درس تفسیر

OK, welcome to the final part of the lesson for Thriving on Chaos.

This is the commentary, where I just talk without a plan, without a script about the topic. Thriving on Chaos is a great book by the way, the title Thriving on Chaos is by Tom Peters. And Tom Peters is a business guru, business management guru.

Guru means experts, so he’s a business management expert. I like him, I like his style, I like his basic approach to business and management. He’s not quite so conservative like most of them are.

So anyway, if you’re interested in business and management or leadership any thing like that, try one of Tom Peters books, or you could check out his blog at the end of the learning guide, and to learn more section. I’ve got a link and address for his blog, TomPeters.com I think.

Anyway, he’s an interesting guy. Denise Littky is also an interesting guy, which the quote at the beginning of that article is from Denise Littky.

He wrote a book called The Big Picture, and Denise Littky was a… he started as a middle school principal. He was a principal in a public middle school here in America.

And of course, he started the school, when he took over, when he became the boss, the school was in bad shape, it was really bad. And over time, over a couple of years, he made it into a really great school, really, really good school. The students did very well.

But he was still frustrated because he felt that in the public school there were too many rules, too many problems.. He couldn’t do what he wanted to do.

So, he started his own school and he got people to donate, to help build the school. The school is not just for rich people. Even though it’s private they take a lot of people who don’t have money.

So they get money from the community from businesses things like that. So, really interesting school. And in fact, I think now he has many schools.

So check out that other link on the learning guide about Denise Littky. He’s a very interesting guy.

Let’s go back to the basic theme which is thriving on chaos, succeeding when times are changing very fast. And I think right now in this period in history this is a chaotic time, there’s a lot of changes. Certainly we see in technology, new technology changing all the time, right?

You get a new computer and three years later, your computer is old, the technology’s old and you get an iPod and three, four years later the iPod’s old. Everything is changing very, very quickly.

I must admit that I thrive on chaos. I like it. I like change. I do not thrive on conservatism. I don’t thrive in a situation that’s not changing.

So, you know, kind of a conservative culture or a conservative period in time is antithetical to my personality. I don’t like it. I like change. I always like to be learning something new, trying something new, changing, it’s… I don’t know.

Some people, of course, chaos is antithetical to them. They don’t like it. A lot of people in my family, my family members they don’t like it so much, right?They like to do the same thing each day, they like stability, and a lot of people like that.

But whether you like that or not, the truth is that our societies, our culture, all over the world are changing very quickly right now. So even if you don’t like it, it doesn’t matter. You have to learn the thrive on chaos somehow.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a teacher. It doesn’t matter if you’re a student. It doesn’t matter if you are a business person. Even, even your family relationships, you know.

Relationships are evolving very quickly. The old relationships of the past between men and women, they’re just not the same anymore.

And in many ways, I think that’s a good thing. I think a lot of women think that’s a good thing. I don’t know about men, but a lot of women do think that’s a good thing. So anyway, everything’s changing quickly, and we gotta learn to change with it.

I once went white water rafting. I’ve been several times actually. But I remember something, when I went the first time, there was a guide for the raft. White water rafting is when you go on a river, that’s very big river, right? Huge waves, and it’s a little bit dangerous.

And the guide told us, in our little group, he said that when you come to the rapids, when you come to the fast part of the river, where it’s very tumultuous, right? This part of the river’s tumultuous, a lot of rocks and the river changing quickly. It’s easy to fall out of the boat. It’s easy for the boat to hit a rock and turn over and everybody falls out.

So he said the secret is when you come to rapids, when you come to the tumultuous part, you have to row faster. You have to make the boat go faster than the river.

If you are going faster than the river, you still have some control. You can control the boat. But if you do the opposite, if you try to go slower, if you try to slow down, if you fight against the river, then you’re going to have problem. Then you lose control and you’re going to hit a rock and you’re gonna fall out, or fall over.

So I think that’s a great metaphor, great analogy for life in general; that when the time is changing a lot, when the environment’s changing quickly, you need to go faster. You need to change faster than the environment.

If you change faster, you actually will keep some control and you will be able to adapt quickly and thrive.

On the other hand, if you try to resist the change, if you try to slow down, if you try to go against it, that’s when you lose control. That’s when you become overwhelmed. That’s when the environment will defeat you, and you are going to be in a very bad situation.

So, I like that idea, that picture of when you hit a time in your life when there’s a lot of change, you have to change even faster. That’s how you survive, that’s how you thrive.

Anyway, it’s a good analogy. I like it. I try to use it in my life. When things start changing in my life, even if I don’t like it, I realize I can’t resist it. I can’t fight against it. I have to actually change myself much faster.

