Coffee Beans, Carrots, and Eggs: How You Respond to Change Matters

A young woman, feeling overwhelmed by life’s challenges, approaches her mother in despair. She expresses her frustration, saying she’s tired of the constant struggles—just when one problem is solved, another arises. Her mother, seeking to impart wisdom, takes her to the kitchen and fills three pots with water, placing them on the stove to boil.

As the water heats up, she adds carrots to one pot, eggs to another, and ground coffee beans to the third. The daughter watches in silence as her mother lets them boil for twenty minutes. Finally, her mother turns off the heat and removes the contents, placing them in separate bowls.

“Tell me what you see,” she asks. The daughter replies, “Carrots, eggs, and coffee.”

But her mother guides her to examine them closely. She touches the carrots, now soft and yielding, a stark contrast to their original firmness. Next, she cracks an egg, revealing a hard-boiled interior, once liquid and delicate but now solid and impenetrable. Finally, she sips the coffee, savoring its rich aroma and flavor.

Her mother explains that each item faced the same adversity: the boiling water. The carrots became weak, the eggs hardened, but the coffee beans did something unique—they transformed the water around them.

“Which are you?” her mother asks. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?”

This story serves as a powerful metaphor for how we navigate challenges. We can choose to be like the carrot, allowing our struggles to soften us, or like the egg, hardening our hearts in response. Or we can take a page from the coffee bean’s playbook, not just enduring change but actively transforming it, making our environment richer in the process.

Your mindset on change matters. Choose to be the coffee bean.