Two posts in one

Today I am going to merge 2 separate posts here. So if you thought the earlier posts were maggied up, wait till you read this one! :-)

Post 1: We all have different ways of handling a problem. There is this approach that I have been using recently and it has been working well in the areas that I tested it in. Some of my friends have already heard about this one from me…

Post 2: Many of my friends have already heard from me about what I am about to write. Today I think I’ll write about my favorite movie scene. I always find it nice to think about this scene when I face a problem…

Post 1 (contd): …When I am in a problem, what I do nowadays is that I take myself out of myself, and then look at myself as an observer with a movable time frame and I see someone who will have solved the problem at hand a little time later. It is just like trying to watch the happy ending to feel good by forwarding a movie…

Post 2 (contd): …My favorite movie scene of all time is from the movie Patch Adams. There is this scene where Robin Williams (Patch Adams) enters a mental hospital voluntarily. There he sees an old famous scientist (who also had entered voluntarily) showing 4 fingers to everyone and asking them “How many do you see?”…

Post 1 (contd): …Seeing things like this helps you feel good about the current situation and makes you more proactive, I think, because it makes you believe that you’ll get through. But it works when you are facing a problem similar to ones you have solved before. What happens when a problem appears which you haven’t solved before or have been defeated by before? What would be the answer to it then?...

Post 2 (contd): …Whenever anybody answered “four”, this old man would start cursing everyone in sight. One day Patch answered similarly and the old man called him an idiot and left. But Patch wanted to know what the answer was so he returned later that night…

Post 1 (contd): …Last night, I was facing one of those problems. Something during the day had ticked me off and since I had never solved this problem before, I was looking for a different approach, a different answer maybe…

Post 2 (contd): …“You are another one of those bright young fellows who always know the right answer.. well, welcome to real life!” said the old scientist sarcastically when patch asked for the right answer. Patch noticed that the old man’s cup was leaking, took a sticker off the table and put it on the leak of the cup and fixed it. The old man, with a little shade of gratefulness in his eyes, showed patch 4 fingers again and asked him “How many do you see?” Patch again answered “Four”. He said “NO, you are focusing on the problem. If you focus on the problem, you’ll never see the solution.”…

Post 1 (contd): …I tried to focus on this problem, zoom in on it and get to the core of it. The way I saw it, there were 2 answer options and both of them sucked so I ended up calling a friend of mine…

Post 2 (contd): …“There’s never a right answer, but when you see beyond the problem, you’ll see different solutions; solutions which others cannot see. Look beyond the fingers” When Patch looked beyond the fingers (while still looking in the direction of the fingers) he saw a blur effect which made every finger appear as if there were two of them. He started seeing 8 fingers this time. So he answered “Eight”. Finally, he had looked beyond the fingers…

Post 1 (contd): …In an effort to take my mind off the problem at hand, we started discussing other things. And then my friend repeated something I had said to him some 6 months back…

Post 2 (contd): …“That’s a good answer… yes… Eight is a good answer!”…

Post 1 (contd): And it was the answer I was looking for. Although it may not be the right answer and there still may be apprehension in my mind about it, it is one of the infinite possible solutions but it is a nice solution I saw and when the usual approach doesn’t work, maybe what needs to be done is to ….. “Look beyond the fingers”