As far as family traditions between me and my household, I'm gonna really be honest with you guys. Me and my husband have not created any official family Christmas traditions. Hi you guys, my name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys, in today's video, I am going to share with you all about my family's Christmas traditions. I'm really excited about this video because this is a part of a huge collaboration hosted by Christy from These Little Sprouts. She has reached out to me and a whole bunch of wonderful and amazing homeschooling mamas just for us to share all of our Christmas traditions and put them in this massive playlist. So I am very excited that Christy reached out to me to be a part of this collaboration. I really love Christy. I love her channel. I just really can relate with her, especially since that our kids are all around the same age ranges. I believe her kids are 10, 5 and 2 and my kids are 10, 3 and 1. So I'm a little bit like a year off with the younger kids but I really feel like through her content and through everything that she shares on her platforms, I really can relate with her and I definitely know she knows the struggles. Especially having like that big age gap between the oldest and the younger kids. So yeah, I'm very excited you guys about today's video and just sharing with you all of my Christmas tradition. So let's go ahead and get right on into this video. So you guys growing up, at least for my childhood Christmas has always been a huge thing. I actually grew up in the church. So just for Christmas, the Christmas season it really always started probably like after Halloween, November was really the true start when it came to Christmas growing up. If I could put the categories for the Christmas traditions that I grew up with they will be in three. It will be home, family and service. So being in the church, I can definitely say that I always was a part of some type of Christmas recital some type of Christmas play. Christmas was huge. I remember just, I just have vivid memories of just always being centered around just family and love. And I really feel like my mom, she did an awesome job really showing us what Christmas and the Christmas season was truly all about. Along with participating like in the church and doing all the different things within side of the church, musicals, recitals my mom always made us do some type of service some type of area where we were given back. I even remember giving back when I was younger where we were a part of so many like toy drives. And as I got older within the church my mom, she really challenged me and my siblings to really start to give back in other ways where we fed the homeless. We went to homeless shelters and we sang to the sick in the hospital and it was so many different areas that my mom really exposed me to in my childhood and it really gave me an appreciation for this season. It really just showed me just all aspects that Christmas is not just about the gifts and the tree and you know, all of the cookies and the bacon and the fun things but it's also about giving to others. It's about service. I really feel like my mom instilled the Christmas tradition showing us that the Christmas season is really a start in a new to the new year. I really feel like she did a good job of displaying those things to me. So within those three categories some things that really sticks out to me as Christmas traditions that I have done with my family growing up was just I think things at the home is what I'm gonna start off with talking about is that we always would open up our stockings on Christmas Eve. I always look forward to open up our stockings, you guys. Inside of our stockings, we really didn't have much in them. It was a lot of gifts from the Dollar Tree, toothbrushes, candy, but it was just so much fun. Just opening up all of those guide gifts especially on Christmas Eve when you see the presents under their Christmas tree. You're so excited to get to them and you just have one more night left and I really love that tradition of opening up our stockings on Christmas Eve. Another tradition that my mom has recently started, I believe she has done this with my daughter for the past like three or four years where it's after Thanksgiving, my mom, she would take my daughter and my niece out to the park and they will pick up pine cones and after they collect all the pine cones my mom will lay them out on the table to dry and the girls they will paint them at glitter and those pine cones will be a part of a lot of Christmas baskets and Christmas gifts that my mom will give out to various places. My mom, she definitely always showed me just how to give during this holiday season and how the little things that we do, sometimes we feel like they don't matter but they do and those little gifts and those little tokens of love and appreciation that we show our neighbor, that we show our co-workers, even though we know we may not receive, those things are definitely appreciated to others. So that is a tradition that my mom actually has done with my grandkids. Another tradition that we have done growing up is that my mom actually taught us how to make homemade ornaments. You guys, one year Christmas was really, really tight for my mom and she actually didn't share this story with me until I was a lot older but Christmas was really tight one season and my mom didn't have enough money to buy us ornaments for our tree that year. So my mom actually found some red fabric at the bottom of her closet and she took cookie cutters to make the templates and that year I actually learned how to sew and we sewed and we stuffed our own ornaments that year. You guys, that Christmas tree I feel like was the prettiest Christmas tree we ever had. Even though for my mom that year she definitely knew that season was really tight. Things was really, really hard that Christmas but that was one of my favorite Christmas growing up and my childhood just sitting at the table making ornaments with my siblings. My mom actually made ornaments with my oldest daughter, Brielle and my niece the other weekend and my daughter was so happy when she came home and it's just so funny how a hard season has turned into a really beautiful tradition for my family. I have not yet made homemade ornaments with my younger daughters just yet. You guys, they are one and three like I said and I definitely know I have time to create these memories and traditions for them but for right now, you guys, it's really survival mode for me when it comes to my younger girls but I'm definitely happy that my mom, she definitely still holds on to these traditions that we have grown up with. Now as far as family traditions between me and my household, I'm gonna really be honest with you guys. Me and my husband have not created any official family Christmas traditions within our household. I feel like we have gathered traditions from my side, from his side and we're just kind of combining them but for ourselves, we haven't really created any. However, this year is gonna change. This year, we're actually gonna do something really, really different. We're going to celebrate Kwanza this year and I'm really excited about it. My husband, he actually did Kwanza one year with his father so I really think that celebrating Kwanza could possibly be our new family tradition. I'm very excited. We actually had to learn a lot about Kwanza and the Kwanza season and even though we may not be able to celebrate all seven days of Kwanza, I really want us to at least strive to do as many days as we possibly can. I really feel like Kwanza would be a great family tradition for us to add on and I'm very excited to see how this is going to play a part in our new family traditions. Other than that, you guys, I really feel like I don't have any just grand family traditions. Again, I really have learned to focus on home, family and service throughout the Christmas season and one thing I definitely will say is as my girls get older, I definitely know a lot of service things they cannot do just yet but as they get older, I'm really excited to show them service, show them how we can give and serve others just locally and I can't wait till they get older so I can start that tradition within my household. So you guys, I know this video was very short and sweet. I don't have anything like big and fancy. We do the regular things, cooking, baking, spending time with family and yeah. So you guys, please don't forget to check out all of the amazing moms and amazing homeschool moms videos where they're gonna be sharing their traditions. It may be bigger, elaborate traditions or it may be small and simple traditions like I celebrate here in my household. So you guys, as always, please don't forget to comment, like and subscribe and I look forward to seeing everybody in my next one. Bye.


