Have you graduated from the UNIVERSITY of life

A beautiful attitudinal correction story I thought I must share with you.
A cattle and sheep farmer was overseeing his herd in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new cherokee all terrain SUV advanced out of nowhere raising a dust cloud behind it and came to a screeching halt. The young man driving the car was clad in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Cartier sunglasses and YSL tie. He stepped out of the SUV and asked the farmer,
'Hey man ! If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, and that to with all the details well printed , well bound and accurate to the last detail, like the weight of each animal, with body mass index and metabolic rate of the animal, details about what they need to eat, how much, and much more, Will you give me one of your calves ?'
The farmer just looked at the man, gives him the feeling of being impressed, and then looked at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly said , 'Sure, Why not?'

The yuppie gets out of his car, takes out his palm top, pulls out its antenna to connect to the world wide web, and hits the NASA page on the Internet. He calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany .Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-TechMiniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the farmer and says, 'You have exactly 2,186 cows and calves.''That's right.

Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' said the farmer as he watched the young man select one of the animals. The young man stuffs the animal he picked up in to the back of his SUV as the farmer looks on .

Then the farmer smiles as he looks at the young man and said, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what exactly you do for a living, will you give me back my calf'? The young man thinks about it for a second and then says,'Okay, why not?''

You're a Consultant, right',

.'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?''

No guessing required.' answered the farmer.

'You showed up even though nobody called you;

you wana get paid for an answer I already knew,

and a question I never asked.

You tried to show me how smart you are;

but you don't know a thing about cows...

this is a herd of sheep. . .'...''

and now you better get my dog out, or he will bite you when he gets out of the back of your car".

Why will he bite me Sir? asked the young man now with some respect.

Well because he has been trained by me using NLP techniques to behave like sheep when any thief is lifting my sheep, but also trained to bite the thief like a wolf later and get the sheep back home. And than he helps the cops get to the thief as well and dear sir, "my dog has no blackberry, he does not use a computer, does not even care if there are satellites around the earth, he only works for love and knows there is no place sweeter than his little straw mat in my shack.

"Vow! said the yuppie, that is amazing. It sounds scientifically so advanced, mind blowing, I must say, I wonder why they dont teach all this in the university any more".

"Stuff like this is taught in the university of life alone", said the farmer.

The young man decided to be the the farmer's understudy for a year and learnt well. He still is a consultant, but now he knows the difference betwen sheep and calves and also knows, that the dogs that dont bite, are not sheep.

Friends I know this story is true, because that farmer was my God-Father, and other than my university degree I also graduated from Dad's university, and I value that much more than any University degree. No one recognises the degree that my Dad gave me, but it has got me a lot of recognition.

An other great attitude to live by is to know that we can turn any situation in to a learning situation. We need to understand what true learning is all about. Has it got some thing to do with heaps of degrees and certificates that we collect over a period of time, or it has more to do with, what we have learnt and also learnt to apply in our lives? Remember we can turn any situation in to a class room by becoming the student in that situation. If our attitude is right we can even learn a lot from a deck of cards.

Here is another famous story called the DECK OF CARDS. This is a beautiful soldiers tale that can teach us a lot about how to learn, how to have a positive mind set, making the best use of what ever resources you have, thinking out of the box and prudently interpreting life and the different situations and experiences that it puts us through..

The story goes like this..................During the North African campaign, a bunch of soldier boys had been on a long hike and they arrived in a little town called Casino. The next morning being Sunday, several of the boys went to Church. A sergeant commanded the boys in Church and after the Chaplain had read the prayer, the text was taken up next. Those of the boys who had a prayer book took them out, but this one boy had only a deck of cards, and so he spread them out. The Sergeant saw the cards and said, "Soldier, put away those cards." After the services was over, the soldier was taken prisoner and brought before the Provost Marshall. The Marshall said, "Sergeant, why have you brought this man here?" "For playing cards in church, Sir." "And what have you to say for yourself, son?" "Much, Sir," replied the soldier. The Marshall said, "I hope so, for if not I shall punish you more than any man was ever punished." The soldier said, "Sir, I have been on the march for about six days. I have neither a Bible nor a prayer book, but I hope to satisfy you, Sir, with the purity of my intentions." And with that, the boy started his story: "You see Sir, when I look at the Ace, it reminds me that there is but one God. And the Deuce reminds me that the Bible is divided into two parts, the Old and the New Testaments. When I see the Trey, I think of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And when I see the Four, I think of the four Evangelists who preached the Gospel; there was Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And when I see the Five, it reminds me of the five wise virgins who trimmed their lamps; there were ten of them: five were wise and were saved, five were foolish and were shut out. When I see the Six, it reminds me that in six days, God made this great heaven and earth. When I see the Seven, it reminds me that on the seventh day, God rested from His great work. And when I see the Eight, I think of the eight righteous persons God saved when He destroyed this earth; there was Noah, his wife, their sons and their wives. And when I see the Nine, I think of the lepers our Savior cleansed, and nine out of the ten didn't even thank Him. When I see the Ten, I think of the Ten Commandments God handed down to Moses on a table of stone. When I see the King, it reminds me that there is but one King of Heaven, God Almighty. And when I see the Queen, I think of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is Queen of Heaven. And the Jack or Knave is the Devil. When I count the number of spots on a deck of cards, I find 365, the number of days in a year. There are 52 cards, the number of weeks in a year. There are 4 suits, the number of weeks in a month. There are 12 picture cards, the number of months in a year. There are 13 tricks, the number of weeks in a quarter. So you see, Sir, my pack of cards serves me as a Bible, an Almanac and a Prayer Book." "And friends, this story is true".

Balwant Gurunay, Mba, PgPr.