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vivaldirules · 06-10-2008, 03:38 PM

Thanks, PH. I'm looking to learn more about this from you, if you don't mind. I find this stuff more fascinating than almost anything. Many of us slog through day after day and pick up a bit here and bit there and change marginally over time. I'm roughly the same person I was thirty years ago and I'm sure there are many who are in that same boat. In fact, I'd argue that most everyone is: incremental progress (or decline). Then there are a few people who, seemingly at the flip of a switch, become somebody different. Either they've picked up some significant skill or made some truly transforming change in their thinking.

Gandhi is the ultimate example for me and a total mystery that just drives me nuts. Here's a guy, a pretty poor and passive student, who went to London for a couple of years in his teens to attend some blow-off schooling and pass an exam so that he could return home and become a well-paid nobody in order to support his family and relatives. He blew wads of his brother's precious cash on fancy clothes and even took violin lessons solely for the purpose of fitting in with and appearing as an upper-class citizen. Fast-forward just a few short years and the guy is sacrificing his mind, body, and soul in a foreign country (South Africa) to help people he's never met before in fundamentally uncharted ways. He then went on for several more decades continually surmounting new challenges and carving out new ground. What happened? What was the spark, the mechanism, the mechanics of the change? There are events you can point to and a background from his childhood. But there seems to be little there that you could have used as a predictor of the changes that were to come for him. It's a total mystery to me and yet if regular people could harness just a tiny bit of that ability, the mind fairly boggles at the possibilities.

06-10-2008, 03:38 PM	#220
vivaldirules When's Doughnut Day? Posts: 10,059 Karma: 13675475 Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Houston, TX, US Device: Sony PRS-505, iPad	Thanks, PH. I'm looking to learn more about this from you, if you don't mind. I find this stuff more fascinating than almost anything. Many of us slog through day after day and pick up a bit here and bit there and change marginally over time. I'm roughly the same person I was thirty years ago and I'm sure there are many who are in that same boat. In fact, I'd argue that most everyone is: incremental progress (or decline). Then there are a few people who, seemingly at the flip of a switch, become somebody different. Either they've picked up some significant skill or made some truly transforming change in their thinking. Gandhi is the ultimate example for me and a total mystery that just drives me nuts. Here's a guy, a pretty poor and passive student, who went to London for a couple of years in his teens to attend some blow-off schooling and pass an exam so that he could return home and become a well-paid nobody in order to support his family and relatives. He blew wads of his brother's precious cash on fancy clothes and even took violin lessons solely for the purpose of fitting in with and appearing as an upper-class citizen. Fast-forward just a few short years and the guy is sacrificing his mind, body, and soul in a foreign country (South Africa) to help people he's never met before in fundamentally uncharted ways. He then went on for several more decades continually surmounting new challenges and carving out new ground. What happened? What was the spark, the mechanism, the mechanics of the change? There are events you can point to and a background from his childhood. But there seems to be little there that you could have used as a predictor of the changes that were to come for him. It's a total mystery to me and yet if regular people could harness just a tiny bit of that ability, the mind fairly boggles at the possibilities.