Summit

Snow never melts atop Mount Everest… winds at the highest altitude summit reach 200 miles per hour… overall a very difficult challenge!

 George Leigh-Mallory is first recorded as attempting the climb in 1921. On his third try, in 1924, he disappeared into the mist, never to be seen again. It is believed that he reached the top but slipped and did not live to tell his tale. The mountain had won.

 However, friends of Mallory gazed upon a large picture of Mount Everest and declared, 'Mr. Everest, you defeated us once. You defeated us twice. You defeated us three times. But, Mr. Everest, we shall someday defeat you because you can’t get any bigger – and we can!'

Eight more attempts were made on the mountain resulting in eight more failures. Finally, Hillary and Tenzing defeated Everest. Since then, there have been over 11,346 summit ascents by 6,098 people.

Failure comes only after we have given up. If the odds of winning are slim to none, they might be worth taking. Surely, we can get bigger and better – better in ability; better in experience; better in wisdom; better in faith.

Scale the summit, blunt failure’s knife
Commit to take on challenges in life!

 - Pravin K. Sabnis

 

Show-How

A trainer observed that his wife took 20 minutes to prepare breakfast, while he scanned the morning papers. Over many days, he made a note of her many trips to the fridge, to the cooking stove, to the dish rack, to the sink... 

 

He concluded that his wife’s efficiency was adversely affected by the excessive trips she made to different parts of the kitchen. One fine day he made an effective decision of sharing his know-how with his wife. 

 

He explained to her how she could get everything done in 10 minutes if she were to follow his plan derived from his observations. She thanked him for his know-how and asked him to show-how!

 

Since that day, he prepares breakfast in nearly 30 minutes while his wife scans the morning papers!

To be better at utility, ‘know-how’ needs to be backed by ‘show-how’. To know how to do something better is never enough, never mind the quality of observations made about another’s performance. We must be able to apply our stated solutions.

Know-how is knowledge on how to get something done. Know-why (the reasons) and know-what (facts) are important, but theories are confirmed only when put in practice. To state solutions is easy, but to walk the talk is prudent.

Unless we can truly show-how
Not of much use is know-how! 

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Excusitis

Ten years ago, my mother wished to see her cousin whom we had no information about other than that he lived in Pune. It took just a few minutes with the telephone directory and a dozen calls to trace him down and meet him.

 It is common to hear excuses for not having called or visited due to the lack of knowledge about telephone numbers and addresses. In today’s age of information explosion, such excuses are most bizarre and are symptomatic of an ailment called excusitis.

 The word has been taken from the book: The Magic of Thinking Big, written by David Schwartz. Chapter Two is titled ‘Cure Yourself of Excusitis, the Failure Disease’. The term refers to the behaviour that finds all sorts of excuses to justify lack of action.

 So often we come up with unoriginal justifications for the unjustifiable. The person seized by excusitis not only wrongly believes that his stance appears logical, but also tends to be gripped by recurring excusitis in other situations as well!

 If somebody speaks of lack of time, it means one of two things... the person does not know how to or does not want to and is being unabashedly untruthful! Effectively it is a skill thing in the first case and an attitude thing in the latter.

 Excusitis blinds us from our own abilities and makes us shirk responsibility. Every time, an excuse arises in our mind, let’s opt to take charge of our choices, our actions or the lack of them! Escaping excusitis leads to embracing ownership of our lives and our true potential!

 Let’s opt for ownership of every action...

Instead of excusitis as a regular reaction!

 - Pravin K. Sabnis