Throughout much of history, cilantro was referred to as the stinking herb, but all the controversy that it's had hasn't stopped this feisty herb from fighting for its place in history. Records show that coriander seeds were found in the Halhamaar, an 8,000 year old Neolithic cave in Israel. The Egyptians also buried it with illustrious pharaohs around 5,000 years ago, including the famous King Tutankhamun. The Egyptians also called coriander the spice of happiness, possibly because they also used it as an aphrodisiac. The Egyptians also used it for muscle pain and arthritis, but probably also made the Egyptians happy. It was also believed to have been cultivated in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Yes, sir, this crutchety granddad of the herb world has been around the block, taken lots of abuse, and come out ahead. So how did coriander and cilantro conquer the herb world? Watch and find out. And now, the history of coriander and cilantro. Um, coriander means what? Now remember how I just said that cilantro was often referred to as the stinking herb? Well, that's actually because it's technically part of its biological name, Coriandrum Satevon. Give me a word. Any word, and I'll show you how the root of that word is Greek. The core of the word Coriandrum comes from the Greek word Chorus, which means bed bug, or, according to some, stink bug. And its full biological name is loosely translated to mean that cultivated buggy-smelling plant. So, obviously the cilantro haters were apparently behind naming the plant. Can we petition to rename it to Magna Urbum Ferentum, which means the great green herb? Yeah, that's a work in progress. You got any better ideas for a good scientific name? Please let me know in the comments down below. Coriander is part of the same biological family as parsley, which is actually not hard to believe because they do really look alike. They're like twins. And you're probably familiar with some of their other family members, too. Carrots and celery. Don't believe me? Check out Carrot and Celery Leaves the next time you're in the Veggie Isle. You'll see what I'm talking about. Where did coriander start? Coriander is so old. Historians hesitate to say exactly where it made its first appearance. People would most speculate that it originated around the Mediterranean Sea, but what makes it so hard is that early on, it was growing all around Western Asia as well. It's believed that the first full crop cultivation of coriander as a spice took place in the ancient Anatolian region of Turkey. From there it spread like wildfire, subsequently being used by the aforementioned Israelis and Egyptians, plus the Armenians, Russians, Chinese, and many more. Coriander in Ancient Lands Various kings loved coriander. You can find it mentioned in a scroll from King Ashurbanal, King Ashurbanapal, you can find it mentioned in a scroll by King Ashurbanapal of Assyria, King Cyrus of Persia, and King Malak Berda down the second, where both big fans of coriander back in the day. But before all of these kings and queens were bowing to coriander's greatness, the ancient Greeks and Romans were already head over heels for cilantro. Well, mostly. The Greeks were the ones to call it Mr. Stinky Buggy herb after all. As far back as 2000 BC, you have the linear bee tablets from Pylos Greece that talk about coriander being used for perfumes. Every major herbalist of the age mentioned coriander or cilantro in some way, whether positive or negative. Discarities highlighted how coriander and cilantro are helpful for a wide variety of ailments, including pustules, testicular inflammations, intestinal worms, and carbuncles. Hey, exciting! But don't have too much of it, because according to discarities, it can dangerously disturb your thinking process. Okay, good to know, just enough to cover the worms in nether regions. Got it. Roman cookbook Epiceus contained about 70 recipes using both coriander and cilantro, and it was the Romans who were responsible for bringing coriander and cilantro to Great Britain in the first century. Roman statesman Cato told people to eat cilantro leaves to awaken their stale appetites, and the Roman legions used it as a flavoring for their bread in barley gruel while out conquering the rest of Europe. Glad they were staying healthy, not so glad they were killing lots of folks. In fact, coriander and cilantro were considered so exotic and useful at the time, they had a very high status amongst other herbs and spices of the time. But unlike other big status herbs of the era, it wasn't that expensive. Records show in 1254 that cilantro only cost 4 pence a pound, while cloves were 14 chillings. That's 42 times more expensive. Sidebar! You know about those sugar plums dancing around kids' heads at Christmas time? Well did you know that sugar plums are actually a sugar-coated treat that were often made with coriander seeds? And this was happening as far back as the Tudor era. So I guess it should be the dance of the sugar-coated coriander fairy. Yeah, it's not as catchy. Coriander in the Middle Ages. During the Middle Ages, coriander was commonly used to mask the rotting flavor of spoiled meats, and was a popular ingredient in sausage products. Great. Let's get people to eat bad food. And as we head into the second millennium AD, we find the Germans putting coriander to use in a special beer called Gozo. But it was because of coriander that this beer almost went extinct. Can a beer go extinct? As very strict 16th century beer purity laws in Germany forbade the use of anything besides barley, hops, and water in their beer. Jeez people, I mean whatever happened to you like what you like and I like what I like and we can all just have different kinds of beers. Also in the 16th century, William Turner thought that coriander cakes were good for protecting yourself against a strange disease called St. Anthony's Fire. Every time I hear this disease, I just get the song St. Elmo's Fire stuck in my head. Gonna be your man in motion, all I need is a pair of wheels, take my way on my future's line in St. Elmo's Fire. Coriander in the New World. While lots of historians talk about how coriander was shipped over to the Americas by the early settlers, it actually first made it to the New World thanks to the Spanish Conquistadors. One of the only good things Cortez did. And this helped it become popular throughout Central and South America. And it's actually from the Mexicans, where we get the name cilantro. Although weirdly, the first time that cilantro appears in print wasn't until 1929 in a Spanish-Mexican cookbook. Coriander in modern times. While coriander did in fact waver in popularity over the years. This feisty herb just kept fighting its way through and getting a bigger and bigger foothold in the world. 18th century distillers found that coriander was an excellent way to flavor gin. In fact it's now so popular that after juniper, it's the second most popular way to flavor gin. Around the time gin makers were making coriander more popular, it was the Russians who were the first to extract coriander essential oil. The esteemed distillation in 1885. In Great Britain, coriander was actually a slang term for the word money, around the 1800s. Hey, you better cough up that coriander, see? Are you going to be swimming with the fishes, see? See? And even in this century, coriander's been used as a slang term in other weird ways. Apparently at one point, coriander was used as a code word on Instagram by women who were trying to talk about an abusive partner. Coriander has also been used as a slang term for when a fight breaks out between friends with one friend coughed in the middle. And that's one weird bit of coriander. I don't want to get involved in it. If you want some more cool coriander and cilantro information, then watch this video about why coriander tastes bad to some, or what's the difference between coriander and cilantro? Please, be kind, take care of each other, and try not to get involved in any weird coriander's out there in the big bad world.


