How to Make Pearls

Wonder how? We're going to find out. There's an old saying that says, when life gives us lemons, we make lemonade, but oysters, when it's irritant is bigger than what it can manage, the oyster makes pearls.

Let's face it, life is just not fair sometimes, but for the oyster, it sees things just a little different and that's just where I want to be. Here's what I mean. The oyster dines on the smallest organism known to man called plankton and there certainly is no shortage of plankton. As the oyster dines, it's meal goes through a screening process and it's during this process that particles larger than plankton escape the oyster's filtration process.

When this happens the oyster does something amazing to protect itself from the irritants, such as sand. It secretes a liquid-like substance called nacre. The irritants are then covered in nacre, it hardens and eventually creates a pearl.

The oyster will complete this process throughout the course of its entire life. The bigger the irritant, the bigger the pearl. The irritants that once escaped the oyster's filtration process were a potential threat, but now the irritants are a threat no more because the oyster has it covered.

What will you produce under pressure? In most cases, the pressure is an indication that something has gone wrong. Pressure makes us uncomfortable and for some pressure is the perfect opportunity for them to take off or fight with the thing which they believe is making them uncomfortable. This is called fight or flight mode.

For a moment, let's place a different spin on this giant we call pressure. Let's think of pressure like the oil light on our vehicle's dashboard. Okay, we're driving along in our car, the oil light comes on. We will do one of three things: panic, ignore it or make a plan. What will you do? What will you produce under pressure?

What if pressure, like the oil light on your vehicle, was an indication for you to really shine and a time for you and I to tell life that you are barking up the wrong tree?

A good friend of mine once shared with me an old Caribbean proverb. She said, "A monkey knows which tree to climb up." Wow, this was powerful and profound to me. That meant that life situations and circumstances were not choosing me by accident, but only by what I was equipped with. Life has been a series of testing for us all. Do you fight, take off or make pearls?

Warning: Contents are under pressure