should look beyond the horizon of our daily lives so we can extend our vision to future generations.

When we do that, everything from a hamburger to a lucrative contract will pale in comparison with the magnitude of the task at hand and of the creative opportunities to accomplish those goals. Let’s seriously think about the object now seducing us so we can stop the seduction and open ourselves to a new world of opportunities.

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