Hey everyone Dylan Schumacher with Citadel Defense and today's version of tactical book review is Facing Violence Preparing for the Unexpected by Rory Miller. Rory Miller has written several books in this space and this is one of them. This is the only one that I personally have read. I read this book several years ago actually and I found it in my bookshelf when I was looking through to try to find some other books and I came across this one and I thought oh I don't think I have done a review on this one yet so I should do that. This book covers again it's all in the title Preparing for Violence so it really is helping you prepare mentally for violence is really what it goes on about and it's primarily based around hand-to-hand violence and not necessarily guns are involved although certain certainly could be covered it's primarily based around a hand-to-hand combat or violent confrontation. One of the most impactful things I took from this book that I still use in reference today is when he talks about social violence and he talks about different kinds of violence.  I've heard those referenced several times on active self- protection for instance the educational beat down or the group monkey dance and those are very good descriptors of violence and how violence can occur you're maybe wondering what those terms actually mean have to read the book. So that is one of the things out of here that I took that's been extremely impactful and giving me good categories for understanding violence. I would really recommend reading this book I read it several years ago when I first started getting into reading and looking for books to read and what books should we be reading and it is giving me some helpful categories and helpful hooks to hang my hat on to put ideas in buckets. I'm a big believer that in order to understand ideas in general we need terms and buckets to be able to dump knowledge into and this book does that well it gives me several terms and understandings of things that I can dump knowledge into and come back and reference it later. So if you haven't read Facing Violence by Rory Miller I would pick it up I have not read any of his other books I'm sure they're equally as applicable and then helpful and when I get there we'll put them on the channel but until then please read Facing Violence it would be helpful for you in just understanding how you deal with violence. The other thing that this book does a good job of is explaining your brain on adrenaline and that was another very helpful thing from there that I wanted to mention. Until then do brave deeds and endure.


I'm Erica Hall from San Francisco, founder of Mule Design. I'm excited to be with you. We're going to go on a journey of a lot of information. A lot of ideas stuff. Yeah, this is cool. But because my talk is about asking questions, I'm going to start with a question for all of you. And I want you to look in your hearts and answer it really honestly, very candidly. Do you enjoy being right? Raise your hands. You like having the right answer. OK, it looks like most of you are truthful people. There. You are right. Hold on to that feeling. Hold on. It's a good feeling. And I'll tell you something about me. I love being right. Ah, it's the best feeling. I was that kid in class, the one like, call on me. Call on me. Jumping in there. Right answer. Correcting people's jokes. Very popular child on the playground. And so then I always wanted to have the right answer.  Because you know what philosophy is? It's the art of winning arguments. So it essentially weaponized this tendency. And I learned how to create the conditions in which I would always be right. Because you set the terms of the argument. You define like, oh, we're going to be talking about ethics. And for the purpose of this conversation, I'm going to define ethics as this. I'm going to define free will as that. And you can set the terms and create an argument and dominate in your face socrates. But then I graduated. I went out into the real world. And I'm the rightest person. I have a degree in right. Praise me. I'm so awesome. But I learned that this desire I had to be right, this good feeling I wanted to hang on to, had a lot of really unfortunate effects. One, it made me really annoying. It made me a very bad listener. Because I was that person, you ask them a question, and they jump in with the answer before you're even done. And you're like, that wasn't even my question. And the worst effect it had because of that is my desire to be right, to have the right answer, increased the chance that I was actually wrong. Because I was not listening. I was just trying to prove how smart I was. So because of the intervention of many kind friends and colleagues, eventually I got over that. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to find the right answer. That's a good thing. I'm not telling you, go out and be wrong and love it. What I'm saying is that it's important to want to find the right answer. But that is not the same as wanting to have the right answer inside and to prove that you're right. But the problem is that throughout our educations and a lot of times in our careers, we are not rewarded for having questions. We're rewarded for having answers. But the truth is that a good question is much more powerful and much more effective than a good answer because answers have a really short shelf life. Like say you were designing something for high school students and you had a question like, oh, how do high school students spend their time? Like maybe you do a little research and you get some answers and you're like, sweet. We have the answers. But you can't stop there. You have to keep asking that same question because otherwise the world will change. Things will move on. High school students will spend their free time in a different way. But you'll still be holding on to that answer. You're like, no, I was done learning. I learned, I did it, I'm done. But this is so often how people in design and business and technology treat asking questions. You're just trying to find your answer as quickly as possible so you can move on. And when we're coding or writing or designing, like when you're sitting at your keyboard, you feel like you have so much control. Every pixel goes where you want it to go. Every word goes where you want it to go. It's like, ah, I'm creating this new thing. I'm so excited about this active creativity.  And people don't necessarily care about what you have to put out there. And the only way to increase your chances of success is to learn about what's going on out in the world because you can't control it, but you can influence it. And unlike a philosophical discussion, you cannot set the terms. You can't define what's gonna happen for people. You can only make assumptions. And those assumptions are risks unless those assumptions are well-informed. Because you're like, oh, we're gonna assume that people really value what we're putting out there. But if you don't do your research and you don't ask the right questions, you're not going to know if that's really true.  Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position, but certainty is an absurd one. And the problem is asking questions is really, really uncomfortable. And a lot of people who advocate for research, I think, don't emphasize that enough. They just say, of course, of course everybody wants to do research, but you have to recognize that as people who are often really rewarded for having the right answer, asking a question or admitting that you're uncertain is deeply, deeply, deeply uncomfortable. Because being right, that is a good feeling. Not knowing is a really, really bad feeling. And that's at the heart of a lot of the objections to doing the research in the way that we should be doing it. The good news is that you can start wherever you are. Just like right now, if you shift your mindset from thinking, oh, having the answer is really, really good and really powerful to asking questions is really good and I wanna be a curious person and I wanna ask a lot of questions. I don't wanna just hang on to that really good feeling. I wanna live in that place of uncertainty. All you have to do, all, is make that shift. And you will be able to start gathering more and more information that increases the chance that you actually have the right answer, but it's going to be uncomfortable. And that discomfort is the greatest barrier to learning. So the place I like to start is asking the question, why is design so hard? And this manifests in terms of all of the bad design out in the world. I look around in the world as a designer and I'm very curious and whenever I interact with something that seems hard to use or awkward or not very aesthetically pleasing, I ask, how did bad design happen? Because like you look on Amazon, there are like 10 million books about design. The principles of good design are really, really well known. They're out there. So how does bad design happen? Like this is a question, I have it so curious. Because there's so many kinds of bad design. I look at my local newspaper website and I see some less than optimal design. Like maybe it looks a little cluttered, but you don't understand. That is all the article content on that page. That's it. That's it. Then there's stuff. I'm not even showing you. There's like four more feet of scroll. And I look at that and I think, okay, I'm sure that the people who worked on this know how to design a really effective and easy to read article template. We've designed a lot of editorial sites, but it's like, how did that happen? That's so interesting to me. Or what I call the Jared Spool commemorative example. United Airlines. I am sure that a lot of very intelligent, skilled people worked on the site. And yet this was the result. And this is a little unfair because they've redesigned recently. So, I guess there's an area of focus now, but then there's some other wacky areas with just a lot of stuff. They like post-its. I think they took post-its a little to literally in their design process. Like, how did this happen?  