In the Hole or In the Crowd? The Deaf Frog Effect

I recently finished Joyce Meyer’s book, Change Your Words, Change Your Life, and it was packed with so many lessons I can’t even begin to list them all. But one of the final stories she shared really stuck with me.

It was about two frogs that fell into a deep hole they couldn’t jump out of. As the rest of the frog community gathered around the top to watch, they started shouting down, “You’ll never escape! You might as well give up and die.” Every time the two trapped frogs attempted a leap, the crowd repeated those disheartening words: “You can’t do it. Just give up.”

Eventually, one frog gave in to the noise, laid down, and died. But the other frog kept jumping with everything he had. After countless failed attempts, he finally cleared the ledge and escaped.

The amazed crowd asked him, “Why didn’t you listen to us and just give up?”

The frog replied that he was hard of hearing—he had assumed the crowd was cheering him on the entire time, and that belief gave him the motivation to keep pushing for success.

The Power of Deaf Ears

On the surface, it’s a classic lesson in perseverance: keep going regardless of what the world says you’re capable of doing, because listening to naysayers will leave you so defeated that survival feels impossible.

I think almost everyone can relate to this story, and to be honest, I can relate to both frogs.

I’ve had dreams in the past that I let go of because the people surrounding me said they weren't possible and that I’d never succeed. I allowed my spirit to be deflated by the voices of the world rather than holding fast to what God’s word says about me.

Starting my journey of creating EVE has required me to turn a deaf ear to a lot of critics. Reading this story made me pivot my perspective. Now, I choose to be so delusionally confident that I just assume every person is cheering me on—regardless of what they're actually saying!

Are We in the Hole, or in the Crowd?

After mulling the story over, another angle hit me: what about the crowd of frogs at the top? The ones banding together to be the negative soundtrack in someone else’s journey?

We so often picture ourselves as the frog in the hole, but how often do we ignore the times we’ve been the frog in the crowd?

If people in your life are brave enough to chase their dreams, you don’t necessarily have to be their biggest cheerleader, but you certainly shouldn't join the masses in tearing them down. It goes back to the old saying: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

Please don’t take this as me preaching—I’ve been guilty of judging other people’s choices, too. I’m simply offering a reminder to myself, and maybe to a reader or two.

Missing Fellowship and the Courage to Innovate

My very first thought when reading this was: Why didn’t the crowd band together to help save them?

If there was an entire crowd up there, couldn't they have worked together to lower a vine or find a solution? It made me reflect on true fellowship versus a lack of it, and actual problem-solving versus passive observation.

What if just one frog in the crowd had spoken up and said, “Hey, let’s try something else”?

That leads to the final lesson I took from this story: sometimes, refusing to follow the crowd is your best bet for survival and success.

The surviving frog achieved a level of success no one thought was possible because he engaged in trial and error until he figured it out. In business and in life, people constantly try to push the "norm" or follow the template of what everyone else is doing—we see it on social media every single day. But the reality is that the person who tune out the noise of the crowd is the one who ultimately breaks through.