World is a Classroom

Lessons from the wonderful world around me – The world is a classroom and everyone and everything a teacher.

Allergic to Bullets

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Jerry is a manager of a restaurant. He is always in a good mood. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would always reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”Many of the waiters at his restaurant used to quit their jobs when Jerry changed jobs, so that they could follow him around from restaurant to restaurant.
Why?

Because Jerry was a natural motivator.

If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was always there, telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.
Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! No one can be a positive person all the time. How do you do it?”
Jerry replied,

“Each morning I wake up and say to myself, I have two choices today. I can choose to be in a good mood or I can choose to be in a bad mood. I always choose to be in a good mood.

Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be victim or I can choose to learn from it. I always choose to learn from it.

Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I always choose the positive side of life.”
“But it’s not always that easy,” I protested.
“Yes, it is.” Jerry said.

“Life is all about choices.When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations.You choose how people will affect your mood.You choose to be in a good mood or a bad mood.It’s your choice how you live your life.”

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something that you are never expected to do in a restaurant business. He left the back door of his restaurant open. And then?

In the morning, he was robbed by three armed men. They forced Jerry to open the safe box. While Jerry was trying to open it, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped of the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him.

Luckily, Jerry was found quickly and rushed to the hospital.After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body! I saw Jerry about six months after the accident.

When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I would be twins! Want to see my scars?”
I declined to see his wounds but did ask him what was going through his mind as the robbery took place.

“The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied.

“Then after they shot me, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or I could choose to die. I chose to live.”
“Weren’t you scared?” I asked.
Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me that I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read ‘He’s a dead man.’ And I knew I needed to take action.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Well, there was a big nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry. “She asked me if I was allergic to anything. ‘Yes,’ I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Bullets!’ Over their laughter, I told them, ‘I’m choosing to live. Please operate on me as if I’m alive, and not dead’.”
Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude.

I learned from him that:

Everyday you have a choice to either enjoy your day or to hate it.

The only thing that is truly yours- that no one can control or take from you- is your attitude. So if you can take care of that, everything in life becomes much easier.

Learning to ride a cycle

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Here are the instructions:

  1. Stand perpendicular to the cycle, with the handlebar side of the cycle ahead of you. Put a leg across the cycle such that the cycle is now between your legs
  2. Get yourself seated on the cycle seat, leave one foot on the floor and another on a pedal. Press the foot on the pedal down clockwise and the cycle will start to move forward. As the cycle starts moving, the other foot should also be placed on the other pedal.
  3. Keep pedalling with both feet. The cycle will move forward based on the force you apply on the pedals.

Congratulations you have now learnt to ride a cycle. Believed me? No?

Then why look for tips, tricks and techniques to change your life overnight. Go get your hands dirty, fall down a few times and keep fine tuning your approach – that’s the way you learn.

The First Principles

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When Elon Musk  and his team were trying to estimate how much the first SpaceX rockets would cost, they could have just looked at the products on the market. Instead, they figured out what the necessary parts of a rocket are and then found out how much the raw materials of those parts would cost. The result was startling – SpaceX could build a rocket for about 2% of the typical price.

Elon Musk’s approach to solving problems is to always start with the first principles. He says that often we go with analogies  – “They did it this way OR nobody has done it yet”. But with first principles, he boils it down to fundamentals – the first principles. What are the physics of it? How much time with it take? How much will it cost? Why will it not be possible?

Ashlee Vance mentions how Musk wanted to revamp the very idea of the automobile and build an energy network at the same time with a budget equivalent to what Ford and ExxonMobil spend on their annual holiday parties. Or how similarly SpaceX created avionics parts at the cost of the food at meetings about the cost of avionics parts at traditional firms. Similar stories were shared by Sergey Brin & Larry Page when they first started with Google and people said it was impossible, but they worked out the numbers and figured it could be done. As Larry Page quotes “Good Ideas are always crazy until they are not”. 

When you start with a large task or challenge – conventional wisdom usually answers that it is not possible to solve such a challenge. However, if you were to work out the basics and the numbers underlying the challenge – it is often doable. Next time you hear something like “Thats how it is” – try switching to first principles.

Focus on the process and the journey

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At the recent Toastmasters meeting, I informed people about Stephen Covey’s P/PC balance (Production and Production capability). Covey explains how a company that only worries about production and doesn’t think of machine downtime will soon lose out to the other which plans its PC- production capability with downtime, machine repairs, research, upgrade etc. Similarly, I requested people to concentrate on what they were doing with their own production capability rather than just the results – so sleep habits, eating & exercise, building teams, learning new skills, etc. Focus on the process of self-improvement rather than just the results.

