Inspirational: The Contrast Between Change Within and Change Without

I read this Story from Rev. Sam Adeyemi and i love it so much. It will inspire you. Please do make sure you read to the end.

 The barbers and hairstylists of the United States were about to have their national convention. They wanted people to appreciate their profession and wanted  to give Americans a better image of their profession. They hired a young Public Relations executive to handle the job and help in packaging the convention.

The young man thought of a very brilliant idea and went to work immediately. He went down town the city of New York, to the slums, and picked up a young man who obviously was a street urchin, popularly called ‘area boy’ here, who was looking so unkempt. With clothes that were tattered and soiled. His hair was unkempt and his beard dirty. The guy listened to the young executive’s offer, and since there was some money involved they bargained and the area boy agreed to the conditions.

The young executive took him first to a photographer’s shop and had some snaps of him the way he was; dirty and unkempt. Then he gave him a face  lift: a steam bath, a shave and an hair cut, and took him to the photographer for another round of snaps. But he was not finished. The young executive took the boy to town and got him professionally made suits, shirts, ties and shoes. Then he had a third round of photographs snapped.

On the day the convention started, the young executive positioned three life-size photographs of his subject in the lobby of the hotel, so every one who came in saw the transformation that had happened to the man. And he wrote at the top of those pictures, “See what the Barbers and Hairstylists of America can do to a man”. And the story immediately hit the headlines across America.

For effect, the well-suited area boy was positioned at the hotel lobby to shake hands with people as they came in for the convention. The strategy worked. The campaign was a success. The Manager of the Hotel was touched; he fell in love with the young man and decided to do something to help him. He decided to get the area boy a job. He made some phone calls and it was agreed that the man should start work with one of the manager’s friends. So he had an agreement with the man to come back on Monday to resume. However, on the agreed Monday, he expected the man all day but he didn’t show up. The next day, there was still no sign of him. When the young man didn’t show up after a month the manager forgot about him.

After some months, they were going through their store, when the manager saw the picture of the man again and then decided to go down to the slum to look for the guy. He had the picture of the guy, and he kept asking but nobody knew the man. Then after one hour it occurred to him that he was holding the picture of the area boy after he had been cleaned up. So he went back to pick the picture he took before he was cleaned up and within a few minutes the man was located.

The message in the story is this; the barbers and hairstylists in America can change the outside of a person in a few hours but if they don’t change the person’s inside, the person has not yet changed. Although the young man was changed outwardly, inwardly he was the same old street urchin.

When I move around this country and see the way people behave, the way they treat the environment and the way they treat other people, it occurs to me that until we invest in the minds and hearts of our people, there is no way we will be able to get them to live in a developed system. True change in this country must begin in the minds of the people. The government may budget a large amount of money, they may repair roads and build good ones, put street lights, build airports, but until there is prosperity in the minds of the people, there will not be prosperity on ground. And whenever any structure that looks like prosperity is erected, because of the people’s mindset, they will depreciate the structures on ground to agree with their mindsets. The greatest investment we can make is investing in our thinking level.                                                                     -(Credit: Sam Adeyemi)