A group of boys in one neighborhood had broken off from school for a one month holiday. Seeing there was no much activity to occupy them, they decided to come together to be playing football during this holiday.
They agreed each of them to contribute an item required to start playing football since there was nothing. One contributed sports shoes, another contributed a ball, another goal posts, another a uniform and so on until everything was available to start playing.
Then it was time to choose teams. One person had to create the teams and divide all the boys among these teams to make different squads to compete against each other. But there was a disagreement on who should do this because they thought there would be bias as the person who creates the teams would choose a stronger team for himself.
So they decided to find out the most valuable item available to play the game. And whoever owned it would choose the teams. To do this, they started playing with all the items, and one by one, they would get rid of an item they could do without until they remained with the one they needed the most.
The first item they discovered they could do without was the goalkeeper gloves, they got rid of them and the goalkeepers started using their bare hands. Then they got rid of the whistle, they decided the referee could shout instead. Then the uniforms, the players could do with their casual clothes. Then the shoes, the players could play barefooted. Then the goal posts were replaced by bricks on each side of the goal.
This went on until even the ball was replaced by a plastic cup.
A father and he's son passed by while the boys were playing and noticed them, he said to the son, "Do you see how your friends are managing to play without a single football kit, even though they will not improve their game by playing with such objects."
One of the boys playing overheard what the father said to he's son and rushed to tell he's friends about it. On hearing this, the boys got ashamed and realized they were not enjoying the game as much as they would have because of their pride and ego.
So inorder to enjoy the game and improve their skills, they had to swallow their pride and accept how each item each of them provided was important. And so they all agreed to organise themselves, agreed on one random person to choose the teams and started playing football.
Moral
We all have personal goals we want to achieve but inorder to achieve them, we have to work with others. Each person on the team has a contribution they make towards your development. The team might be your family, workmates, your business partners and so on depending on your career.
We need to recognize all this contribution from the people around us however small it might be. Without it you wouldn't reach where you are or where you want to be.
You might do everything right but fail to reach your goal because you missed reading that one book which would have been recommended by a friend whom you pushed aside.
Let's learn to work together as a team to help in achieving our individual goals.
Thanks for reading.