There come moments in our lives where something just clicks in a different way. It’s as though someone is shifting the camera angle on the world, and we gain another perspective. Here, people share stories of times that left them saying, “Ah, I never saw it that way.”
Someone once pointed out to me why they thought people so often believe the world is either going to end or be plunged into chaos. It’s because they can’t cope with thinking everyone after them will have it better.
His argument was that, despite the fact life seems to become easier, longer, and less painful as time goes on, people would prefer to believe that they are at the peak. The thought that if they were born just 100 years later they would have fewer worries, more fun, and a better life, actually causes unhappiness. They are envious of the future generations who will experience these things.
The solution? Adopt the belief that things are going to get worse soon. Through warfare, environmental damage, or civil unrest the belief that the end is nigh is actually comforting, as people can then believe that they have it as good as it’s ever going to get. They can feel like they won life’s lottery. That’s why every society has some end of the world story or another, and why a new thing will bring about our destruction every few years.
I don’t know if I agree or not, but it is an interesting idea.
Jake Williams
Many of you must have driven in crowded (U.S.) cities like Chicago or New York. I have too. Often, in traffic, people refuse to give way when you want to change lanes to enter into a mall or a freeway entrance. The remedy? Open the window and signal with your hands. I had to do this, too. I used to think that by signalling with my hands, I am asserting myself, forcing the driver behind me to let me change lanes. I felt superior after doing this, until I read a thought on this problem by Richard Muller…
continued on the next page
His theory is that by signalling with hands, I let the other car know that I am a human like them, who is driving this car, and I really need to change lanes. A simple signal with your hands is able to bring out emotions like empathy and politeness (his words). I said to myself, I am not really forcing him/her to let me change lanes. Instead, I am coming out of my car” – my machine – to appeal to him/her/them on a personal level. After reading this, I could think of many such scenarios, where we may feel that we forcefully got the job done, asserted our superiority. On the contrary, we connected with him/her/them and the other person allowed us to progress.
Parag Chandakkar
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side!
We’ve all heard this timeless anti-joke. But someone once explained it to me in a new way that left a deep impression. It’s kind of a macabre interpretation, and it turns the joke into an exercise in philosophy. This interpretation renders the joke forever humorless in my mind; but that’s okay, because it wasn’t really funny to begin with.
Here’s the dark explanation:
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the “other side.” By “other side” here, we mean the afterlife. The street was busy and so it was likely that she would be hit by a car and die, which is why she chose to crossto get to the other side. So the dark interpretation of this joke is that the chicken’s street-crossing escapade was actually her choosing death.
Kind of dark, right?
John Chase
My biggest example of this “aha” moment led me to write a brief how to guide.
I had a really difficult time getting employers to pick up the phone and call me after I applied and submitted my resume to a job. After researching the recruiting process and thinking critically about how business decisions are made, I realized that I wasnt thinking about things in the right way. Here’s what I learned from my research…
continued on the next page
- Recruiters may spend six seconds or less reading a single resume.
- Employers receive hundreds of applications for a single job opening.
- Most employers use an applicant tracking system to filter out job applicants whose resumes dont align with the job description.
- Hiring managers need to justify why they hired you.
I began to think of my resume as a business justification rather than a summary of my past experiences and accomplishments. Now, I structure my resume to include…
continued on the next page
- An executive summary that summarizes and quantifies my competencies.
- Data that supports the statements in my resume and that is placed in the direct line of sight of the reader when theyre skimming through the resume. Hint: People tend to read in F-shaped patterns, which means that the data needs to be on the left side of the resume in order to stand out to someone skimming through the document.
- Only the information that is relevant to the job. This mitigates bias and ensures the recruiter or hiring manager is basing their decision to call you on the information that pertains to what they are advertising for.
continued on the next page
This way of thinking and designing resumes has worked for dozens of friends and acquaintances that I have helped over the years. Regardless of the field or industry in which people work, this style of resume writing has landed phone interviews with a wide variety of companies.
