Life presents you with two Choices:
An Easy Life or Meaningful Life
Which one will you pick?
Picking an easy life is not going to add any meaning to your life. If you still want to get an easy life, Eliyahu M Goldratt told in "Choice" that, Take a hammer strike it hard on your head and you will get everything on the bed. You won't get an easier life like this anywhere on this planet.
Choosing a meaning life adds value to your life. To live a meaningful life one has to be an Analyst. An analyst is humbly arrogant. Humble in the sense that one doesn't know. Arrogant in the sense that having the confidence that one is capable of figuring out how to make things work.
Every situation is an opportunity to learn something new. Every new initiative is an exploration. Impediment to action always advances an action. To live a meaningful life, you have to solve lots and lots of problems. The best way to solve a problem is to build a model of it.
A problem is known and you want some desirable answer. Through your experience, you build a model that may be made of plastic, wood, code, or some computer simulation, etc. Feed input to this model and wait for the result. If the result matches your desired answer than your model is correct otherwise it's wrong. Make some changes in the model and try it again if the model doesn't meet your expectations.
In real life, our proposed model rarely works for the first time. When something doesn't work, we are left with two choices.
Complain about reality.
Harvest the gift it just gave us, the knowledge of what has to be corrected.
You have to reiterate your model to reach the optimal solution. In the end, the satisfaction of the progress compensates the disappointment.
Building the logical map of the world can help you to recognize the opportunities that are important to you. Along with that when things initially don't work, logical maps help you to identify the missing element until you convert the opportunity into success. Knowing the cause and effect relationships can help you to think clearly.
In Choice, Eliyahu M Goldratt describes the four obstacles which prevent us from thinking clearly are:
Reality is Complex.
Conflicts are given.
Blaming others.
The situation can't be improved further.
Reality is Complex: Any real-life situation, no matter how complex it initially looks, is actually, once understood is embarrassingly simple. The more complicated the situation seems to be, the simpler the solution must be. Our distorted perception of reality prevents us from thinking clearly which makes us
Unable to see the camouflaged problems.
Avoid challenging the things that are in the base.
Once reaching an excellent situation, not being motivated to explore for better solutions.
Newton didn't invent his three laws, he discovered them. He revealed the inherent simplicity that was already there. Asking why and insisting on a meaningful answer is the key. Every child is Newton in potential. You might think that asking why leads to more and more complexity. No, because when the system converges, common causes appear as we dive deep down. There are very few elements at the base which through cause and effect govern the whole system.
Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not to be in the multiplicity and confusion of things. Issac Newton
You might argue that how does the reality is so simple if it takes a large number of books to describe the universe, the human body, or a company.
The answer lies in the definition of complexity. The prevailing definition of complexity is, the more data elements one has to provide to fully describe the system, the more complex the system is. The other definition which the analyst use is, the more degree of freedom the system has the more complex it is. The degree of freedom means the minimum number of points you have to touch in order to impact the whole system.
Which one is a more complex system: Left or Right?
According to the analyst, the System on the left is more complex than the right one because the degree of freedom of the Left system is 4 whereas the degree of freedom of the right system is 1.
Conflicts are given: What is a Conflict? A conflict is a situation where we want contradictions. For example, the wings of an airplane. On one side, we want wings to be thick to ensure strength. On the other side, we want them to be as light as possible. In the Computer world, we want an algorithm to be as fast as possible along with that it should take as little space as possible. In every domain, we find lots of conflicts.
How to resolve conflicts?
We know that reality is inherently simple. As we dive deep down, causes converge. Conflicts arise due to some causes. Once the faulty assumption is removed then the cause of the conflicts also gets removed. Conflicts in good situations lead to compromise and in bad situations leads to a stone wall. Conflicts can be solved by the elimination method. Meaningful opportunities are open when one sees how to remove blockages.
An obstacle to people's perception is that conflicts are given and the best we can do is to seek a compromise. Inherent simplicity means that the reality is governed by very few elements and that any existing conflict can be eliminated. If we take that as given, as absolutely correct in every situation, we'll find ourselves thinking clearly.
It's amazing how frequently things that seem to be unrelated are connected to form a bigger picture. Similarities and differences emerge out of nowhere with such frequency that great thinkers start to expect and use it. Harmony is everywhere.
