February 15, 2023

Notes by Aarya Mishra

Review

Last week, in the story, a girl was asked to write about the 7 wonders of the world in school. While the rest of the kids wrote about things like the Taj Mahal, the Leaning Tower of Pizza, and the Great Wall of China, she wrote about-to be able to see, to hear, to feel, to taste, to think, to love, and to be kind. Nowadays, people value places and buildings, rather than valuing themselves, like the girl did. Also, we learned about how we develop self-confidence. According to Sumanji, if we break a promise we made to ourselves – to wake up, to eat healthy, to work out – we are lying to ourselves. For example, if you ask a friend to come over, and they say they will but they don’t, and they keep on breaking their promises to you, you won’t trust them anymore. The same with ourselves. If we keep on making promises to ourselves then breaking them, we won’t trust ourselves. The RAW was to sit still for 5 minutes every day. This was a promise that we made to ourselves.

Story 

One day, 2 ants went out looking for food. As they were looking, they came upon 2, big cookies! They both were shocked and happy they had found food. But the problem was, they didn’t know how to bring the cookies back to their homes! They both started pushing at their cookies. The 1st ant broke off a tiny piece, and said that he was going to bring it back. The 2nd ant laughed at the tiny piece, and said that he was going to find a way to bring the WHOLE cookie back. So the 1st ant went home, and the 2nd ant kept pushing. Later, the 1st ant came back and broke off another tiny piece and brought it back home. The 2nd ant hadn’t budged the cookie one bit! The 1st ant came back, and left and came back and left, each time bringing a tiny piece with him. Soon, the whole of the 1st ants family came and brought tiny pieces back. The 2nd ant still hadn’t moved the big cookie one bit! Eventually, the 1st ant’s family moved the whole cookie through tiny pieces. And eventually, the 2nd ant went home with no food.

Lesson

How many people have achieved 100% of their goals? No one! Maybe 75%, or 50%, but never 100%. To reach your goals, you have to break them into smaller pieces. For example, could you eat a WHOLE watermelon, without cutting it? No! But, you could eat a whole watermelon if you cut it up into smaller slices. Similarly, to reach really tough goals, you have to break it into pieces! For example, if you want to get into a really good school, like Harvard, you have to have a good degree, good grades, ace your interview, ect. To do those things, you have to split your work into pieces, so it can even be possible. Like the ants! The 1st ant split up his cookie, and brought it home in pieces. The 2nd ant tried to tackle his problem headfirst, rather than breaking it up to make it easier. There are actually 2 kinds of goals. A big goal and a small goal. A small goal might be something temporary, like ‘I will eat healthy today.’ A big goal might be something for a long time, like ‘I will eat healthy for a month.’

Practice

Sumanji asked us to close our eyes, and imagine our most favorite food. Imagine smelling, taking a bite out of it, chewing it slowly, savouring it, then swallowing it. You might be tempted to go get this food right now. 

RAW

Whatever food you imagined in the practice, you cannot eat it today. This is a small goal. But, you also cannot eat it for the rest of the week. This is a big goal.