Training: The Essence Of Fulfillment Through Simplicity

Confucius said,“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” A thought to ponder.

Let me start by simplifying the three important areas that I will be discussing in this topic – simplifying our life, simplifying our teaching, and simplifying our system.

Life is how we make it. If we want it to be complicated, then it will be. But before you throw that criticizing look at me, I just want to clarify that I'm not advocating becoming a monk or joining the Amish to make life simple nor I am advocating to lose balance like working with only two tools though you know that there are still a lot of options.

I'm not an advocate of examining your life on such a micro level that you even failed notice the obvious. An example is, when you look up at a flock of geese winging their way south, you wonder how one side of the “V” always happened to be longer than the other. The reason is simple – there are more birds on that side. The moral is, sometimes, we are the ones making the problems harder than what they really are. Simple answers are already there but we tend to delve into the deeper ones.

Have you heard of the term Ochams's Razor? It was named after a 14th century English philosopher named William of Ocham. His work on knowledge, logic and scientific inquiry played a major role in the transition from medieval to modern thought. He mentioned in hi writings Aristotle’s principle that entities must not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. This principle is now known as Ocham’s Razor or the Law of Parsimony – a problem should be stated in its most basic and simplest terms. I n science, the theory that should be selected is the simplest one as long as it perfectly fits the facts of a problem.

Seek for simplicity for most (if not all) of the times, the best solution to a problem is almost always the simplest solution.

Here's an explanation on how simplicity creates balance in one's life.

A woman came out of her house and saw three old men with long, white beards sitting in her front yard. She didn’t recognize them. She said,  "Sirs, ...I don’t think I know you, but you must be hungry. Please come in and have something to eat.” “Is the man of the house at home?” they asked.

“No,” she said. “He’s out.” “Then we cannot come in,” they replied.

In the evening when her husband came home, she told him what had happened. He said “Go on out and tell them that I’m home now and invite them to come in!” So the woman went out and invited the men in.

“We do not go into a House together,” they replied. “Why is that?” she wanted to know.

One of them pointed to one of his friends and said “His name is Wealth,”, and said pointing to another one, “He is Success, and I am Love.” Then he added, “Now, go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you want in your home.”

The woman went in and told her husband what was said. Her husband was overjoyed. “Wonderful!!”, he said. “Let’s invite Wealth in. Let him come and fill our home with wealth!” His wife disagreed. “No! Let’s invite Success to come in?”  Their daughter was listening from the other corner of the house. She jumped in with her own suggestion, “Wouldn’t it be better to invite Love to come in? Our house would be filled with love!”

“Let’s listen to our daughter’s advice,” the husband said to his wife. “Go out and invite Love to be our guest.”

The woman went out and asked the 3 old men, “Which one of you is Love? Sir ...Please come in.  We want you to be our guest.” Love got up and started walking toward the house. The other 2 also got up and followed him.

1. Why are you coming in?”

The old men replied together, “If you had just invited Wealth or Success to come in, the other two of us would’ve stayed out, but since you invited Love, wherever He goes, we go with him. Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success!”

A simple but powerful truth giving a picture of how vital simplicity is.

Here is another inspirational story.

Three competing store owners rented adjoining shops in a mall and they all waited for the inevitable outbreak of mayhem. The retailer on the right put up a huge sign saying "Gigantic Sale! Super Bargains!" The retailer on the left came up with bigger signs that read, "Prices slashed! Fantastic Discounts!" The store owner in the middle saw what his competitors did – stating the obvious. Instead of doing what his competitors did, he had a sign made to hang over his door which simply states, ENTRANCE. He got the point. Why make things complicated if they can be simple?

In the principles of teaching, it has been said that it should be done so that an eight-year old child will be able to understand it after all; the value of being a teacher is not measured on how smart the teacher is but on how much the students learn from what he has taught. People will not be able to learn unless they understand by explaining things in an easy and digestible manner.

I believe that the best way to transfer knowledge is through a system – creating a process on how things should be done.

We are living in a community with system-based culture with basically two kinds of workers – a work processor and a work creator. What differs one from the other is that, a “creator” says, “give me a blank slate and I’ll improvise and create a way to get the job done” while a “processor” says, “just tell me exactly what you want, exactly, and I’ll do it over and over again.” Processors want a system. They will do things as what they were instructed.

Recruitment companies can either fail or succeed depending on the system they have. Sometimes when I meet with the leadership of these companies and have a preliminary meeting I ask them what their system for recruiting is.  They answer with comments like, “well, we teach our people to be independent thinkers, so they all do it differently” and give me their blank looks. These companies rarely succeed. Unless they provide a simple system that is easily duplicated and passed on to others. By then, growth will be unpredictable and at its best. “Work creators” will mostly have the spotlight focused on them having the system which serves as their motivation. On the other hand “work processors will unconsciously stumble and fall unless they will be discouraged to continue. All they need is a system to follow and that will keep the business simple.

Things that are simple are easily remembered. Having the system for training is usually the key to success. I call it 'TT' that stands for “transferable technique.”With this, a simplified system will be at hand making things easily remembered and transferable. With this, everyone will be at the same page, having almost the same understanding on how things work, and growth will eventually follow.

Living in a fast paced world seems to be part of our culture. People won't “wait” forever just to learn and understand a particular thing. As much as possible, they want it now. Not tomorrow nor the next day but now. Whether you'll agree with me or not but most people do not want to undergo the slow process of learning. Coming up with a simple plan of action will make things more understandable and teachable.