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Sunday, July 28, 2013

The Strong Is Weak Because They Are Strong

This could be a part of Zen Discussion. For those who are not familiar with Zen Discussion, it is a discussion used among Zen Buddhism priests. Their purpose of this discussion is to approach the truth of the universe. Their sentences seem to be contradictory. They contain profound meanings when one thought through it. Pay attention to the title of this article as an example. In the logical way it does not make sense. Instead, it would make more sense if it were "Even the strong is weak in their weak points." It will be logically correct if it is "The strong is not strong because they are strong".

It is not, however, typographical error writing this sentence this way. It says, "The strong is Weak because they are strong." Let us examine this proposition taking an example of martial arts fighting involving existing 2 masters historically.

It is a story on 2 martial arts masters. They were masters of swords art. One is Kojiro Sasaki. Kojiro's skill was speed. When he swung his sword, no enemy could track his sword. He used long sword taking advantage of his speed. He could cut flying sparrow twice using his long sword, people said. The other one's name was Musashi. He was powerful and intelligent. He always studied his opponent before he fought. All swordsmen need both hands to handle one sword, which is heavy. Musashi could use one hand to manage one sword, as others use both hands. Later he invented 2 swords technique.

They decided to fight. People talked about the fight. People thought that Musashi would not have been able to win against the speed of Kojiro. Interesting was that Musashi thought so, too. Musashi studied the method how to win Kojiro's speed. Musashi prepared long wooden sword. Their fight was in seashore. When they met to fight, Musashi positioned himself having sun behind him and kept top of hand-made wooden sword inside of seawater, so that Kojiro could not realize the length of his wooden sword. Kojiro was fast. Musashi's wooden sword, however, could reach Kojiro from the position beyond Kojiro's sword's reach. Musashi won the fight.

Kojiro lost because his opponent Musashi studied his strength. He lost because of his strength. Musashi could win because he accepted his weakness and invented a strategy to overcome his weakness. The strong lost because he was strong. The weak won because of his weakness. Let us keep in mind that one can lose because he is strong. This happens often in the market place. The majority of reasons why top share company loses ground to the followers are not because they have weaknesses, but because they do not consider and exercise next step because they are strong in the market.

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Sunday, July 21, 2013

Nature of Fear - 3 Suggestions to Control Your Fear

"Fear" is the backside of "Anger". Some say fear creates anger. People show anger to hide their fear. In this sense, you need to control your fear to control your anger. Fear is the most complicated, most profound, and very powerful emotion. The way we all feel about "Fear" is related to our childhood experience or education. In most cultures including mine, Japanese, being fearful is almost sin. All parents do not like their children to be fearful. So parents educate their children not to be fearful. Be brave. Do not cry. Do not be afraid.

So, fear is the most control intended emotion. By age 10 or 11, most of us learn how not to show our fear even we feel it. Many feel insulted if somebody says you are afraid. Ask your kid if he is afraid, he will answer you, "No" with angry face asking back why you. But the reality of life is there is no one who does not feel fear. These mixed and complicated experience makes fear to be a special emotion for all of us. It may be simpler if one can freely and openly show their fear. Think we do not have to hide our fear. We do not have to hide it with anger or any other emotion.

There are many kind of fear in our lives and society. But despite of its complexity, fear can be categorized into just following 2 kinds:
1. Fear that you lose what you possess.
2. Fear that you do not get what you badly want.

What is Nature of Fear? As we discussed, we were all born with fear. Not just human beings, but any animal is born with fear. The fear is one of built-in mechanism of any creature on the planet earth. Fear is one of the safety mechanism prepared for avoiding dangers in living. So, everybody feels fear. The person called bravest in the world feels fear as you and I do. Knowing this is one of important factor to deal with your fear. Nobody is fearless even they are called so.

Then, how and when do we feel fear? When we are sick, we feel fear. You do not have to be seriously ill to feel fear. Even you have hung-over from previous night drinking triggers your fear. You feel fear when you face something, which you cannot control. For example you do not receive email reply from your lover. You heard that your colleagues in your company lost his job. You may be the next. CNN said stock market crashed, and so on.

