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I grew up in Spain during the 1960s. It was a very different country then. Life was simpler, harder, and much more rural.

Every summer my family visited the village where my parents were born. My uncles and aunts worked the land as farmers. Their days were long and physically demanding.

One evening after a day of harvesting, my uncle Ángel asked me to help him take the mules to drink at the village fountain.

For a seven-year-old boy, this was a great responsibility. Two large animals followed me calmly through the village streets. I felt proud.

Afterward we returned to the stable so the mules could rest and prepare for the next day of work.

That is when something small happened that stayed with me.

My uncle filled the manger mostly with straw.

Then he opened a small can of barley and mixed it into the straw.

The mixture looked strange to me. Almost all straw, only a little barley.

So I asked him why.

He explained patiently.

Mules love barley much more than straw. If you give them barley alone, they eat it too quickly and it harms them. If you give them only straw, they will not eat enough to regain their strength.

So the barley is mixed with straw.

To get the barley they love, the mules must eat the straw as well. In this way they recover properly and are ready to work again the next day.

Then he added something simple.

He said he learned it from his father, who learned it from his father before him.

At that moment it was simply a story from my uncle.

But many years later, I understood it was much more.

As adults we often wish life contained only the “barley” moments.

The highlights.
The achievements.
The exciting breakthroughs.

But life does not work that way.

Most of life is made of what might look like straw: ordinary days, routine work, quiet effort, small frustrations.

And yet those ordinary moments are what sustain us. They prepare us. They create the conditions that make the meaningful moments possible.

If life contained only intense experiences, we would burn out quickly.

Just as the mules could not live on barley alone, we cannot live only on excitement, recognition, or achievement.

The quieter parts of life give meaning and stability to the exceptional ones.

Over the years I have seen many leaders struggle with this balance.

They pursue only the “barley” moments:

Major achievements
Recognition
Big milestones

But leadership, like life, is built mostly in the quieter spaces.

The daily conversations with a team member.
The patient development of trust.
The discipline of showing up even when progress feels slow.

These are the moments that sustain long-term success.

They may not feel remarkable in the moment, but without them, the highlights cannot exist.

That evening in the stable taught me something I would only understand many years later.

Good and difficult moments are not opposites.

They are part of the same mixture.

The routine moments give meaning to the memorable ones.

And often the simplest experiences carry the deepest lessons.

If you look back at your own journey, you may find that the moments that shaped you most were not always the obvious ones.

They may have been small conversations, quiet observations, or simple stories that revealed their meaning only much later.

Leadership, like life, is not made only of extraordinary events.

It is built day by day in the mixture of straw and barley.

If this reflection resonates, the next step is not more information.

It is a focused conversation.

I work with experienced leaders who want to reflect more deeply on their journey, realign their goals with what matters most now, and move forward with greater clarity and intention.

If you would like to explore that together, I invite you to book a private strategy conversation.

Book a private strategy conversation with Agustin