This isn’t the important part of the story, but last night I… accidentally… watched The Bachelor. It was the first episode where the 22 girls do the walk up and do the 2 minute intro. One of the girls was a Jewellery Designer. My girlfriend on the couch next to me said, “that’s so cool! how do you become a Jewellery Designer?”. My response: “You just start”.

Before this woman was a Jewellery Designer (capital J and capital D), she just started designing jewellery (lowercase d, lowercase j). This is like anything worthwhile – you don’t become something until you start. You don’t get that title with the capital letter until you’ve done it. If you ask “how do you become an Author? that sounds so cool”, the answer is you just start writing. If you keep writing to the point where you publish a book, you’re an Author. If you ask “how do you become a Painter?”, the answer is you start painting.

Perhaps in a job you get the title before you’ve done the work. But very few jobs provoke the response “wow, that sounds so cool, how do you become that?”.

“Reassurance is overrated because you can never get enough of it”
– Seth Godin

Don’t seek reassurance. If you need reassurance that somebody else thinks you’re doing the right thing or that somebody else thinks it will work, you’re not going to get a lot done and you’re not going to learn to take initiative. Seth Godin says that any reassurance you get will quickly wash off. What then?

Sometimes, you just need a fresh start. If you can change your circumstances by increased effort, improved efficiency and by forging new, more positive relationships, that would be your best option. But in some cases, a fresh start is the only solution.

This might be in business. You might have been slogging away at your business or idea for an extended period of time. You might think you just need to work smarter or harder or better. But there comes a point where you just need to cut ties and start from scratch.

It might be in the office. If you earned yourself a bad reputation, it can be very hard to turn it around. No matter how hard you work in the future, you might still have that negative aura and people might still see you as lazy. If you’ll be forever linked to previous behaviour and you can’t see a way to rectify it, a completely fresh start with a new attitude might be the answer.

Parables

“Parables” are simple stories used to illustrate a lesson. Some of the most well-known books are parables. The likes of The Richest Man in Babylon, The One Minute Manager, Who Moved My Cheese? and The Greatest Salesman in the World are some great examples of popular parables. Rather than simply stating the facts, these stories force us to analyse and internalise their lessons. Google “parable” and most of the results will involve Jesus. These stories are a great way to teach religious or spiritual lessons. I’ve found them a great way to also teach business and financial lessons too.

Reading the story forces us to think about the lessons, rather than just being handed them on a silver platter. I think that when we interpret the lessons, we feel a little bit clever, and these with stick with us a lot more. By the same token, these lessons aren’t hidden. They’re pretty obvious, but you do have to do a very small amount of work to extract them. I feel that by doing that little bit of work, the morals of the story really resonate with us and hopefully we are more likely to internalise them and act upon them. Below are a few of my favourite examples of business or personal development books that are delivered through parables.

The Richest Man in Bablyon

This is a collection of parables set in ancient Babylon. These were originally distributed as series of different pamphlets distributed by banks and insurance companies before being compiled into a book. One of the parables tells is of an old, rich man passing on his knowledge of creating substantial wealth. Another uses an examples of the Walls of Babylon to show us that we all need to protect what we have. This is my favourite parable I’ve ever read. Definitely 5 stars (out of 5 of course!).

The lessons are the basic finance lessons our parents tried to teach us when we were young. I feel that if this book simply stated the facts, we would dismiss the advice like we dismissed the advice of our parents and teachers. This is really simple advice that EVERYONE needs to practice, but we don’t like being told what to do. Instead, George Clason delivers these lessons in the form of parables set thousands of years ago.

It isn’t condescending because we are so far removed from the situations of the camel trader and the spear maker, but the morals of the stories hold true today. By reading about the ancient Babylonians and their money issues, we can instead form our own judgements and apply them to our own lives today. If you’d like to learn some personal finance lessons without reading the entire thing for yourself, you can read my full summary here.

 

The One Minute Manager

Here is another good delivery of some very simple management techniques that we can use to help manage ourselves and those around us better. Rather than just telling us the three keys to one minute management, the parable helps us move through an office and understand WHY we should be using the One Minute Goals, One Minute Praisings and One Minute Re-Directs. This books isn’t just for “managers” as these principles can also be applied to our own lives. Read the my full summary here.

 

Who Moved My Cheese?