Have you had an experience, maybe when you were a young boy or girl, walking in the school after everybody left at night? Or going home late and you tried to make a short cut walking through a park with lots of trees like a forest. You might have noticed that how different they were, when you walk through vacant school or park at night by yourself. You must have been frightened by your own shadow and sound of trees by wind. Once you started to feel fear, you could not stop it, could you?

It appears that fear has amplifying effect as above, when you started to feel fear, it just could not be stopped, it amplifies and becomes bigger and bigger. When your baby is sick, you hope it would not be serious and it is just a cold and simple fever. Next day, the fever does not go down. You started to worry. It might be a serious disease. It might be pneumonia. He coughed a lot last night. It must be pneumonia. Your anxiety would be continued to be bigger until you decided to take him to a hospital and doctor told you that it is simple cold and he would be okay in a few days.

I have heard that 99% of your anxiety, fear, worry will be solved as a matter of time. Please take a moment trying to remember what you were feeling fear this time last year. There must have been something, which you worried. Most cases, you would not be able to even remember what those were.

As mentioned above, there are 3 things you can try to control your fear:
1. You can accept you feel fear. Remember everybody feel fear. There is nothing to be shameful to be afraid.
2. You can analyze why you feel fear. Is it not amplified fear without cause or reason?
3. You can think about near future, maybe next week or next month. Do you think you would be fearful next week in the same way as you are today?

It is always help to do what you can do to get rid of your fear and focus on actions not emotions.

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Sunday, July 14, 2013

What is Zen Discussion?

Zen is famous for meditation. At the same time, Zen is not just meditation. Zen is a process and training for getting absolute status of mind, unchangeable and peaceful. One of the training methods, in addition to meditation, is "Discussion".

Here is one example. A Zen priest asked his teacher how many times and how long he should meditate to reach the ultimate-mind status of peacefulness. The teacher asked back to the priest why he meditated. The priest answered that he wanted to reach ultimate status of mind. Suddenly the teacher brought a roof tile and started to grind with a cloth. The student priest asked what teacher was doing. The teacher answered. "I am grinding the roof tile to make a mirror." The student priest frowned and said. "Teacher, you cannot make mirror out of roof tile." The teacher stood up and told the student. "What you are asking is same as asking how long you should grind a roof tile to make a mirror from it."

"A roof tile can never be a mirror however long or however many times you grind it." This is an intriguing statement. The teacher is saying that meditation does not help to achieve ultimate-mind status. Then why do they meditate? There are no right answers for Zen questions. My interpretation is that instead of thinking about how long or how many times of meditation, you should consider changing yourself to be mirror material from a roof tile. The meditation is just help, not a way to reach it. What is more significant is you find mirror material to grind to be the mirror. Do not we sometimes make a mistake on which is more substantial, find the mirror material or grinding a junk?

The story continued. "The teacher asked the student priest "When your ox carriage stopped which you whip, the cow or carriage?" Many would answer "ox." More important is to find why the carriage stopped. Carriage wheel might have stuck. Nothing might be wrong with ox. In this case, answer would be, "Check both before whip."

There are many more stories of Zen discussion on ultimate status of mind, here is the background to explain the world of Zen discussion to achieve ultimate state of mind.

First of all, what is "Ultimate Status of Mind" and why we need it? Watching TV News Programs, we usually come across some miraculous happening. Survived in a major earthquake, saved a life almost drown to death, and so on. When people ask how they survived, and what they thought, they say, "My mind was all blank and I do not remember anything I was just thinking to survive."

This status of mind is called "Beyond Oneself" or "Nothing Oneself". This is the moment people are capable of doing something, something extraordinary, beyond consideration. In martial arts, this status of mind is called "Unchangeable Status of Mind". If one can create this status of mind consciously, it will be powerful.

You know that, in sports games, the skilled, or trained does not necessarily win against less experienced. I think more trained mind can defeat more skillful and stronger. That is why mental training is more powerful than skill training, although skill training can increase confidence and improve mind status. Zen is extraordinarily suitable for this training.