You know, some companies are just, they're full of design geniuses who are fantastic and always make good choices. And if you've used iTunes lately, I've been running, listening to my phone, trying to change a song. And I've like thrown my phone across the park because it's like, how does this even work? Marco Armit, the CT of Tumblr and founder of Instapaper, has great phrase.  So, this is an amazing mystery. How did the most valuable company on the planet who everybody else copies because their design is so genius, how did they do this? How? How is that possible? And their companies that have really, really good design and really, really good customer experience. Virgin America, I love Virgin America. Everything about it was so well thought out. I loved flying on their planes. I loved ordering my food at my seat. You know, I love the booking experience. They really got it right. They totally focused on what the customer wanted. They didn't exist anymore. So, I'm here to bring you the bad news that there is no ROI of customer-centered design. There's a business and there's a set of choices you make and we've labeled some of those choices design but just because something is very pleasing to the customer and beautiful to look at does not necessarily mean it's going to be good for your business. And then some things are just mysterious. This looks like a thing that was created by people who knew what they were doing but then ask what were they doing? Video bills. Okay, I'll explain this. Time Warner Cable, company that provides access to a lot of video content, thought, huh, maybe while you're waiting for the next season of Game of Thrones, maybe you've run out of things to watch so you'd like to watch your bill. He's so happy.  The red wedding of my bill. And this is bad design because of the opportunity cost. Anybody who's working on something like this is not doing something more useful for the world. And sure, you could make a case that, well, video bills are good for accessibility. But hey, why is your bill so complicated that it provides enough material for a video? That's a good question to ask. So, and then my favorite in the last couple of years, many, many millions of dollars went into the innovation and creation and engineering of a device that squeezes bags of frozen fruit. Looks nice, but why, how did this happen, right? So it's sort of mysterious. And I'll tell you this exercise, this like, how is the meeting, how did this happen? This automatically makes anything really annoying you're dealing with kind of interesting and fun, because you start thinking, how did this happen? Why is there bad design in the world? And there are new ways of having bad design. There are new technologies. A Bank of America, I take this one real personally, has developed an AI assistant named Erica. Yeah, not displeased. Displeased. So you're like, why is it gendered? Why are they calling it she? What's wrong with online banking? There's another sort of marketing campaign that says tap on Erica. No, do not tap on Erica. Do not tap on Erica. So, what do all of these things have in common? So this is a range of less than ideal design across many media. The thing that all have in common is people. And the reason design goes wrong is because people want to have the right answer. Because somebody had an answer, somebody said, you know what, I wanna have a really fancy machine that squeezes bags of frozen juice. And I'm gonna put that out in the world. I wanna create, like everybody else is doing AI, chat bot things with names and genders. Let's just do one, I wanna have it. So the reason why there's bad design out in the world is because people were more interested in defending their answer throughout the process than really asking questions, asking like, is this something people need? Do we have all the resources to do it right? Is designing something like this and really serving the customer need, is that really gonna help us make money? Or is there something else we should be focusing on in addition that will help our business be successful? And the problem with people is that we are riddled with cognitive biases. You're not meant to read things on this chart that's based on the Wikipedia page for cognitive biases that I really recommend looking at. The point is that we have so many, I can't even fit them all in one slide. So we're riddled with cognitive biases. We wanna be right and we go into these processes where we're trying to design new, amazing things in the world because that's all design is. Anytime you wanna go from what currently exists to creating something new and putting it out in the world, and this is large or small. This could be a cool new chair or this could be a whole new system that helps people pay their taxes in a simpler and easier way. Any level of thing you wanna get from the current state what actually exists to some better future state. And in order to do that, you have to understand the current state. We've actually had fights with clients when they say, oh no, no, we don't want you to think about the way the world is now. We have blue sky, blue sky. Just imagine the best case scenario. And they think they're making our jobs easier by doing that. But they're not because any innovation that changes the world fits into the world. But that's uncomfortable because then we have to ask questions about the world and we have to think about a lot of really suboptimal things. So a design project, you know, I construed that very, very broadly. All it is is a series of decisions. Like we really like to focus on the artifacts. Like, oh, design is creating things and making things. But what it really is is making decisions about things. It's making choices. And the reason we need to ask questions and do research is because research leads to evidence-based decisions. And this sounds like it should be obvious because if you're not basing your decisions on evidence, what are you basing them on? So anytime somebody goes into a design process without doing research, ask what are their decisions based on if not evidence? Fear, confirmation bias, having an answer they found a long time ago. People like to feel in control, right? Because uncertainty is so uncomfortable. And so they even like to, when they talk about like different ways of gathering information, how often is there a diagram like that where it's like, oh, let's just put it in little hexagons. Let's make it tidy, let's control it. This is just a natural impulse to deal with how messy the world is. But the world is messy. And a key to this, a really important part of doing design research is collaboration. And we'll talk about it for a moment because like, you know, open source software, that's pretty collaborative. But then maybe you go out into the world and you're dealing with clients who are in a business context and all of a sudden you feel like, oh, we're not collaborating so well. What's going on? We all, those are all nice people here. Collaboration in business is so rare. There have never been any actual photos of it. That's why you see this. That's why stock photographers are like, oh, I've never seen people collaborate. Yeah, put all your hands in. Sure. People can work alongside each other for a decade and never truly collaborate. Because all collaboration means is working together towards a shared goal. But a lot of times people never check to make sure all the people working together actually have the same goal. And collaboration is hard for some of the same reasons. Design is hard, right? It's hard because of ego, because people like to have the right idea. They like to have the winning idea. But I don't really blame people for that, right? Some designers have a bad reputation like, oh, they're so egotistical they want everybody to listen to their designs. But what we call ego is really a problem of bad incentives. A lot of organizations reward the person who confidently says an idea. And that's why we run into issues with bias and discrimination in the workplace. And as a company you hear about people stealing other people's ideas. Why would that even happen unless the organization was rewarding an individual contribution more than rewarding a team achieving a goal? So I don't blame the individual I kind of blame the system around them. Organizations put people in silos, right? It's like, oh, visual designers here researchers here developers here backend engineers