Monday, October 19, 2009

When To Say 'Thank You'

One should only thank someone when that person expects to be thanked. But in many cases, one can only guess what the person expects and in these situations, the following rule will do a lot of good:

I would suggest that the words 'thank you' should only be used when you want to express your gratitude to someone for either going out of the way to help you or helping you on your request or helping you when you did not expect it.

In all other cases, 'thank you' has a counter-productive effect.

The Importance of Being Frank

We've all been in situations where we try to be too nice and pretend to agree with someone when actually we don't.

Some believe that such behaviour is self-demeaning and is therefore wrong. Others defend it by saying that within its limits, such behaviour is an occasional compromise for the sake of better cooperation.

I strongly believe that it is wrong to do so - and it has nothing to do with self-respect.

When we pretend to agree with someone, the person whom we are dealing with generally ends up believing that we actually share his opinion. So he behaves with us accordingly, only to realise on a later day that we don't actually agree with him.

The result of this long story is that, while trying to be nice, we actually cheat the person whom we were dealing with. The intention of trying to be nice doesn't justify it : cheating is cheating.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Winning Quote

There's many versions of this quote by Bobby Knight, so I'm going to paste the one that I read first.

"Everybody has a will to win. What's far more important is having the will to prepare to win."