This is perhaps the most well known, but the one I enjoyed the least. Again, the parable style was good in making me interpret the lesson for myself, but I found this book really really smacked us over the head repeatedly to make sure we didn’t miss the message. The other I think were a little more subtle but you could definitely still work out the lessons. This one really didn’t try to hide it at all. The message is still great in helping us cope with change. Definitely a must read for anyone about to undergo a big change in their life, be that in their employment, relationships, family, friends, living arrangements and so on. If you don’t want to read the book yourself, here’s my summary.

 

The Greatest Salesman in the World

Probably my second favourite, but this one is a little lesser well known. This was again set in ancient times. I won’t give away the big twist at the end, but it was set around 2016 or 2017 years ago… Whilst the title suggests this book is for “salesman”, don’t be turned off. The 10 scrolls were fantastic and you can (and should) apply these to all aspects of life. Definitely worth the read! Or check out my summary here.

Sometimes the hardest part is just getting started. The hardest part is often taking that first step. Similar to yesterday’s post, Biting the Bullet, it often turns out to be easier than you imagined. For me, the two things that become easier once I get started are housework and exercise.

Whenever I see that the dishwasher has finished, I can’t think of anything worse than stopping what I’m doing and putting the dishes away. After enough procrastinating, I’ll eventually get up and get started. Within a few minutes… It’s done!

It’s the same as exercise. The hardest part is just getting out the door. The biggest hurdle seems to be changing into my running gear, putting on my runnings shoes and walking out the door. Once I’m out and get started with that first step, I actually enjoy it!

I need to apply this to more areas of my life. If I spent less time doing anything else but starting and instead just got started, it’d be over before I knew it!

I’ll try not to go into too much boring detail about the specifics of this particular scenario, but today I learned that sometimes you just need to suck it up and bite the bullet. It’s usually never as bad as you think it will be.

I had a task at work to complete that had been hanging over my head for a few days. I was first told about it on a Wednesday. I was only told about it in passing in the kitchen though and my boss told me what to do. It made sense, or I thought it did anyway, but without actually seeing it I didn’t totally grasp what was required. It was due Monday. I had to get a powerpoint pack sent from a colleague (which took two days and I had to chase up on the Friday). So I got cracking, but being late on a Friday afternoon, I kind of decided to go home instead. ‘I’ll get it done on Monday,’ I thought to myself.

Monday rolled around and I had some computer issues. Then my boss came up to me in a visibly displeased manner due to the fact that she hadn’t received the finished product yet. I’m pretty passive at work and don’t like to rub people the wrong way or cause conflict so I just apologised and said I would get it to her before I left the office that day. I had to wait until a friend left the office for the day at 5:30 so I could borrow his computer to get access to the files I needed. I was at work for almost three hours and I felt like I was bashing my head against a brick wall. The spreadsheet was so big that it kept crashing whenever I tried to manipulate the data. In the end, I got to the point where I seriously couldn’t do it anymore. I had told my boss that I would have it to her that day, and there was no way I could do it. I honestly didn’t understand what she wanted. Looking at the data I had and looking at the graphs my colleague had produced, I just couldn’t see what she wanted. I was honestly getting a little worried, almost scared… I knew she already wasn’t happy with me, and me not delivering this piece of work wouldn’t help that! I thought about just ignoring it and going home and trying again in the morning, but I decided I had to just bite the bullet and tell her.

I sent and email detailing what it was that I thought she wanted, what I had done to that point, and where I could see it going. I finished the email with an honest statement explaining my situation. I said something like “I’m really not sure what this is meant to look like. A little more guidance would be greatly appreciated so that I can delivery exactly what you want as soon as possible”.

I walked in to work the next morning to an email along the lines of “come and see me at my desk at 9am”. Having seen my boss’s discontent the day before, I was more than a little scared as to what this meeting would entail! I thought I was in a bit of trouble… But my boss gave me a nice cheery “Good morning” and a smile and I was instantly relieved. We only had to spend 3 or 4 minutes sitting at her desk. She was able to clearly articulate exactly what she needed done and how she wanted it to look. I was able to go away and complete it quickly and accurately and got it back to her that day.

It was in her best interest to support me so that I could get the job done, and my honesty and humility allowed me to show her that I needed help, which she was more than happy to give. I was pretty scared sending that email telling her that I hadn’t completed the task, and I was a little worried heading in the next day that I might be on the receiving end of a bit of harsh feedback. But in the end, there was nothing to worry about! I was able to get the instruction I needed, I was able to get the job done, and it was no where near as bad as I thought it would be!