The speech became so popular that he was asked to repeat it more than five thousand times.
This speech mentioned an old farmer who was very excited by the story of a traveling merchant about people who came to Africa, discovered diamond fields and became fabulously rich. He decided to sell his farm, organize a caravan and go deep into Africa in search of diamonds.
For many years he explored the African continent in search of diamonds. Finally, he ran out of money and everyone left him. Left alone, he threw himself into the ocean in despair and drowned.
Meanwhile, in the backyard of the farm he had sold, a new farmer was watering a donkey from a stream running right through the field. There he came across a strange stone that wonderfully reflected light. He brought the stone into the house and forgot about it. A few months later, the trader mentioned above, traveling on business, stopped for the night at this farm. Seeing the stone, he became very excited and asked if the old farmer had returned. "No," they told him, "the old farmer was never seen again. But what is the reason for such excitement?"
The merchant took the stone and said: "This is a diamond of great price and value." The new farmer was skeptical, but the merchant insisted that he show where the diamond was found, then another, then another, and another. It turned out that the whole farm was covered with diamonds. The old farmer went deep into Africa in search of diamonds without even looking at his feet.
The moral of the story is this. The old farmer didn't realize that diamonds don't look like diamonds unless they're cut. To the untrained eye, they look like ordinary stones. A diamond needs to be cuted and polished before it becomes one of those diamonds we see in jewelry stores.
Your own diamond deposits can also lie under your feet. But they are disguised as hard work. Opportunities come dressed up in hard work.
Maybe your diamond deposits are in your talents, interests, life circumstances and experience, in your profession, in your contacts... it may turn out that your diamond deposits are under your feet if you take the time to recognize them and work on them.
Theodore Roosevelt said, "Do what you have to do with what you have, right where you are."
Most of the time, what you're looking for is right under your nose, but it doesn't look like a superficial possibility.
