Skip to main content

Sic Parvis Magna

From small beginnings... This is a phrase that I often latch on to. After all everything has to start somewhere. The seed of an idea has to be planted before the seed can develop. Nothing can be generated from nothing..

This week I have been sorting few several problems at work, problems that all stemmed from something small. An assumption about something that turned out to be incorrect was the common denominator. This got me thinking about how catastrophic events can stem from one small act, and how delicate we sometimes have to be when we make a judgement or decision about something. Like snow gathering on an acorn rolled down a slope, things can quickly escalate.

The key observation that came out of the problem solving actually relates not to the seed or the person making the assumption, but rather what happens when others who put you in a position of authority rely on your judgement and assumption to take things forward... The snowball moves faster and gets larger and larger. Eventually it can become unstoppable until it hits a wall and things disintegrate.


So from now on, I am focusing on the small things  

Comments

Anonymous said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
1:25 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fear

It challenges us all. We all face up to it. We all tackle it. We all shy away from it. More important than that is how we face up to ourselves. Being honest with yourself is not as easy as it sounds, and it is often the cause of significant angst and negativity. It is always easier to blame someone else...rather than be honest about what we have committed ourselves to doing. Trouble is, it is a slippery slope!So, maybe the answer is to yield - to accept ourselves for who we are, and act accordingly. We make mistakes, we make the wrong decisions - the important thing is to be totally honest with ourselves and others and accept that sometimes, we have to admit that we have taken a wrong turn or made the wrong decision. Hiding from that is not good, it cuts across our ability to love ourselves for who we are.
Post a Comment
Read more

The simple things

It is Easter and I am sitting in the Old Post Office B & B in Paparoa, a village of a few thousand (max) people in the heart of the Kaipara District of New Zealand. It is quiet, there is a full moon, and Amelie my 3 year old princess has just run into the sitting room and said N Niiiight, kissed me on the cheek, given me a hug and bounced off to her bedroom for a story ... She gets distracted by the pieces on a chess board as she goes, 'this one here, that one there' .... Ammeeeliiee, her mum calls - oh oh she says and toddles off to hear the story. There is a clock ticking close by, the lighting in the sitting room is soft, it is peaceful. How lucky to be here - how lucky to have the simple things in life laid out before me, no hassle, no complexity, no need to think, no need to relax, I can just be. We do make our lives complicated sometimes don't we - more often than not because we desire or want something, or someone to do what we want them to do, or maybe thi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pathways

The other day I found a piece of paper that I'd created with my best friend a few years ago, and it reminded me of how simple things are when we want them to be. We travel along our path, experiencing this and that - hearing and seeing this and that, and along that pathway we make decisions. Those decisions keep us moving, either in the same direction or in another. Like travelling along a road, we sometimes know our way, we recognise the road - it's a well travelled road as they say - we know where we are going because we have been there before. At other times we see signposts and respond to what they are telling us - we react to them and alter our direction based on what they say. At other times, we register signposts to give us confidence that we are on the right track, we experience 'deja vu' or coincidences we just get that intuitive feeling that we are moving in exactly the right direction. I think this simple little topic is going into my book. Have a gre...
1 comment
Read more