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Sunday, July 7, 2013

Touch the Spirit of Zen

Zen became one of main streams of Buddhism in China in 6th century. The meditation sitting form both legs crossed is famous worldwide. But Zen in China did not invent this meditation style of sitting. It was there since Yoga in India started about 3000 years age. Chinese priest, Daruma, who started Zen, used this meditation form in 6th century. He was against King over tax issue and put in the jail. He kept himself sitting for 9 years in jail and lost both arms and legs, but he gained ultimate status of mind and opened his Buddhism, Zen.

Zen teaches that anybody can reach to ultimate status of mind if one trains himself. Kung Fu origin can be found in Zen, too. While Kun Fu is dynamic form, Zen is static. Zen style meditation started from Buddhism to save people and save oneself. Because it asks people train themselves, this was well adopted by Samurai worriers in Japan in 15th - 17th century. It is under Zen philosophy Samurai believed that his life or death could have same meaning.

Although Zen was well adopted and known by people all over the world by its powerful meditation practices, there is another part of Zen, which is not well known. It is brain training.

The most mysterious but interesting statement in Zen brain training is "Everything is Nothing and Nothing is Everything." There can be millions of interpretation on this statement. And it was designed that way. Let us think about Roman Empire, Mongolian Kingdom, The Third Reich, Japanese Pacific Empire and so forth. Historically, they were there prosperous and strong. They looked like imperishable. But, all of them are gone. Gone as if they did not exist from the very beginning. Still it does not mean all human society was gone. It is still there and benefiting at the same time keep giving huge influence to people. In this sense, this statement is quite correct when we take a look at history from time length.

Another one is "The strong is not strong because of his strength, but because of his weakness. The strong will not lose because of his weakness, but because of his strength." Here is an example. There was very strong clan in 15th century Japan, the time of medieval age. The name is "Takeda". The head of the clan, Shingen Takeda was eminent strategist. One of the early adopter of "Guns" brought into Japan for the first time. He trained his gunmen and formed gun unit. His army was called strongest in Japan that time.

After the death of Shingen Takeda, his son, Katsuyori, inherited his army. His army was supposed to be as strong as his fathers. He fought against Nobunaga Oda. Although Katsuyori was so confident that his army with gun unit can defeat Oda. But, Nobunaga Oda studied everything about his gun army unit of Takeda and imported newer guns from Europe to defeat Takeda. If Katsuyori's army were not strong in gun power, Oda would not have been aware of it, and could not study about it. This example is typical on "The strong lost due to its strength." Do not you think Takeda clan lost not because of their weakness, but because of its strength?

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Sunday, June 30, 2013

How Can You Be Active and Stay Active?

Did not you have an experience that the information, you were looking for, happened to come to you, instead of you found it, when you are positively and actively looking for such information? Or have not you experienced that you came across an advice when you needed it and actively looked for it.

It seems to me the key words here is active". There are people who said they are waiting for they feel like "active" to do something. But, the conclusion is that you will be never active if you wait for the moment you feel active. Instead, I think if you are active and start taking an action, you start to feel active.

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. (The Gospel According to Matthew, 7:7-8) The Bible recommends you to be active, not to wait for something happens.

We all are lazy somehow. We are not active to take actions, if we do not have specific need to take actions. We all have thousands of excuses not to do certain things, even if we know it is better to do. So, we all need to create our own "need" to be active. For example, it is my rule to say to myself when I feel lazy, "Incapable men always have good excuses." This is my slogan to encourage standing up and taking actions.

There are another thing that you can try when you are feeling lazy. It is meeting with people. You can meet with the people who you have never met before. You can pick up a phone and schedule to meet a new (mostly business) person for the first time and schedule to have lunch or dinner with that person, whenever you feel dull and inactive. You do not want the new person think of you inactive or lazy, you need to get up, be prepared, and go out meet that person.

It is important to meet a quality person and avoiding negative and only-critic style of person. Somebody told me to avoid being or meeting NATO people. According to him, NATO means No Action Talk Only. You do not want to be influenced by such a person. It is easy to be influenced by this kind of people.

Instead, you can plan to meet a person who are active, positive, outgoing. You will be glad if you could be influenced that way. You can keep active by being active. If not feeling active, take an action to be active. Please do not forget you cannot be active if you wait to feel active.

