Do you know the story about the guy whose car gets stuck in the mud while hiking? He is stuck there for quite a while and does not have a shovel, so he walks around a little and thankfully notices three houses nearby. He decides to go ask if someone has a shovel he can borrow.

Watch the video or continue reading to find out more.

He knocks on the first door, and a woman looks through the peephole and says, “Sorry, I don’t even have a shovel, and I’m not going to open the door for strangers.” The guy turns around and says to himself, “All right then. They don’t have a shovel. Let’s go to the next house.”

He gets to the second house, and this giant, somewhat mean-looking man opens the door and says, “Even if I had a shovel, I would not give it to you because you’re probably going to steal it.” So the little hiker runs out of there and says, “All right. I’m going to try the next house.”

Now he is starting to panic and think, “Well, they probably won’t have one either, and I don’t even know what I’m doing.” He knocks on the third door. A beautiful, kind woman opens the door with a smile, and he immediately looks at her and says, “Keep your darn shovel!” Then he turns around and walks away.

The irony is that she actually had several shovels sitting right behind the door, and she would probably have gladly given him one. But because he had already experienced two negative situations, his brain created a neural pathway. Somehow, he had already decided in advance that it was not going to work because it had not worked the previous two times.

Our brain likes to do that. It generalizes. It creates neat little boxes. When this happens, we put it in one box. When that happens, we put it in another box. But sometimes those boxes are created incorrectly. Sometimes we create neurological connections, synapses, and pathways based on assumptions that are actually wrong.

The idea is to remember that story the next time you assume something will not work. Before someone opens the door and you mentally say, “Keep your darn shovel,” try not to assume anything. Ask anyway.

I remember hearing this story when I was five or six years old. Every time I would say, “Well, I’m pretty sure it’s not going to work,” my dad would tell me this story. It was one of his favorites because he wanted me to understand that if you do not ask, you will never know.

So keep trying. It does not matter if it did not work in the past. This time might be different.

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