What Do You See?
11th April, 2023 A professor asked his students to prepare for the test. The professor handed out the question paper and asked his students to turn the page and begin. To everyone’s surprise, there were no questions, just a black dot in the center of the page. The professor seeing the expression on everyone’s face, […]
‘The Streetlight Effect’
10th April, 2023 An old parable sometimes ascribed to Mulla Nasreddin, the 13th Century witty philosopher from today’s Turkey, tells of a drunkard searching under a street lamp for keys he has lost because the light there is better than where he thinks he lost them. A police officer sees a drunken man intently searching […]
‘Avoid the Wrong Choices ’
03rd April, 2023 In his classic book, ‘Winning the Loser’s Game,’ Charley Ellis gives one of my all-time favourite success analogies: ‘In expert tennis the ultimate outcome is determined by the actions of the winner. Professional tennis players stroke the ball hard with laser like precision through long and often exciting rallies until one player […]
‘Problem Solved’
02nd April, 2023 The teacher wrote on the board, 36X + yx, 2/3yx+3x(66y +12x)/b =0 He turned to the students and said, “Solve the problem.” One of the students walked up to the board, picked the duster, cleaned the board and said, “Problem Solved!” Wish some of our problems had similar solutions, but many of […]
‘It doesn’t add up’
28th March, 2023 A lot of things don’t make any sense. The numbers don’t add up, the explanations are full of holes. And yet they keep happening – people making crazy decisions, reacting in bizarre ways. Over and over. Historian Will Durant once said, “logic is an invention of man and may be ignored by […]
’Winning Lobster’
24th March, 2023 Hierarchies are everywhere. It is often argued that they are a social construct, invented to allow certain people to have power over others. But not everyone agrees. While promoting his new book, ’12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,’ psychology professor Jordan Peterson, of the Univ of Toronto, has sparked debate […]
‘What is Evil?’
21st March, 2023 I recently read a book called ‘Evil- The science behind humanity’s dark side’ by Julia Shaw. It looks at why people do terrible things. One of its points is that most evil people do not think they are doing something wrong, because they can justify their actions in a way most victims […]
‘Look for the Extraordinary in the Ordinary’
20th March, 2023 Two masons were approached by a reporter who asked the first mason, “What are you doing?” His response was to complain that he was virtually a slave, an underpaid bricklayer who spent his days wasting his time, placing bricks on top of one another. The reporter asked the second mason the same […]
Humility – Character in Action
16th March, 2023 Sam Rayburn served as the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the United States Congress for seventeen years. As the Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn wielded incredible power and prestige. He was third in the line of succession to the presidency. One day, he found out that the teenage daughter […]
“Practice Being in the “Eye of the Storm”
01st March, 2023 Storms are a natural part of life. They come in the form of the death of a loved one, disease, job loss, separations, financial collapse, and numerous other trials and tribulations. We can wish and pray that a storm will never find its way to our door, but they always do. You […]