Blaming Others: To excel in life, you need collaboration from lots of people. Relationships play an important role in our life. Preserving harmony in a relationship is very important to live a full life. The quality of forming a pleasant and consistent whole is known as harmony. If relationships are not harmonious with others, the chance of bringing an opportunity to fruition will be severely reduced. Harmony exists in every relationship, unfortunately, we don't bother to find it and actually implement it.
A wonderful recipe to ruin the relationship is to blame others. There are four strategies one can apply in any relationship:
Lose-Lose
Win-Win
Lose-Win
Win-Win
Lose-Lose: In this approach, both the parties are at loss. Stephen Covey in Seven Habits of Highly Effective people gives an example of a Lose-Lose situation.
I know of a divorce in which the husband was directed by the judge to sell the assets and turn over half the proceeds to his ex-wife. In compliance, he sold a car worth over $10,000 for $50 and gave $25 to his wife. When the wife protested, the court clerk checked on the situation and discovered that the husband was proceeding in the same manner systematically through all the assets. Some people are so centered on an enemy, so totally obsessed with the behavior of another person that they become blind to everything except their desire for the other person to lose, even if it means losing themselves.
Avoid Lose-Lose situation at all costs.
Win-Lose / Lose-Win: In this approach, one person is winning at the expense of others. It assumes Life is a Zero-Sum game which means the size of the cake is fixed. Taking the bigger pie will reduce the portion of the other party. Winning at the expense of the other will sore the relation. Life is an iterative prisoner's dilemma. Employing such a strategy is going to deteriorate the relationship.
Seeking a compromise is a Win-Lose approach. Human beings have an emotional account of winning in their head. A situation that is handled as a Win-Lose, we are more protective than generous.
Win-Win: This approach assumes Life is a Positive-Sum game which means the size of the Cake is infinite. Taking a bigger pie has had no effect on the portion of others. The success of one person increases the chances of success of other persons.
A change that will bring both parties what they need from a relationship is a mantra of the Win-Win approach. Always think Win-Win. Blaming others will move us away from this approach.
The situation can't be improved further: Quantum leaps in performance are always possible. Accepting that I know is an obstacle preventing you from looking for that quantum leaps. Never say I know. A person can never learn or improve at anything if he convinces himself that he knows everything.
No matter what you achieve, it is always the beginning of infinity. The most precious opportunity to deepen our knowledge is whenever reality is significantly different from our expectations. It means something is missing in our approach. The best way to tackle this is to pause and carefully examine the situation.
Without continual growth and progress, such words as achievement, success, and improvement have no meaning. Benjamin Franklin
The hardest thing to do is to struggle to find an answer to a problem when we believe that there is a high chance that it doesn't have an answer. It's so easy to give up. Every obstacle is an opportunity to learn something new. A solution to a problem is creating a new reality. A new reality means new possibilities that you haven't thought about before because they didn't exist in previous reality.
To improve a situation one has to think clearly. Always avoid circular logic. It means A happens because of B and B happens because of A. A kind of Deadlock. For example, you want to learn how to drive a Car. You ask your Dad, buy me a new Car. Your Dad replies, first learn how to drive a Car. Recognizing this circular Logic will help you in thinking clearly.
Be skeptical about tautologies. A tautology is a statement that is always true. A man is a mortal is a tautology. Inherent simplicity means causes converge which means one cause is responsible for more than one effect. To avoid falling into the trap of tautologies, find the other effects, and verify your hypothesis. More effects mean the hypothesis is correct.
People are good. It's our judgment which is worsening the situation. Things can't touch the mind, they are always external. Anxieties come only from our own internal judgment. Things are changing at every moment. As you see something, it'll change immediately and then will be no more. The universe is changing. Life is a judgment. Every hypothesis, before it's even entertained as a plausible hypothesis should first pass the test of not being derogatory.
Conclusion: Life is short. Derive the maximum yield from the present moment by thinking clearly. The harder we try the more we are likely to succeed. The more we succeed the more we are motivated to go about it again. Each of us, if we want it hard enough, can have a full life. Stay calm and be relaxed.
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