Ingenious Things I have Assimilate from Unschooled Peoples

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”

1.  We can lucubrate something useful from anyone.

Whenever we find ourselves ignoring someone because we’ve already determined that they aren’t “smart” enough to say something meaningful, we’ve made a big mistake. Besides being presumptuous and arrogant, this mindset blocks out every useful thing the other person might pass along. Instead of just listening and mining the conversation for nuggets of wisdom, we allow our pre-existing bias to brand everything as “not smart enough for me.” Incredibly bad idea.

2. If you fail at first step, it really doesn’t mean you have a bad idea.

This one I learned from those children’s who goes home to home in search of some work for money and their daily food. They are not engineers or masters in doing difficult work, even though they go here and there in search of work and do works like cleaning, dusting, washing cars, gardening, etc.

3. Don’t ever let annoyer dispirit you – not even once.

Now, some might say this one is too dogmatic because it’s possible to allow annoyer to discourage you in the short term so you can get the upper hand in the long term. But the best advice I ever received about this came from a taxi driver who said, paraphrasing, “When you let annoyer dispirit you, the annoyer doesn’t necessarily win, but you definitely lose.” What he meant was, you lose upstairs where the loss takes a progressively worse toll on your psyche. Yes you can recover from that, but it’s going to take a lot more effort to bring your self-esteem up to par again than if you’d stood your ground to begin with.

4. The game of relationship exists in interchange and always will be.

If you can’t find it in yourself to return a favor, or give back more than you got when someone helped you out of a bind, then you are relationship handicapped. While this may seem like basic intuitive logic (and it is), it’s amazing how often it’s ignored. While relationships shouldn’t be tit for tat arrangements, the underlying willingness to reciprocate — even if it’s really hard to do —must be there for the relationship to grow and flourish. None of us are one-way streets.

5. You learn that’s good; But if you do its best.

Well, ok, this one is a little bit on the nose. Learning is more than good – it’s essential. Learning is the remedy that makes the human brain the most powerful organic decision-making and problem-solving tool on the planet. The main point here is that there’s a certain magic in doing that many people simply miss out on. You can learn a lot about car engines, but until you get under the hood and work on one, you can’t see just how remarkable an invention these machines we take for granted truly are. That’s one example of thousands, but the same principle applies.

6. You can outlive anything.

More than one person has said something like this to me, and I think it’s dead on right. Often it’s rumination about how we won’t survive this or that calamity that really gets us. But usually we can find the inner reserves to overcome just about anything, and will probably surprise ourselves that we pulled it off. I’m not saying it won’t hurt like hell, or bring us to our very brink, but we usually give ourselves far too little credit for being able to overcome difficulty.

7. Money is essential, but experience is priceless.

Experience is really important, and that’s the thing you can’t buy with money. When you buy something, you’ll enjoy that thing for a while, but our in-built tendency toward habituation will eventually assert itself and the thing will become yet another thing we own. When we invest in experience, however, we are buying memories, and new learning, and new ways of thinking, and a whole lot more.  Those are things that become part of who we are, and no physical item can touch that rupee for rupee.

8. Just be prepared.

Just be prepared…for anything. Quoting that inestimable philosopher, Mike Tyson, “Everyone has a plan – until they get punched in the face.”  Exactly.  So be ready to get punched in the face, and then refer back to #6 on this list.