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Sunday, June 23, 2013

Mental Strength Based on Vision and Passion

Yataro Iwasaki, the founder of Mitsubishi Corporation, Japan, tells us the importance of vision and passion. It is not just a slogan. It is not just beautiful and fancy words. His personal history gives us clearly about bitter actuality walking the course to be successful.

Yataro Iwasaki was born in Lower Class Samurai family, who normally could not get education provided by local government that time in Japan. That did not discourage him at all when he was young. He educated himself while he was selling birdcages to support his family in his teens.

Later, he nominated himself to study in Edo (Tokyo) and could learn there. His academic achievement drew higher-class management, and he was selected to be an Edo business staff of the local government. His father was arrested when he was in Edo for street fight with higher-class Samurai. He came home to save his father and appealed his father's innocence to his government. He was fired. He was fired several times in his life. This was his first time.

He and his father were put in a jail for a while, after he was released, he reclaimed his innocence and expertise and hired back. Higher-class Samurai colleagues did not like Iwasaki sat in a higher position than them. Iwasaki was again accused of no reason and fired again.

Ryoma Sakamoto, who later became the central figure in Meiji restoration, picked up Iwasaki and Sakamoto and Iwasaki became independent partners, giving birth to "Kaien-tai", the first modern trading company in Japan. "Kaien-tai" later became "Mitsubishi Corporation". His humbleness made him say that he was just fortunate. He would not be able to keep going without passion and vision.

It may not be just Mr. Yataro Iwasaki who talks about "Vision and Passion". Successful leaders emphasize the importance of emotional strength, putting aside smartness. Iwasaki was later calling himself a stubborn, inflexible, bungler. He lost his positions given from his master several times. That made him an independent entrepreneur. Once he believed in himself, he did not change, no matter who tried to persuaded him. One example is that a son of Samurai family became a merchant. His family and friends stopped him because it is downgrading himself. He believed that Samurai would one day give ways to merchants. Society changed as he predicted.

In the era of rapid change such as Meiji restoration, modernization of Japan from Samurai, Shogunate days, there appear miraculously prominent people like Mr. Iwasaki. He might call himself stubborn, inflexible bungler. People today calls him venture business entrepreneur in Meiji Era. He tried everything he saw the future. He failed some, but he was successful in changing the society. Being called a person with "Iron Mental Strength", the foundation supported his mental strength was Vision and Passion.

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Sunday, June 16, 2013

5 Basic Points to Think Before Getting Angry

There is nothing more annoying than dealing with our own anger. One sometimes argue against his own family members, such as spouse, children, and so on. We all know that being angry does not help the situation. Instead, we all are aware that being angry will worsen the situation, because it can make the other person wild, as well. We all still get angry some times. We tend to be angry when the other person pointed something, which we wanted to hide, or did not intend to show. In some other time, we do not like the way the other person told you. Have we had even single event that we were glad that we were angry? Maybe we do not.

When one is angry, he tends to blame someone else. In driving, one would be angry because some other drivers drive too slow, too fast, or too close. It could be any reason. One could be angry to his family for any reason. He is angry with his partner because she did not greet to him in the morning. He is angry with his son, because he uses too much batter in the breakfast. He is angry with his employer because his boss is too demanding. He is angry with his subordinates because they are lazy. The list goes on and does not stop. When one is angry, he does not think about himself. Somebody else is always responsible and causing his anger.

Even we try to analyze why, how, and when we get angry, it does not help us not to be angry next time. It appears that we need to be armored not to be angry or equipped with a tool to avoid being angry. Is not there any tool, which, at least helps us, not to express our outrage to others?

It is clear that anger has all negative impact on our daily lives. One will lose the peace of his mind. He may have to spend a day or so being mad. One will cause others to lose their peace of mind. The person one was angry with might lose his peace of mind and might be mad for the rest of his day. In this way, it will hamper human relationship. It would take one's time more than the one angry could imagine. When you are angry, one needs to spend hours to yell at others. After argument has finished, it takes days, weeks, months, or some times years, for one to reconcile with others, who he was angry with.

