Dr. Ed Tori (Influence Every Day podcast) retells the parable "Acres of Diamonds" (originally popularized by Russell Conwell) and uses it to argue that people already possess opportunities and resources—"acres of diamonds"—in their current lives (skills, relationships, teams) instead of searching elsewhere. He connects the tale to leadership, coaching, social media comparisons, and his conversational-hypnosis technique ("hypnotic gifts") as a way to help others uncover their own resources. The episode closes with a standard podcast call-to-action to share, rate, and explore linked materials.
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This is Dr. Torrey. Welcome to the Influence Every Day show, where we make every day better and we influence for good.
In my coaching of aspiring leaders, business owners, parents and professionals, I am shocked at the number of times that I bring up a story and do a worksheet workshop sort of session that people haven't heard of. And it's a story that it's been in the personal development, self help kind of world since the 1970s. I first heard it from Earl Nightingale in a program called Lead the Field. And that, by the way, is what I happen to think the best rendition of this story. But it's an incredible tale. It actually has multiple layers of meaning, multiple layers of application, and it's immediately applicable to any sort of situation we are facing, whether it's at home, at work, in our own development and growth. And it was first made famous by someone named Russell Conwell. He was actually like a polymath in the late 1800s. He was a Civil War veteran, he was a journalist, he was an attorney, he was a preacher, a well known public speaker. And he had this vision of being able to make education affordable and accessible to the average working class person. And so he set out to raise funds to create a university with that exact mission. And ultimately he used this very story to found Temple University in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, by the way, being the cultural hub of the universe. Fly, eagles, fly. Anyway, Russell Conwell used this story and the story is often called Acres of Diamonds. The story goes like this. There's a Persian farmer in India who was well known, well respected. His name was Ali Hafed and he was wealthy, content, had a family, a farm, and was semi well known in his region. He had visitors come by his farm and they were talking about this sort of thing that was spreading among the people. It was news that people were finding diamond mines, they were finding diamonds, and even just one gem would be enough for them to be wealthy beyond their imagination than they already are. And so keep in mind, Ali Hafed was already a wealthy person and had what was described in the tale, a life of contentment. But when he kept hearing these stories of people finding diamonds and their life changing with life changing kind of wealth, he decided to sell his farm and leave his family and actually go in search of diamond mines to look for diamonds. He actually traveled across large swaths of the Middle east, leaving India, the western part of India, going across South Asia, in through the Middle east, through Palestine and into Europe. And he ended up finding nothing. He found no diamonds, no diamond mines, and was broke and Was broken eventually, as the story goes, threw himself off of a large cliff into the sea, into the Mediterranean Sea, and he died. Now, what an awful story. Except if you go back to his original farm, the person who purchased it from him had guests over and one of them was standing around in the main living room area and there was a fireplace and a mantle, and he saw this odd stone on the mantle that was sitting right in the center. And he walked over to it, he picked it up and he promptly fainted. As the man came to, he asked the new owner of the farm, where did you find this? And he said, what do you mean? This is just a. You know, I see some cool stones and rocks and things like that strewn throughout the stream in the back of the farm. And, you know, I found this. And this happened to be one of the bigger ones, weirder ones. So I brought it in and put it on the mantle. It turns out that was the largest diamond discovered up to that point. This is the 13th century. And that mine eventually became the most well producing largest diamond mine in India. And in that particular region of India happens to be known for diamonds. Now, it turns out that person, Ali Hafedh, had acres of diamonds. He was standing on acres of diamonds. First of all, keep in mind he was already wealthy, he already had a wonderful family life, but something pulled him to go looking elsewhere. And yet he had acres of diamonds, acres of wealth, unimaginable relationships and all those things. They were already there. He already had the loving spouse, the loving children who were respectful, the contentment, the farm that produced goods. He had all of that. He was respected, he was known, but yet he went and looked elsewhere. Now, this has applications in so many ways, right? Obviously we have. If you just look at your own life, imagine you're scrolling through Instagram and you're seeing this fake life that others have. You're seeing other people's diamonds, essentially, other people's diamond mines, other people discovering wealth. And whether it's true or not, whether it is or they're finding contentment, they're finding happiness, they're finding. They're showing the pictures of their best self. But in actuality, it's not real. Not only that, you haven't looked at your own area, take your face out of the phone and take a hard look at your own life. Where are there already diamonds? They might be in your voice, your story, your history. It might be in your closest friends or your relatives, your loved ones. It might be in your colleagues. It might be that you're like that Whole Kevin Bacon game where you're waiting one person or two persons removed from something that's already there, that can completely change your perspective and your contentment, your fulfillment, your life. It's easy to look around and think the world is ending every five minutes. It's easy to look around and to say, to want more because there's so many things screaming for our attention. But if we just take the moment to look right where we are within ourselves, our own skill set, our thoughts, our creativity, our energy. Maybe it's in our neighborhood. Maybe it's in local charities that we could volunteer for. Maybe it's. But it's right here. It's already here. Maybe you're a leader and you're like, we have this challenging problem in our organization, but have you looked at your own employees? Have you looked at your own team? Have you asked them about their skills that are outside of their job, roles that are outside of their job description? You know, sometimes we put people into buckets, like they. They are that way. I remember when I was an intern and started working later as an attending physician with my previous mentors, I was still always sort of like that young intern to them, right? And it's so. It's like that for a lot of things. Sometimes we know someone in a certain context and we keep them in that bucket. But they might be able to give us a gem. They might be able to show us that we have diamonds right here. It might be a partnership. It might be a relationship. It might be a conversation. In fact, that's actually the approach that I take to all conversations. It comes from my training in conversational hypnosis. In conversational hypnosis, there's a concept called hypnotic gifts. That happens to be the title of one of my books. Hypnotic how to Change Someone's Life in a Single Conversation. Actually, if you're interested, you can check it out at hypnoticgiftsbook. Com. Hypnoticgiftsbook. Com. See, the whole point of a hypnotic gift is to show, like, covertly show them in the middle of conversation to help them uncover for themselves their own diamonds, their own resource states, their own solutions to their problems, their own opportunities that are right before them. We can do that in a single conversation. But it's like that. It's acres of diamonds. You're standing on them. You're living in them. All it takes is for you to look for them. Don't sell the farm, don't leave the family, don't leave the life you have right now to go look elsewhere. Water the grass where you are now and it will get greener instead of looking and thinking the grass is greener on the other side. There are acres of diamonds under your feet right now. It's time for you to mine them. I'll see you in the next episode.
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