"In the mountains of Vietnam, there are caves where many thousands of birds make their nests.<br /><br />In the early morning, the birds fly out to look for food to bring back for their young.<br /><br />Sometimes the mouth of the cave is obscured by a passing cloud and the birds cannot find their way home.<br /><br />Only when the bright light of the sun melts away the clouds can the birds see clearly the entrance to the cave and come home.<br /><br />In our lives there are things that block our way, causing confusion and preventing us from finding our true home.<br /><br />Not only obstacles and suffering cause us to lose our way; sometimes the most profound teaching can mislead us if we do not understand them correctly."<br /><br />Thich Nhat Hahn, Zen Buddhist Master<br /><br />Yesterday I put a post up about Colin Chambers, who was Nelson Mandela’s Chaplin for eight years when he was imprisoned on Robben Island.<br /><br />His message was excellent and one thing he said was that when people are presented with a solution they always say: “Yes, but the problem is ….” and you can read that blog post here - https://nfps.info/focus-only-on-the-solution-not-the-problem/<br /><br />In the blog post I wrote about the exercise Colin Chambers made the congregation do.<br /><br />He asked the congregation to place their focus on something in front of them.<br /><br />Then he told them to raise one hand at put it in front of their face.<br /><br />The point of the exercise was that they could no longer see what they were initially focussing on.<br /><br />They could only see their own hand.<br /><br />The ‘solution’ was obscured by their own doing.<br /><br />In Thich Nhat Hahn's book he goes on to write that: "Sometimes the most profound teachings can mislead us if we do not understand them correctly."<br /><br />This, he states, is because some teachers don't understand the teaching themselves.<br /><br />So, just as a passing cloud can obscure the entrance to the cave or a hand in front of your face can obscure what you need to focus on, some people and organisations can mislead you by obscuring from you what the truth really is.<br /><br />This is true in every industry sector too.<br /><br />Some people who give out incorrect information, thereby obscuring the truth or the solution, may simply be misinformed and/or do not fully understand the trust.<br /><br />Others however, may be motivated on a more self-interested level, which may be purely motivated by wanting to seem important or by generating more work and money as a way of clawing back their return on investment into some scheme or other (that they only paid for as a means of generating more work and money for themselves).<br /><br />So, what's the purpose of this post.<br /><br />It's simple.<br /><br />Do your due diligence before you invest your time and money in someone's training or services.<br /><br />Don't let any 'certification' or 'accreditation' obscure your sight from the solution to your problem or the truth that you are looking for.<br /><br />Don't become one of the; "Yes, but the problem is ....." people.<br /><br />Don't let others obscure your view of the solution you are looking for at the expense of their own self-interest.<br /><br />