over here. That's not how anybody experiences a product service software out in the world. It's not like, oh, now I will look at the code. Oh, now I will look at the words. But people aren't put in a cross disciplinary collaborative situation. And a lot of times there's competition for internal resources. Oh, we're all supposed to be working together but no, you get the researcher I get the researcher you get the writer, right? And so then you're not in a really good position to be collaborating with each other. Or people are far apart either physically or conceptually with no facilitation. It doesn't just happen on its own. Like sometimes you do get an organization where you can sort of walk by somebody in a hallway and like, oh, yeah, we have to resolve a small conflict but without good facilitation collaboration does not happen on its own. And academic research, right? Is not traditionally collaborative. So when you just bring research into an organization a lot of times what that organization will do is just put the researchers over in a corner. Like I talked to some people who worked for a large technology company who said the researchers literally had a different building with like a different air circulation system. And so you'll get the people learning the knowledge over here and then the people solving the problem making the decision over here. And if that's not being brought together you don't have well-informed collaborative decision-making you don't have the conditions for good design. Collaboration requires both intent people have to want to do it and they have to be rewarded to do it or people will do the thing that they're rewarded for. And a lot of times people are more rewarded for coming up with an answer that sounds good. And Dan Brown, my friend Dan Brown with the worst SEO has written several very good books. I feel that, like whatever I look at them up I have to go through like 10,000 different versions of the Da Vinci Code. And he read this great book called Designing Together which is about design collaboration that's really good and he said collaboration requires behavior change and that's why it's so rare because as we know if you're designing products for people out in the world you know like changing people's behavior is really really hard. It's the same in an organization. So it's really hard and you have to be intentional about it the same way you have to be intentional about design. You have to have a plan, provide a rationale, define roles and responsibilities, set expectations, communicate progress, reflect on performance. You have to do every single one of these things or you're not being collaborative. If this isn't part of your process you're not gonna be working collaboratively but this feels like extra work and it's like it's so much easier to just like keep delivering things right to keep making things without worrying about being collaborative and you have to embrace conflict. This is the counterintuitive part is that being collaborative involves conflict because the difference between a collaborative process and a consensus-driven process like we've all heard like oh, consensus-driven design is really really bad. That's because if you're trying to achieve consensus what you're trying to achieve is everyone agreeing. If you're trying to collaborate what you're doing is working towards a shared goal and those two things are very very different. As long as you agree on the goal you can have a really productive exchange of strongly held ideas in the service of that goal but the problem is a lot of times this sort of interaction is defined as soft skills and people don't really learn how to have good conflict so it gets personal, it gets toxic and then people just avoid it and they optimize for agreeing and that's where you get the consensus-driven design process because you're like oh, but we all agreed why is the design bad? Well because you were aiming to agree you weren't aiming to achieve your goal together and this stuff's all really really hard but not for the reasons people think it's hard. It's not hard because the technique to learn is hard like the research process is hard or the software is hard, it's hard because we have to overcome something very deep inside ourselves that isn't often recognized. And then the really hard part so once you embrace like yes I have intellectual curiosity I will be in the place of uncertainty I will gather the data, I will ask the questions and then you bring the data to somebody else and you're like I found the data and they just reject it and you're like wait a second I did everything right but the problem is when you're trying to influence decision-making you're up against people who wanna have the right idea and you're up against the fact that new data doesn't change minds like there are plenty of social science studies that show this like if you come to somebody with new information that challenges their beliefs they'll just reject it and they'll dig in harder and so when researchers come into this they're often not equipped to deal with that political reality and I've heard some really really unfortunate stories about that. This is why we get so many objections to doing research like I've heard all of these again and again like oh we don't have the time oh we've got the time to build something but we don't have the time to determine whether we're building the right thing same thing for money right we're totally willing to like set fire to money so that we don't have to do research oh we don't have the expertise same thing how do you have the expertise to design and build something and you don't have the expertise to determine whether you're designing and building the right thing for the right reasons we have specialists this is what I mentioned they're often in another building generating reports for people to ignore oh we'll just AB test we'll just have we have analytics that's more concrete right that's more certain you know what talking to people gross messy let's make a prototype way more fun right and making a prototype is a type of research but it is often a very expensive way to learn but because a prototype is an answer it's much more comfortable and that's really the reason people do it and of course even to this day billionaire geniuses who change the planet didn't do research so why should I do research geniuses don't have to do research genius I have the answer so we hear these objections but there are so many advantages it actually makes decisions go faster like when I work with clients I tell them a design project moves at the speed of decision making if you don't have your research if you don't have people working from the same information then you'll take a really really long time to make a decision right if you've done your research then decisions can go really really quickly if people are working from the same information you decrease your risk you save money you increase the value of everything you're making something more valuable every member of the team is more valuable you get continuing returns because this is the thing about asking questions and learning if everybody's asking questions and learning then people are collaborating better and better and getting more and more well informed and making better decisions it's not like every time you have to start from scratch an organization, a team can develop this knowledge base over time and develop this curiosity and keep asking more and better questions everyone is more effective and more efficient but the reason that you hear these objections it's all a smoke screen it's all because people want to preserve that really really good feeling of being right and don't want to go to the place of being uncertain and you have to make sure that everybody on a team isn't just working from their personal view because you could say, yeah yeah yeah we all have a shared goal we all know what we're supposed to be doing but unless you check you don't know because the goal of doing research together of asking questions and finding new information and answers together is to work in a shared reality and there's often a misconception that any sort of research is unsuccessful unless you discover something like wildly new and a lot of times decision makers use this as an excuse to not do research to say oh we already know everything but it's like does everybody working together to make decisions to do the work do they all know the same things? Have you checked? And by working together as a team and asking questions collaboratively what you do is ensure that you're all working from the same shared reality because otherwise you'll find out way too late that you have very very different ideas about what the business priorities are what the customer needs how you're gonna value success and the place to start because you can't start by talking somebody into research like I said you can't go to somebody and say oh you think you have an answer let me actually tell you so when you go to somebody who thinks they have the answer and you tell them they actually don't and they need to do research you are telling them that they're ignorant and wrong and that is not a way to get somebody on your side right this is why if you've ever gone to