In my last post on this topic I shared two real life incidents of how by just asking – they were able to get things. Both the people kept their egos and fear aside and checked and they were able to get things that they wanted.

Today we will look at why most people – including me , many times – end up with the mice rather than the antelopes.

The story goes that a lion is very much capable of capturing mice and eating them. But it does not hunt mice. It hunts antelopes. Mice are to be found all over the place, but antelopes are few and have to be searched. The lions also have to chase the antelopes to capture one of them, because antelopes can run very fast. But the lion still prefers to hunt the antelopes because the calorific value the lion gets by eating a mouse is not worth the effort. But when it hunts an antelope, it can keep the lion satiated for multiple days, so it’s worth the effort. A lot of times because we see the low hanging fruit we chase that, rather than chasing the worthwhile fruit.

Most of us have extremely big egos and / or a lot of fear. That stops us from asking questions. Given a chance most of us would be scared of even opening our mouth in front of a stranger. We would rather accept what is available without asking the question.

So a lot of times what “antelope” could have been yours, just disappears, because you didn’t ask the route to get the antelopes and stuck yourself in finding the “mice” because they were easier to find. Its all in our brain.

Our brain takes its primary role as survival and fears , asking a question may endanger you or your ego (people may laugh at you because you asked a stupid question or people may shout at you). In school I remember I was taught “curiosity killed a cat”. For a long time and quite a few times even now, this comes up at the back of my mind and stops me from asking questions.

But quite often its worth the try.

Till next time then……just ask…..curiosity doesn’t kill cats.

Carpe Diem!!!