There is a study showing the structure of anger. According to the analysis, the anger is the front side of one's fear. One may be angrier if he hears that he is fearful to be angry. One method could be accepting being fearful and try to find what caused him to be fearful.

1. Take a deep breath, count 5 seconds (slowly), and think it may be you who is wrong.

2. Take a deep breath again, count 10 seconds (slowly), and try to find what could benefit you by being angry.

3. Accept that there is a fear behind the anger.

4. Think about fear behind the anger.

5. Try to eliminate the cause of the fear, which caused the anger.

Please remember the cause of your anger may be negligible and insignificant. You might think why you were so angry after a while. Do you remember when the last time was you were angry? Do you remember whom you were angry? Do you remember why you were angry? Are you still angry for the same reason? Remember anger does not help anything. It will get one's situation worse.

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Sunday, June 9, 2013

Do You Think Outside of the Box?

We have been hearing it for a while since dot-com-company boosting time. "Think outside of the box." We do not know the origin of this phrase clearly. It makes sense not to think with usual framework of business concept to be successful.

If you are working for a company, the reality is totally opposite. A company trains people to think "inside of the box" even in a new business development office. When engaging in producing executive summaries, proposals, or examining new proposals from other organizations, even in a company brain position, such as a strategic business development, a company disciplines its staff to think inside of the box, not outside.

Are you surprised? In periodic executive meetings, or when you need to produce executive summaries, your boss was constantly watching and asking what could be different from the previous time. They had their own file of all of previous summaries. The first step, for staff making new proposal, was to open the past example from Hard Disk Drive. If this way, there is no way they can "think outside of the box".

One day, Mr. Jack Welch, GE, was visiting my former employer. He was not as tall as I thought. He was calm, smiling, and gentleman looking person. I met him before. He remembered me from the previous meeting and asked my name, and politely accepted my business card. He was speaking for directors in that afternoon. I could listen to his speech. As he spoke, his gentleman like approach did not change, but his reasoning was, sharp, keen, and acute. He spoke in the way he got right to the point.

His point in his speech on that day was that he appreciated people who proposed "something different" from what they did in the past. He said, when one was proposing a copy of what he already did, Mr. Welch would have never accepted it. He was joking that his company has 200 years history of bureaucracy; therefore, it is not easy to find something, which they have not done before.

The contents of speech by Mr. Welch on that day reminded me of one scene in the movie "The Matrix". The hero Neo was trying to save their leader Morpheus. He decides to attack military building. It looked impossible and suicidal. His partner Trinity told him that nobody had ever done like that. Neo answers, "I know. That is why it works."

People tend to think that it did not work when they came across something belongs to outside of their box. People are judgmental and hypocritical to those who think differently. They will discourage those who try things outside of the box. They may laugh at you, criticize you, and tell you it does not work.

They were excellent signs, if you meet people who laugh at, criticize, oppose to, and reject your idea. Do not worry. There will be a person who views the value of our thinking outside of the box, and settle with it, like Mr. Welch. Time will prove that you are right.

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Sunday, June 2, 2013

3 Suggestions for Effective Communication

In an office, one morning, Mr. Smith talks with 2 of his coworkers. Mr. Smith, the general manager, asked them why sales of a new product is not growing as expected. One of his coworkers, Bill, answered back "Mr. Smith, the growth can not be expected in a short period. It was just a month since we launched the product. The growth expectation was too big from the beginning." Mr. Smith asked Bill if he has some idea to increase sales. Bill answered that sales would not grow without spending more money for promotion than they did. Mr. Smith did not say anything.

Instead, he turned to the other coworker, Tom to check his opinion. Tom answered "I agree that the sales growth was not as expected." He continued, "We all may need to accept that sales expectation might not be realistic." He concluded that additional promotion would help to improve the situation. Mr. Smith liked Tom's opinion and asked Tom to give him planning for the promotion. One month later, Mr. Smith transferred Bill to another division.

Were not Bill and Tom saying essentially same thing? What was the difference between 2 coworkers talking with their boss? The difference of two is their response style. The style Bill used can be called "disagreement style". He disagreed several points of Mr. Smith. He disagreed that sales are not good. He disagreed that the growth cannot be judged in a short period. He disagreed that growth expectation was not right. At least, Mr. Smith heard his statement as the manner above described.