somebody with authority and said we really need to do research what you're telling them is that they're wrong that is not a place to start collaboration you have to start from point of agreement and the point of agreement I found the one common point of agreement is generally everyone wants to develop better products faster if you're in an organization or a working environment where that is controversial take a moment maybe find a different one like oh I wanna do worse things slower I mean sometimes it feels like organizations do wanna do that and also no one wants to read a research report the goal of design research is not to generate reports not even researchers like to read research reports but for some reason there's this idea about oh that's what research is for it's for making a really good professional looking report but it's not you're just asking questions and getting new information so you can make better products faster you know you're successful if you're making better products faster and working more collaboratively here I have a historic video to show you in case anybody hits this particular objection Hi for those of you that don't know me my name's Steve Jobs and this is the first of one of many chalk talks we're gonna have this year together the subject of this one is really important which is who is our target customer why are they selecting our products over our competitions and what distribution channels are we going to use to reach these customers a lot of light bulbs have come on over the last 90 days I've had the good fortune to be with a lot of you out in the field meeting customers getting first-hand information as to what they're doing with our products you have fed a lot of information to the management of this company we've done a lot of thinking and looked at the data and all of a sudden out of this data some very very important things have come to light I want to share them with you today even geniuses do research and then because they're geniuses their marketing tells you there's no research they just know what they're doing so a lot of times design research gets conflated with usability testing or user research but you kind of have to understand the whole burrito there's your organization like you and your client or your internal team there's your uses and customers and then there's the whole real world context and these are all the things that you don't control but need to know about but the good thing is the actual research process is really simple the most important thing is not to be dogmatic about it there's so many different things you could do and everybody's looking for what's the method what's the right method so I can again find my answer and not have to ask questions anymore and then they argue about artifacts and ways to like oh is it personas is it jobs to be done meh meh meh meh designers are always finding ways to like carve out territory and have these arguments about methods in order to avoid I think getting down to that really really scary place but all you have to do is make sure that you're being goal driven and being very skeptical this means always have a goal and always be willing to question your methods and never find something and just like hang on to it and say no this is the one right method because it's not because the process the simple process is just forming questions gathering data and analyzing the data that's it if you do all of these steps you're doing research correctly if you skip a step plenty of people just do the gather data part if you just do the gather data part you're not doing research right and then you get insights those feed into any decision making process you have and then hopefully you're more successful because of it but again you also have to have a really good decision making process as well you can't go out and find all this data and feed it into a process where people are too focused on proving they have the right answer research activities are only ways to answer questions that's it and you need goals in order to give the research purpose if you don't have a goal you can't start down this path at all and you need questions to give data meaning so forming questions is the most important part of the process and the most overlooked only after you have goals can you form questions because all you're trying to do is place better bets on human behavior that's all business is you just want to have more well informed bets because you can never have certainty right you can have higher levels of confidence so you have to ask the right questions and there's a lot of confusion around this there's so much more talk about what method than how to form questions but if you don't ask the right questions it doesn't matter how good your data is a good question is specific it's actionable, it's practical a really bad common question how do we get millennials to like us? Businesses ask this constantly it's meaningless it's not specific millennials aren't really they don't have behavioral differences but it's like ah we've come up with a way to avoid asking meaningful questions a better question is more specific you might ask how do recent college graduates decide what to have for dinner a really good question is asking your team your organization what you really know get in a room like this could be a really scary question to ask you don't even have to look outside your team to really say what do we know and how do we know we know it the best question is the unknown that carries the most risk and examples of risks are people don't value what you're making maybe you're listening to the wrong customers maybe your business model doesn't support it you know maybe somebody else is doing it better or you know maybe if you do succeed you will destroy the planet that's a good thing to know before you go down a path and another important thing to think about is what you need to know and what you can ask people are very very different research questions are not interview questions and an interview might not even be the best way to get the information you need to design for example if you want to know how people spend money on vacation you can't just ask them that because people start lying to you, right? but you might ask them oh walk me through your last vacation you might want to know how likely people are to adopt your product like you see this and like how likely are you you see this as a literal survey question all the time nobody can answer this question but you have to see what products people already use and then make the judgment to figure out how likely they are so there are many stages in the process when you can ask questions like you don't know what to ask what's going on, how does it happen how well does our solution work to solve the problem people jump to this too quickly why is this happening you can't just look at measurements you can't look at quantitative data and get causation out of it but if that's what you need to know you have to know that that's what you need to know before you can ask the right questions so then the gathering data part you have to start with your goal, your topic, how much time the method you use is totally up to these factors, right you have to start with your goal you can't start with a method I've talked to people in so many organizations who say we talk to customers every Friday I'm like why and it's like because we feel like we have to oh we run surveys, why oh we go out and hang out people in their homes really is that the best use or time and money you know it all depends there's no one right method it's whichever one answers your question and is the most practical and useful and you have to think about whether you need to know something quantitative or qualitative so the nice thing again about dealing with research and data it sounds so complicated it's really not when you get down to kind of the base principles the only types of data you have to deal with are data you can measure and data you can't measure and you've got to be really clear on which answers your question this is from the Manga Guide to Statistics which I highly recommend you need both you need descriptions and measurements one is not better than the other you need to know whether you're asking a question that demands a measurement or a question that demands a description measurements will never tell you why and then you choose the activities that will give you the kind of answers that answer the type of question you have and one of the problems is that because of this sort of anxiety about research and asking questions is that people doing qualitative research try to apply a quantitative standard to it because it feels more science-y and so the idea that you have a fixed and measurable reality that you need to do a quantitative study people misapply that to qualitative research and that's why you get things like people in labs whether they should be out in the field that's why you get eye tracking totally unnecessarily when you can just do a usability test because there's a sense of if it's more controlled it's more science-y and it's more accurate but that is not right quantitative data doesn't capture the context and the most important thing is not to just go on fishing trips you can't just