Alex Mooney
I was in my early twenties, and two very simple notions were introduced to me:
- True love isnt a feeling. Its a constant decision. Every day. Feelings fade, and if love is just a feeling, it will too. But decisions—commitments—are forever.
- Romantic relationships, marriages especially, arent about you.They arent even 5050. You give 100% to your spouse, and they give 100% to you. When working correctly, you dont have to worry about what you are getting out of your relationship, because your spouse is taking care of that for you, and vice-versa.
I had been dating girls for a decade at the point that this revelation was given to me, and very quickly realized that I had always been in the relationships for myself. I was chasing the feeling of being loved, seeking to fill my need for approval, and pursuing the satisfaction of physical intimacy. Sure, I went through all the motions—I was very romantic, in fact—but ultimately, in my heart, even those actions were done for selfish reasons, necessary as they were to perpetuate a relationship that was meeting my needs…
continued on the next page
Its no wonder that none of those relationships lasted!
Fast forward another decade, (plus some), and Im happily married with two kids and one on the way, and Ive gained some perspective from marriage conferences and counsellors that has done wonders to help me understand concepts that, while amazingly true, dont seem to be well-known.
Starting with those first two revelations from my twenties, my wife and I have gathered all of these concepts over the years into what we call our marriage toolbox. My father always told me to use the right tool for the job, and Im always thankful that when conflict or difficulty arises in our marriage, my wife and I are able to pull out the right tool to resolve the issue. We often lament that so many marriages have so few tools at their disposal, and we share the tools whenever we can with couples who may need them.
Teddy Otero
I started taking a look at undocumented Mexicans who had lived in the USA for many years, especially in California or the Southwest. ‘Ship ’em all back,’ was my old mantra. Then one day, I realized something. It was like a book dropped on my head.
I suddenly figured out that a lot of these people were encouraged to come here to pick our crops, and that Americans working with farms were helping bring them over to the U.S. to do so. It was a business for many years, and supported by U.S. farmers themselves. This was going on heavily between the end of World War 2 and right up into the 60s. Then when the Hispanic populations here began to increase because of this business, that’s when people started reacting to the inflow of illegal aliens…
continued on the next page
For all those years, it was mostly Americans who were doing the transporting, too. Paid by the farmers, with the Border Patrol ‘sort of’ allowing it all to happen as long as it didn’t get too wild. Who was going to pick all those crops in California? White, Anglo-Saxon Americans? No. Mexicans. So, we bring them here in droves over a period of decades, and some decide to stay, and they flourish. It came to me that it was America who brought this on themselves. But here we are whining about it now, when for decades we practically waded across the Rio Grande and dragged them here with promises of work…
continued on the next page
In a lot of countries, they don’t have illegal immigration backlash. Many of those countries are easy as pie to enter. So what’s the difference between those countries and the good old USA? Simple. In many of those countries, you can’t rent an apartment, get a job, buy a car, obtain government money or medical care, put your kids in school, or even open a bank account without some form of national I.D that confirms you ARE a citizen. We have a few laws sort of related to those things, but not really. If you hold out the carrot, the donkey is going to approach it. If there IS no carrot, the donkey will stay where he is. If the U.S. had a national I.D system, created by the U.S. Mint that restricted all those things I mentioned to holders of the I.D, the illegal immigration problem would vanish almost overnight. Then you set a future date to implement it, and grant blanket amnesty to everyone already here who isn’t a criminal. One in 25 people in the United States are here illegally. That’s roughly 12 million people. Trust me when I say that trying to deport them all just won’t work. And that doesn’t count the folks who are RELATED to those people, but actually ARE legal.
It’s America’s fault for creating this, so we can’t continue to blame it on the people who came here, worked hard, and are now flourishing.
Robert Blevins
Apparently, this is a common method they used to teach finance. It changed by life to understand it.
I had a late-night conversation with a fraternity brother, who was a finance major, in college, 18 years ago. He was eating a cheeseburger, and stopped to explain the cheeseburger from the perspective of a finance major.
When you think about it, he said. The fact that this cheeseburger costs less than a dollar is a triumph of capitalism and corporations.
Then he explained why…
continued on the next page