Have you ever heard the “put the glass down” parable? No, it’s not in the Bible. I always think of the Bible when I hear the word “parable.”
The “put the glass down” parable is a stress-management, motivational short story written by Wade Cook. It was featured in a 2016 video that I recently watched.
The video takes place in a college classroom. The professor pours water into a glass that he then holds up in front of the class. He asks the students, “How heavy is this glass of water?” One woman says, “Um, eight ounces?” Someone else says, “Twelve ounces?” Yet another student thinks, “Sixteen ounces?”
The professor tells them, “The absolute weight of the glass doesn’t matter. It depends on how long I hold onto it. If I hold it for a minute, nothing happens. If I hold it for an hour my arm starts to ache. If I hold it all day long, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. The weight of the glass hasn’t changed but if I hold onto it, the heavier it becomes.”
He continues saying, “The stresses and the worries of life are like this glass of water. If you think about them for a little while, there’s no problem. You think about it for a little bit longer, it begins to hurt. You think about them all day long and you’ll feel paralyzed. Incapable of doing anything. Always remember… put the glass down.”
I know I’ve had times in my life when I held that “glass” all day long. Sometimes for many days. How I wish I had realized I could just put the glass down.
One of my children called me the other night while they were on the way home from work. I love getting calls from them, even those times when I have to pause a show or movie I’m watching. It is funny how it always seems to be when there’s five or ten minutes left in the show. They’re just about to solve the murder and the phone rings!
Anyway…
It was one of my daughters on the phone and when I asked how she was doing she sighed and told me that she just had so many things to do she didn’t know how or when she was going to get everything done. She sounded really stressed.
That’s when I told her to try and stop and take things One. Step. At. A. Time. I did point out that it took me a long time to learn that. In fact, I still struggle with it sometimes. More on that in a minute. (A little foreshadowing here.)
I asked her, “What do you have to do first? Okay focus on that. You can’t do any of the other things until you do that.” When I asked her what was the very next thing she was going to do, she told me she was going home to have dinner. I asked, “What are you having? That sounds delicious! Is it difficult to make? Where did you get the recipe? What’s in it?” My goal was to get her thinking about ANYTHING else and get her mind off of all the things on her “to-do” list. I’ve learned how the mind will fixate on whatever you focus on.
As an example, if you spend your entire Monday morning thinking, “Ugh! I’m so tired!” Guess what? You’ll continue to feel tired. If you focus on something else, say how delicious your coffee is or how the sun is shining, you may not notice the tiredness.
Oh my little foreshadowing? Last Sunday night my wife and I were watching TV when I must have sighed or something. Priscilla asked me if everything was all right and I told her I was looking at my calendar and getting stressed about all the things I had coming up the next week. Yeah, I wasn’t really practicing what I preached. Once I reminded myself of that, or more precisely, my wife reminded of that, I felt much better. You shouldn’t worry about Thursday before you do what you have to do Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
It seemed ironic that the video came up on my TikTok a few days later.
We need to “put the glass down.” The thing you’re worried about will still be there tomorrow or the next day or until you actually deal with it. Why ruin your entire day or night worrying about something that’s in the future? Maybe you don’t even need to be worrying about it at all!
Another post I read this week talked about how some people let a problem ruin their whole day. Others give themselves 15 minutes to be upset, then they figure out what they’re going to do about it and fix it.
I know, it’s not easy. And even after 65 years it’s still a work in progress for me.
This week though, I’m going to try and remember— it’s okay the “put the glass down.”
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