The Toastmaster of the Day (Sid) had a couple of lovely messages with “Movies” as the theme. Interestingly, I felt they applied to this overarching theme of the process. He opened with a story about his granduncle explaining the time and effort it took to create a movie. He showed him the many takes, the edits and all the effort that went into creating one clip in a movie. All this effort is always hidden and we only see the movie. But such is life. You may have to put in days or months of effort and that would yield one moment to present yourself. Like they say, it takes 10 years to become an overnight success.

Sid’s conclusion was equally apt. He said a good movie plot should not be judged on the twists and the climax, but instead on how the movie progresses between those points. Life is similar to that, we long for and sometimes dwell inside some key moments. But the real action happens between those points in your life. The points are just photographs, the movie is between them.

Treating all like Family

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Let’s face it – the world is filled with idiots. Some argue that there are more idiots than the world population (I call you both idiots, you both call me an idiot and you call each other idiots. So we have 6 idiots but only 3 people. Idiotic Math). Some argue that if you meet idiots all day – you are the idiot. And the science around idiots is quite intriguing, but I am experimenting with dealing with the idiot (myself or the other person – doesn’t matter at this point).

To catch yourself from getting angry the next time, try to treat the other person as a relative. That cute grandpa who forgets everything or the far away uncle who doesn’t understand anything you said or the grumpy old uncle who just doesn’t agree with anything you say. You are not allowed to shout at any of them – so what do you do instead?  Shower some love and hope for the best 🙂

Birthdays…

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I’ve gone through swings in how I think of Birthdays.

My earliest memory of a birthday was a party early one morning in my dad’s office. I was probably 3. My relatives had all gathered around. I was excited about new socks. (and that book about whales). At 5 we had a massive party on my terrace. With a guitarist, a Charlie Chaplin and a magician (and his rabbit). Friends and teachers from school were there and I remember all the gifts. One also spelt my name “Wick Rum”.

The next few years had variations of celebrations with friends. Cutlets seem to be a mainstay of the menu at these celebrations. One birthday celebration coincided with exam season, so my mom designed games that prepared us for the exam.  When I got too-cool to celebrate with a party in school, I went out with parents and relatives. A cake at the pool-side with many relatives and my over sized yellow t-shirt. Eventually I grew into it – so investment 😛

University had a further myriad of celebrations. The first had 100s (at least in my head) show up at midnight to splatter cake on my face and give me my deserving birthday bums.The next had fewer folks at midnight but they decided not to waste the cake – instead it was eggs, flour and a drop into a dirty pond. There were birthday treats that costed 70$ – massive at that point and I felt like I was going way over budget. 

Birthday in Sweden perhaps had the best surprise ever. A bunch of friends waiting in the corner of a train station for me to show up. (yes there was cake and I also almost ran into a train and missed them). There were more variations of birthdays since – combined meal treats, a house party, quiet dinners and DUMPLINGS! Blood donations, food distribution, charity campaigns, and this one attempt at telling 100 people a story of a girl to collect a dollar from each person.

There are plenty other stories about my birthdays. Each story brings back more memories about the people involved and gives me great joy. I am starting to like birthday celebrations again in my own funny way – not because of the birthday celebration and not because I grew a year older; but because its a chance to reflect about the numerous people who’ve graced my life. Its an opportunity to celebrate the many people who’ve shaped me to be who I am.

Thank you for influencing my life in the small or large way that you have.So thank you for the gift of your presence in my life. If you wish to give me more presen(ts)ce- a quick message that we can use to kick off a conversation would be lovely!

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Avi reminded me this morning that birthdays are an opportunity to celebrate achievements & successes. It was a timely reminder to complete this post.

My house help is smarter than me…

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I’ve always admitted that I am very impressed with my house help. She came to the rescue again today.

I got locked out of my bathroom. It’s been locked for a day now (thankfully I have 2 bathrooms in the house). I tried pulling the door and pushing it, tried all angles and degrees of force on the lock, I even tried talking to the door(open sesame). No luck.

This morning, I asked my house help help. She first asked me if it wasn’t opening (not sure if its reaffirmation or teaching me hindi by repeating my broken sentence with correct grammar). Then she tried opening the door – no luck. Unlike me, she gave up in 5 seconds, looked around, found a nail cutter. She used the back end to open the door and walla- it was open within 45 seconds of my initial question. And I apparently studied engineering!

My Realisation – Sometimes I forget that everyone is smarter than me. Ok Well, EVERYONE is smarter than me …  How can I improve my life by asking for help more often?