Anyway, think about it. Give it a try. That’s AJ’s wisdom for the day.

Another thing I talk about in the article is the idea of acting first and then thinking. And I think this is a good idea, this is a Tom Peters idea, he talks about it a lot and I agree with it, that sometimes we get too caught up in thinking, right?

We think and we think and we think. We have some problem and we wanna think about it and we think and we think and we think and we think and we think and we think too long.

And if you think too much, you become paralyzed. You can’t act, right? You just, you get stuck thinking. And it’s easy to become depressed, it’s easy to become worried, it’s easy to become scared, if you just think and think and do nothing else.

But action can kind of break the fear. If nothing else, if it has no other purpose, taking an action, any action, can help you break the fear. You get over the fear. And then something happens. You act and something happens. Maybe something good happens, maybe something bad happens, but at least something happens.

And now, you have something concrete to think about, right? You have a result. You can look at this real life concrete result and you can say: wow that’s not what I wanted, and what can I do differently? What can I try next? You have something concrete to work with.

And it’s basically an experimental approach. It’s a scientific approach, right?

You have a hypothesis, a quick idea and you test it and either it works or it doesn’t. You think about it again and then you test something else. And you just keep doing this and eventually you come up with some really interesting ideas and eventually you find things that work very well.

So, I like this idea of acting first then thinking about it, then acting again, then thinking about it again. I think it’s a good process for innovation. I think it’s a good process for creativity. I think it’s a good process for learning and for science. In general, it’s a good process.

Because it helps you, you know, get both sides. Obviously, we need both action and thinking.

If you only act, which some people do that also, then you just keep doing the same thing again and again and again and again and again and you get the same results and that doesn’t help much. So you definitely need the think.

But if you only think, you get stuck. You become depressed, or you become worried or you become lost in abstract ideas. You become lost in theory. A lot of college professors are like this. You know, they only think. They’re not grounded in reality at all.

Unfortunately, most of my college professors were like this. So they could think a lot, they could certainly talk really well, they could argue very well, but they never did anything. They never did anything useful, they never did anything at all.

And you know, I guess that’s okay if you’re a college professor, but for most people living in the real world, you need action also.

So anyway, I like this idea of both action and thinking. It’s kind of like yin and yang I guess.

Finally, I like this idea of, in general, this process of enjoying the process of learning, enjoying the process of growing. It’s good for language learning. It’s good for any kind of learning.

And you learn to focus more on the process and not be so caught up in the result.

Because, you know, results are temporary, and if you get a bad result, you just discard it, you think about it, you discard it and then you just try again. It’s that simple. It’s not a big deal if you call it fail, and so-called failures are not really failures.

Many times so-called failures can be really great experiences. You can learn from them and they can cause you to succeed in a big way in the future.

Steve Jobs, the president and founder of Apple, talks a lot about this idea of failures are not failures. He had a lot of quote so-called failures in his life, but he’s grateful for those failures. He doesn’t consider them failures, because they helped him to learn.

He never would have developed Apple computer, if he had not had those failures.

OK, so anyway, and he talks a lot about this process of testing and then reflecting then thinking, then discarding the bad stuff, the stuff that didn’t work, and then brainstorming new ideas, finding out what might work and then testing the new idea. And then something happens, even failures and successes. And then you reflect on it, you think about it and then you test, you make a new idea and then you test that.

And it’s just a never ending process. And the trick is to enjoy that process, just enjoy the process of testing things, trying things, thinking about them and then thinking of new ideas and then testing those.

If you start enjoying that process, you’ll be amazed. You will… it will lead to great success, huge successes in your life, in all aspects of your life.

And I think that’s one of the meanings of enjoying the ride. Not just focus on the result but enjoying the ride itself.

All right, well, that’s it. That’s my commentary today on Thriving on Chaos. Again, I recommend if you wanna learn more or you like this topic, go to TomPeters.com, read some of his blog items.

Even better, get some of his books on Amazon. I think he has some excellent books, Tom Peters has some excellent books. And Denise Littky also has some excellent books, especially The Big Picture, I recommend that book especially.

Okay, great. Your final assignment, your final task, your final job is to go to the forum section of Effortless English and write about this topic. Write about your experience with change. How do you handle change? How do you thrive on chaos?

That’s your essay topic. Please write about it. It will help you remember some of the vocabulary and, you know, it’s just interesting too. I like to read those. I like to hear about your ideas.

It’s not just me telling my, you know, ideas. My ideas are not so important. I want to know your ideas.

So, please, please, please, I’m begging you, please write in the forums.. Let me learn more about you and your thinking and your ideas and your opinions.

OK, that’s all for this lesson. I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.