Grandma Did It That Way…
[This is adapted from a great little story from Zig Ziglar's motivational book, See You At The Top.]
Zig noticed his wife would cut a small amount off the ends of the Sunday roast before putting it in a pan and roasting it, so he asked, “Why do you cut the ends off the roast?”
“Because my mother was the best cook in the world and that is how she did it.”
When they went to visit her mother he asked the same question. He received the same answer.
Several months later, at a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by his wife’s grandmother, Zig asked the grandmother, “All of the ladies in your family certainly make excellent Sunday roasts, and everyone in the the family cuts the ends off the roast because that is the way they were taught. Please tell me, why do you do it?”
She replied, “Because my pan was too short.”
How many habits and routines do we blindly and unquestioningly follow without ever once thinking about why? How many rituals are no longer necessary and serve no purpose. As you make your way through the rigors and tedium of another day, think about your “could do it blindfolded” path. I am not suggesting you should change — just think about it and understand why you do the things you do. Chances are you will find a few things that you want to change. Some might save you time, some money, some just make you feel better. You might find some things don’t need to be done at all. But it is also comforting to know and understand that many of the things you have been doing for years are done for the right reasons and do not need to change.
We get ideas and habits so ingrained that we too often take our way to be The Way, The Right Way, The Only Way. Take time to understand and remember that with most of the things we say and know and do, there are usually multiple ways of achieving the same results. You and your mate, or boss, or co-workers, or neighbors, may have very different ways of doing something, but neither of you may be necessarily right or wrong. Just different. And different can be good…
7 Comments so far
We talking “thinking outside the pan” here?
Seriously, I agree with what you say, and you got through it without saying “paradigm shift,” so a tip of the Anti-Bromide-Hat to you.
@Gerry: Nope, no “paradigm shit”, and no “sea change” ether…
Thinking outside the pan. I like it. You’re alert and full of it this morning…
Ha! I used the old ‘paradigm shift’ less than 24 hours ago… I guess you know I am not shiftless.
Interesting, Winston. Took me a while to figure out why all my friends here are so slow at mental arithmetic.
We do it differently! Let’s choose say 68*76 in your head. Now as a child you probably learned all the 100 products up to 10*10 as a mental lookup table. But I also learned the 100 numbers N squared up to 99*99.
So I see immediately that 68*76 = 72 squared - 4 squared. And since I know that 72*72=5184, I know immediately that 68*76= 5168 after just one subtraction. They on the other hand, have to do 4 multiplications, 3 by-10 shifts and 3 additions.
Stu
BTW. Did you see my recent piece on how to take cube roots of upto 6 digit numbers in your head in less than a second?
it’s a good reminder and story. It’s hard to think outside the box and often our boxes got formed when we were children for reasons even our parents didn’t understand but had learned.
There is always more than one way to do a thing, with the excepton of the prescription bottle instructions.
[...] the ends of the Sunday roast before putting it in a pan and roasting it, so he asked, ???Why do youhttp://www.nobodyasked.com/2008/03/30/grandmas-roast/Arts Listings 4/24 Provo Daily [...]