Do you make these mistakes in your thinking when you’re in a bind? Part I

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, …”

The phrase is taken from the opening paragraph of Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. The passage suggests an age of radical opposites taking place across the English Channel, in France and the United Kingdom respectively. It tells a story of contrasts and comparisons between London and Paris during the French revolution.

‘London’ and ‘Paris’ can be replaced by ‘Pre-Covid-19’ and ‘Post-Covid-19’ narratives of an ongoing revolution of our beliefs on how to live out the pandemic which shows no sign of slowing down as of this writing.

A good place to start is in our own thinking. How do we model it for these times? Perhaps looking at mistakes we make based on Aesop Fables kind of stories is perhaps one way. So here goes …

1.   Are we tethered to an old belief?

? Like the baby elephant tethered by a rope of a certain tensile strength which it does not outgrow even in full-grown adulthood; or for that matter, the shark who crashes against the glass case holding a bait umpteen times and then ceases to approach the bait even the glass case is lifted

2.   Do we side step taking the hard course and miss our chest of gold?

? Many side-stepped the boulder the king of the land had placed on a busy highway, except for a peasant who kept his load from his back down and moved the stone to the side for other’s convenience and found a chest of gold

3.   Are these trying times making us angry and restless leading to poorly conceived decisions?

? Father of a young boy who had a bad temper gave him a box of nails and told him to nail it to the wooden fence whenever he got angry; when he had overcome his anger issues, the father asked him to pry out the embedded nails one by one; the moral of the story: you can get over your anger but the damage is done and left a mark - so nail it before you make a display of it.

4.   Am I stuck on a problem and allowing it to consume my day and night?

? A wiseman’s cure of a complaining disciple who would not stop complaining, was to tell him a joke again and again and again … the same joke until the disciple found that it wasn’t funny anymore; he stopped his incessant complaining that very moment

5.   In these times are we developing an empathetic side to our thinking?

? A boy insisted in paying the full price for a crippled dog in a pet store when the owner was willing to give it to the boy for free; the owner understood why when the boy’s trousers lifted at the ankle when trying to pay the storekeeper; he was crippled himself and thought the dog could do with some empathy and understanding that only the boy could give.

6.   Are we resisting reinventing / pivoting because it is difficult to do, not realizing difficulties give us wings to fly?

? A man spotted a butterfly attempting to emerge from a cocoon but appeared not to be succeeding, so the man cut the cocoon at the bottom to help the butterfly emerge only to give birth to a bloated butterfly which could not fly; the cocoon was exerting the pressure on the emerging butterfly so that the mass of the butterfly will move from the body to its wings to give it strength; nature’s natural scheme of creating survival mechanisms scuppered by a man trying to do good by equating difficulty with failure; a parallel anecdote is the transformation boiling water does to each item cooked in it: the hard potato becomes soft to consume; a fragile egg in its shell becomes strong and delectable; and indigestible coffee becomes an aromatic drink that wakes up many a sleepy head

7.   Do we denigrate what we cannot have when we don’t get it?

? Like the fox who could not reach the bunch of grapes, gave up trying saying they are in any case ‘sour’ grapes

8.   Do we have it in us to be generous in these days when many are in want?

? A boy wanting to get away from the sweltering heat entered an ice-cream parlour and asked the waitress how much was an ice-cream sundae? She replied, ‘50 cents’. The boy looked at the change pulled out of his pocket and asked how much was a plain ice-cream. The impatient waitress with many to attend said, ’35 cents’. The boy said he will have a plain ice-cream. The waitress marched off and came back with his order. When she came back to clear the table after the boy had left, she found the boy had tipped her, ’15 cents’ from his 50 cents by foregoing the ‘sundae’ and having a plain ice-cream

9.   Do we have it in us to pull the plug on the bad news to stay positive and focused on what we need to do?

? Two frogs fell into a well while on a trek with a group in the forest, and made several attempts to jump out, encouraged by fellow trekkers, until the trekkers got tired of egging them to try and began telling them to give up. One of the frogs gave up and died, while the other kept trying despite the naysayers saying give up, give up! Finally, the frog leaped out of the well and thanked the trekkers for supporting his attempt. The fellow trekkers looked at him ashamedly since they were in fact doing the opposite; the mystery was resolved when one close to the frog who jumped out of the well said that the survivor frog was deaf

10. Do we feel beaten by the pandemic because all the efforts we have been making since the last three months is not fetching us any relief in business or studies or personal health?

? A motivational speaker held up a $20 bill to his audience and asked who wants it. All 200 hands went up. He crushed the bill in his hands and asked again who would want it. All 200 hands went up again. He dropped the bill the floor and stamped on it and soiled it the best he could. Again, he asked who would want it. All 200 hands went up again. Then he declared that however beaten we may feel in these times, like the $20 bill, our value had not diminished in anyway. So chin up and keep the fight on.

If you liked the anecdotes on freeing up our thinking provide a comment or a thumbs up to encourage me to publish Part II and Part III.