look at data and expect to learn anything that's just going to be a way for your biases to creep in because you'll be looking to be proven right you won't be looking for the right answer out in the world and why not just make a prototype? Yeah, that's a way of learning prototyping is cool, prototype and test prototypes are comfortable because it's an answer you don't want to go straight to the answer and oh, let's just see how right I am that's what a prototype is really asking and Victor Lombardi had a great, great quote for this if we only test bottle openers we never realize customers prefer screw top bottles and I can tell you when I get home from a long day working with clients I will pick the bottle I can just crack it right open I don't want a fancy I don't want like a $300 fancy rabbit wine opener but this is actually because people are so irrational this has actually led to another design problem which is sommeliers in high-end restaurants they can't bring out like oh oh you ordered a $500 wine let me crack that open for you so there's now a new tool which opens a screw top bottle with a certain amount of flourish it's true because people not rational not rational, nobody makes rational decisions and it's so easy to mistake the polish of a prototype for the quality of an idea right you're like oh and then people get precious about it nobody wants to critique a prototype that looks beautiful if the idea at the core is not a good idea and surveys I'll take a moment for surveys the problem with surveys is they're too easy to run and they generate data that's so measurable and countable and feels so certain that they're just comfortable it's like look at all these answers oh I got bad answers at scale that's cool that makes me feel good and you see like man I see these all the time somebody wrote to me about 4C surveys and these pop up on every single site and 4C is very popular because it purports to do the alchemy of turning qualitative into quantitative right so if you look at these questions rate how well the site's organized rate how well the site who thinks like this no human thinks like this and my favorite rate the number of clicks so that people are gonna like pick two yeah it only took me two clicks cool these are terrible but they're so popular because they give answers that feel good and so if you're thinking about running a survey don't do it cause running a survey is easy do it because it's the best way to answer a question and if you do run the survey focus on asking things that people can actually answer and ask it at the right time just to send out a blanket survey to people you will not get good data but it will feel really good you'll be like oh I didn't have to talk to people people are terrifying and then you have to analyze you have to go to this step you can't just ask questions and look at data you then have to ask what the data means and you have to do this with your team so everybody understands what it means and you don't have people drawing different conclusions and then you end up doing all this research and fighting about personal opinion anyway and wasting all this time and then saying like oh it's not even do research it was a total waste of time knowledge is not useful unless it's shared if knowledge is just in one person's head it will not benefit the team it will not save time it's not about having an answer it's about having everybody working in a shared reality and the best way to analyze especially qualitative data or any data is to talk it through with everyone who has to make choices and decisions based on that data but sometimes you know sometimes you work with your team and then you have to report it to other people and you've got to remember that data doesn't change minds so you can't just be collaborative with your team and say oh we're totally on board we're asking questions we're being uncomfortable we're being open to new information and then we're going to take it to a decision maker and they go like like I talked to a researcher once who was working at a big tech company and she was talking to this VP of product and she saw his roadmap and she's like oh wow I have data that totally contradicts that so she made an appointment with him for the following Monday morning went back over her data made a big report came in Monday to find out that he'd canceled the meeting power Trump's data it does and she was blindsided because she didn't have anything she's like all I have is getting the best quality data I don't have the tools to overcome politics and overcome a fear of being open to asking questions and being open to not knowing things so if you have to go in and talk somebody into your findings always start from common ground always start from agreeing and then introduce new information because you cannot win arguments with data you can only win arguments with questions and by starting with common ground start with shared goals tell a story like be fun I've been to so many boring research reports right they come in they do a presentation they talk to their methodology don't be afraid of putting on a show people like shows and then keep it brief keep it to the point and create a habit of collaboration because again it's too easy to do the things that you're rewarded to do for yourself and not collaborate with your team because a lot of times there are not incentives in place for collaboration so it's a discipline that gets easier over time the same way that asking questions gets easy so you always have to keep why you're doing what you're doing at the center of everything you do and if you create this as a practice and you develop this intellectual curiosity and you think like wow it's not just creativity it's curiosity that everybody needs to cultivate that's an innate thing that can get you know smushed down by wrong incentives you think okay it's fun it's more fun to do things to design things to put things out in the world when we know why we're doing it and then we have a better chance of conveying to other people out in the world why they should care and this will be better for everything thank you Erica thank you so much that was wonderful does anyone have any questions for Erica just go ahead and raise your hand and I will bring you a microphone hi so first I want to say I really enjoyed your talk thank you and what you hit on were a lot of things that were very useful that I can take away with the way I deal with my team but sometimes and more common than I like to admit a client says no I have this terrible idea and I know you're making a great thing but I don't want a great thing I want this terrible idea and that becomes a situation where okay disagreement and pushback can lead to chargeback and losing client right how do you deal with that and stay honest to these principles mm-hmm the way we've always done it is organizational research is non-negotiable in our process we go right away and we tell them because we explain like the what slows things down is the speed of decision making and we need to be well informed and in order to serve you we need to understand you because what's a good solution for one organization might not be a good one for another and so we start by understanding them and understand really understanding what their goal is because if the goal is not more important than that person that decision maker's solution you will never win you just won't and you have to establish that in the beginning you have to lay the groundwork we talk about creating a framework for decision making and so we go in and we talk to the client and we talk about the decision this is why uh... my the message I'm trying to hammer home with designers as much as possible is take the emphasis off the deliverables onto the decision making so we talk to the client we're like here's the goal what are all the decisions we need to reach that goal what are all the all the artifacts we're gonna be creating to support the decisions so we take the artifacts and knock their importance back a little bit and say you need to make a good decision we're gonna show you things that help you make that decision okay what evidence are we gonna base that decision on and so we have to explicitly know how a client team makes decisions before we insert any recommendations into that process because if they're not making decisions based on evidence there is nothing you can do you have to understand what the standard is for decision making and it's hard and once that once uh... you know the horse is out of the barn or whatever you can't put it back you can't say oh we're shifting the basis of truth you have to start at the beginning and say let's agree on what our basis of truth is before you show them any artifact or else it'll be all on polish and not on concept thank you so much can we get another round of applause for Erica and uh... I'm hanging out too because I know we're on time now and so if you just want to ask questions I'll be here in whatever location they tell me is most convenient for everybody thank you so much


