The Fruit

There were once a group of three lost men in the mountain and they only had a fruit to feed all of three, who were almost fainting from starvation. Then God appeared to them and told them he would test their wisdom and depending on what they would show would save them. So God asked them what may they ask Him to fix that problem and get everybody fed.

The first one said: "Then make appear more food", God answered that it was an answer with no wisdom, since you should not ask God that magically make appear the solution to problems without working with what we have.

The second one said then: "So make the fruit grow to make it enough", to which God answered no, since the solution is not to ask always the multiplication of what we have to fix the problem, since the human being can never be satisfied and therefore it would never be enough.

The third one then said: "My good God, even though we are hungry and we are proud, make us small ourselves so the fruit would be enough". God said: "You have answered right, since when man makes himself humble and small before my eyes, he will see prosperity".

Know that it is always taught that somebody else fix the problems or to look for the easy way out, always asking God to fix everything without us changing or sacrificing anything. That is why so many times it seems God does not listen to us since we ask without letting anything be left aside and always wanting to win. Many times we are selfish and want always everything for us.

We will be happy the day when we learn that the way to ask God is by seeing ourselves as weak, and by being humble leaving our pride aside. And we will see that by making us small in luxuries and by being time at heart we will see prosperity from God and see the way how He does listen.

The Empty Soap Box

One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soap box, which happened in one of Japan's biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soap box that was empty.

Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly line empty.

Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high- resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soap boxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty.

No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent whoopee amount to do so. But when a workman was posed with the same problem, did not get into complications of X-rays, etc but instead came out with another solution.

He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

Moral of the story: Always look for simple solutions. Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problem. So, learn to focus on solutions not on problems. "If you look at what you do not have in life, you don't have anything; if you look at what you have in life, you have everything.