I Lost the Pie Eating Contest

When I was 21, I was in a pie eating contest.  One piece that is, not the whole pie.  There were two others. I knew one of them.  I didn’t know the third.

I didn’t win.  Neither did the guy I knew.

I forget his name.  He was the husband of one of my at-the-time-boyfriend’s co-workers, a fact that has absolutely nothing to do with this story. We were both just known for liking to eat.  And so, John, aka boyfriend, and his co-worker decided to enter us into this contest at their company picnic.   They thought it was hilariously funny.  Me, not so much.  But, I went along with it.

Now I could journey down the road of other completely irrelevant pieces of information.  But I won’t.

Here’s what happened.

Co-worker’s husband and I tried to eat as fast as we could.  We both ended up with a mouthful of pie we could now neither chew nor swallow.  Nameless-third-guy took a bite, chewed, swallowed, and took his next bite. 

And that was how nameless-third-guy won the contest.  And then explained his strategy.

Why do I share this rather gross story of a pie eating contest with you?

I was having a conversation with someone recently in which we talked about the times we try to do too much, too fast, and end up accomplishing very little.  It is only when we slow down and tackle our tasks one step at a time that we truly feel productive and on-task.

As a great mentor of mine once said, “Sometimes you have to slow down to move faster.”

If you find yourself busy all the time but not feeling productive, choose to slow down.  Pause, take a cleansing breath, and ground yourself.  Be intentional with choosing your next step and focus on that step only.  Then, choose the one after that.

My pie eating contest held a powerful lesson.  It was just such a terrible waste of good black raspberry pie.

Next time, I’ll consume mine just one bite at a time.

It tastes way better that way.