Ask Nicely

Transcript

Welcome beautiful thinkers, this is a beautiful thought, this is how your life is already wonderful. 

I was just thinking about asking nicely, something really simple that we can do that can make our lives a lot easier. 

Today I was walking home and an elderly woman asked me “Can I use your telephone for a minute so I can call my husband?”

I made sure I had the credit on my phone and she entered the number and called her husband and it was all fine.

So many problems can be solved when we take advantage of the resources around us in terms of the Human Resources. 

I remember that movie that was really popular in the 90s, Babe. Its about this pig that sees the sheep dog trying so hard to get the sheets herded into the pens and Babe just says “maybe it would be a lot easier if I just asked them instead of barking at them, force them or scare them. I could ask them and say please”

What do you know? It worked, his little strategy came out quite well. It was also his episode of the children’s cartoon Babar. 

I still remember this must have been stuck in my mind for decades cause I haven’t seen this program  since the 90s but there is an episode where the teacher brings the children to the yard and she says alright here are 2 hooks, there’s like a hook and a loop. Both are attached to ropes and they’re a couple of meters apart.  Who can bring these together? Who can hook the loop?

And so one of them comes up is quite impetuous and he jumps onto the hook rope and he’s swinging around putting all this effort, finally grabs the other rope with all that effort and finally manages to hook the loop.

And the teacher says “well done, you did it.”

And they unhook he loop to reset the puzzle and try again. And one young girl walks up and says “I know how to do this.” 

She takes one rope and says “Alex can you please help me with this?”

And Alex comes over and takes the other rope and they hook them together, so simple, much less effort. 

This is a great metaphor for life. So many times we think we have to do things alone but a lot of the time things would be very simple if we asked nicely.  

It’s also something I think about when I am traveling. If I go to a new little town or a big city, I don’t know it but surely there are people in that city who know it very well and just by asking I can get access to perhaps decades of knowledge.  

Simply asking, simply by asking please do you know a good restaurant? Where is good to go? What are interesting things?

People will tell you. Of course they are proud and passionate about where their town, they know where they live.

Very simply, very quickly we have access to all that knowledge, the kind of knowledge you would search very hard to find on the internet, is right there in the minds of the people around you. 

All you have to do is ask nicely.