Let us examine the response from Tom, next. His style can be "agreement style". He agreed that sales are beyond expectation. He agreed that they both made a mistake planning the sales expectation. He agreed that sales promotion would increase the sales. Tom did not have to deny any of Mr. Smith point suggesting his own opinion.

There was a discussion about effective talking in a SNS. One of the participants, who is business consultation presenter, raised his problem that his statements build a wall to the listeners. He uses disagreement style, because he hopes to be constructive to the listeners. He thinks being denial to his listeners can give them new impact and constructive suggestions. The question here is if one needs to be denial or disagreeable to give listeners constructive suggestion. It is more effective to agree and admire some points and open the mind of listeners and give them suggestions. If they were denied, rejected, and disagreed, they feel offended and close their mind. As a result, all one could get from his listeners would be rejections to presenter's points.

3 Suggestions for Effective Communication:

1. Agreement tends to open minds of listeners. Presenter should be prepared for agreeable points of listeners and start from pointing them out.

2. Remember rejection will invite rejection. Presenter should not start from rejections. They should not repeat rejections. They should not stick to rejections.

3. If you need to point negative issue, you may hope to get yourself to be a part of it. Remember Tom said, "We all need to agree that sales expectation was not right."

Remember that even saying the same thing, if one's way of presenting is not right, he will develop opposite reaction from the people.

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Sunday, May 26, 2013

How Do You Handle Life's Unexpected Actuality

"Knowing the Path is Different from Walking the Path." This is from my favorite movie "the Matrix". Oracle gave Neo these words when he visited her for the first time. I believe this is unquestionably true. You can Google Map the road and print and remember it so that you do not get lost. Google Map is so powerful that it can give you traffic conditions or updated situation of the route. Still, one minute before you get to a certain point, there may be an accident and need to detour. Have not you had an event that you thought you knew the way, but what happened was quite different from what you expected, and you still got lost.

Around Christmas of the Year 2000, when my employer told me that they were sending me back to Japan, I had prepared to change my visa status from E-2 (Investor Status) to H visa. My lawyer was confident that it could be changed and could be changed in relatively short time. I waited, waited, waited, and received rejection notice. My former employer's Human Resource tried to fix me to be re-hired by one of the group companies in, but they could not get me a position. Economy was starting to experience so called "dot com company recession". Nobody hired me without proper authorization of working in the US.

My wife, girl friend at that time, offered me to marry so that she can sponsor me for Green Card. She hoped that I continued to stay with her so that we could be together instead of 3 months in US and another month in Japan. If you continue to do this for a long time, so many times, US Immigration starts to notice you and give you a warning. Several times in re-entry, the officer of immigration sent me to separate office and could not re-enter to US for 2-3 hours.

So we married. We hired a lawyer and applied for my Green Card. It took us almost another whole year to get to the point of interview. We were so happy and ready to go to interview. We went to USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Service) and took interview. We thought it should have been no problem. Our marriage is real. We did not see any flaw. Still they sent my case to a higher level for re-examination. We needed to wait to take next interview.

We took another interview 8 months later. Here, the point is that if you apply for Green Card, you need to obtain temporary work permit and emigration (traveling out from US) and re-entry permit for working and even traveling to outside US. Since they expire in every 12 months and needed to re-apply for them, it was troublesome process. USCIS was not friendly. Even my lawyer advised me not to be angry no matter what they say or do. One day, in USCIS office, waiting for my turn, I found curved cursing words on a seat of a chair. I would not have done that, but I could easily imagine the feeling.

The 2nd Interview was not so terrible as 1st one. Interviewer was helpful and cooperative. Since it took me so long time, I could get Green Card valid for 10 years immediately. Usually, they issue 3 year valid Green Card. Applicants need to re-apply for next 10 years, after 3 years.

The lesson was, "We need to be prepared, study all the possibility, and make sure that we are comfortable and confident. Still, we need to be flexible enough to cope with unexpected happenings." So the words, I came across in a movie, undoubtedly helped. It was "Knowing the Path is Different from Walking the Path."

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