Namaskaram, Sadhguru. In one of your quotes, you say that we should not judge a person's spiritual evolution based on their behavior. I am unable to understand that because I have always believed people who are kind and compassionate are spiritually evolved. Could you please help me understand the context of that quote? Well, see, at one time at a certain segment of my school going time, I can't call it education but school going time, I was in certain type of schools where moral science was an important part of their thing. I was in missionary schools. So they are always trying to teach us three magic words. No, no. You have to wait for me for the second cough within the thirty seconds. That's not coming. I've been tested and certified, okay? Magic words, I'm sure all of you have gone through those magic words. Who are the magic words of? What? No, that's not the order. Sorry, it's not the order. What are you up to? Sorry is not the first one. Please, sorry and thank you. Well, you can learn such tricks. I'm not saying you should not say this. If the magic is happening within you and those words came, fantastic. No magic in you. You just got the words. You have a sense of entitlement but you say, please, doesn't mean anything. It's better at least you show who you are. Oh please, gonna have it and anyway you grab it. I see this all the time and you then kick somebody in their backside and then say, sorry, doesn't mean anything. You take what you want from everybody and then say thank you as if they gave it to you. These things are supposed to represent that you have no sense of entitlement. You understand that nothing really belongs to you here. So even if you want a glass of water, you say, please. If you really see it that way, even a glass of water or a morsel of food doesn't belong to you. Fortunately, it's available to you. So you say, please, wonderful. Anything that you do, you may be hurting somebody. You may be stepping on something knowingly, unknowingly. So if somebody even looks at you and says, sorry, what? If you're feeling that way and thank you because you have a sense of gratitude, that's everything that's come your way, genuinely. So the word may come or it may find some other expression. What should be a magic within you happens only in your behavior. That is a tragedy of moralistic societies that they do all the right things but nothing right happens within them. So behavior does not determine one's consciousness or one's evolution or one's transformation. Well, if you have a certain… what spiritual evolution means is from being a hardcore concrete, concretized individual, you become little more porous and becoming more inclusive. Out of your inclusiveness, you may do many things. If things are happening out of your inclusiveness, your gentleness, your loving nature is coming out of your inclusiveness, fantastic. But if it's a formula that you have learned, that you know by doing these things you will get what you want. Actually, that's how it was taught to us in the school. You do this, use these three magic words, things will happen for you. So go and say please, as soon as you get something, turn around and say something else. This was happening around me. So your behavior does not determine who you are. People can cultivate behavior but who they are needs transformation. Transformation essentially means that the sense of boundary that you had about yourself, this is me. This has enlarged. That's all the transformation is. Transformation is not of social behavior. Transformation is if you sit here, what was me was just this. Now what is me is much larger than this. That's all. Out of that, whichever way you behave, it's okay with me. But there must be inclusiveness because inclusiveness is better than insurance. Once you see something as a part of yourself, then what is there about thank you and please and sorry and things like that? It doesn't matter because when you see the other as yourself, I treat everybody as I treat myself hard.  Because I treat myself rough, I'm treating you also rough, okay? Or you want me to be nice, please. I say this in the earlier, in the beginners' programs, I always say please close your eyes. Hello, I do. Because I know you have difficulty closing your eyes, I say please close your eyes.  By then you should have understood the significance. Right now this is just the second, third day of the lockdown. First day you did not understand. By now you should have understood what it means. Now we cannot say please keep six feet distance. We'll have a six foot stick and push you like that because in three days if you still did not understand what is six feet. It doesn't take three days to grasp what is six feet. Even if you're illiterate, you can get it. You don't need any mathematical qualifications. So now government is having army standing by just in case you still don't understand what is six feet. Yes, this happened. What happened? So one day Shankaran Pillai came home. His wife complained about their twelve-year-old boy that this boy is not listening to me. You have to fix him now. So the Shankaran Pillai went about looking for the boy. The boy was hiding in the garden.  So, your behavior. Well, if you want to be in a society, yes of course you have to regulate your behavior because it's not just about you. It's about everybody around you. But what we are looking for as good behavior is not necessarily saying specific words, doing certain things and not doing certain things. No. What we are looking for is that you walk into this hall. There are fifty people sitting here.   That's all that matters. If your concern is for all the fifty people who are sitting here, then you behave one way. If your concern is just about yourself, then you behave another way. This is all you need to fix. Spiritual process is not a social thing. It's something that you do within yourself. Because something within you changed, you may also address the world in a certain way.  They did not have social skills. That's why they kept away from the society. You heard of Sadguru Sri Brahma. He had no social skills. Lot of trouble. This time around, we come with little social skills. Yeah, I'm doing well. Still little friction with some people, but they're always there. That is an indication that we are on the right path, that we are doing the right things in the world. Because if those people praise you, then you must be doing something really wrong. So, one spiritual evolution need not be judged by their behavior. Now, don't take this as a license to behave irresponsibly saying, I'm spiritual. There is that... that tribe also exists in the world. Because they are spiritual, they think everybody is supposed to understand them. They will do weird things. Everybody is supposed to understand. No, no. That is not the thing. Because spiritual process means you're not identified with your physical nature. Your identity has moved to a dimension which is not physical. Once your identity is not physical, then you have no specific way of doing anything. You will do it whichever way it's needed. Soft, soft, hard, hard, wonderful, wonderful, nasty, nasty, whichever way. Whichever way the situation demands, you will respond in that sense. Because your identity is not with your physiological and psychological process, your identity has moved beyond physical dimensions of who you are. So, you have a certain freedom. A cultured behavior means you're fixed to be in a certain way. That means you lost your freedom. Out of your freedom, when it's required to be nice, you're wonderful. When you're required to be nasty, you're nasty. Whatever is needed, accordingly you do. You are driving now because not many vehicles out there, so cows, buffaloes, all kinds of things are on the road. A group of buffaloes are going there. You can say, please, please. They just go like that. Please. No response. Ha! No little. Pick up a stick and say, ha ha! Then they'll go. Because they don't understand what is this please you're talking. Now you are not trying to treat the buffalo badly. If buffalo understood what sweet words are, you would say, you know, sweet nothings to the buffalo. But he doesn't get it. He must understand that you don't like him where he is right now. You must make him understand. He shouldn't be on the road. You need to use it. Somehow you make him understand. You don't have to go and beat him. At least some noise you have to make. Otherwise, he will not move because he doesn't understand. So if you're dealing with a child, you do one way. If you're dealing with an adult, you lead another way. Somebody that you know one way, somebody that who is new to you another way. Our behavior is as the situation demands. Now you fixed yourself. This is the way I behave. Even if the situation doesn't... is not, you know, conducive for that, you do the same things, what is the point of that? Any action which is not relevant to the situation which you exist irrelevant action. So fixed activity always becomes irrelevant in various situations. It is very important that we don't fix our action. We just fix who we are. This is what... You know, I am not a scholar like this, but this is something that stuck with me. Krishna said, yoga stahakuru karmani. First establish yourself in yoga. That means establish yourself, not in your individuality, but in your union with existence and then perform action. That means you're absolutely inclusive, then do whatever is needed. It's fine with me.