Resources to help you finally feel better about your finances As Srinivas Rao points out in his article What We Should Have Learnt in School But Never Did — we all have fixed ideas about what money means, how much we should earn and what we should do with it. Unless we question them, these […]
Being At Peace Comes Down To Two Words
And a ratio I was recently at a talk given by a brave and wise man named Gulwali Passarlay. He talked about being sent away from his homeland of Afghanistan at the age of eleven by his own mother to escape the horrors of war. He explained how he spent the next couple of years being shuttled […]
Giving Is Just Half the Equation
The Forgotten Art of Receiving When I was ten, my parents bought me a magic set from Hamley’s toy store in London. I couldn’t wait to start using it — I spent the entire 8–hour flight to India we took the next day relishing the thought of this impressive new skill. Over the next few […]
Six Letters To Help You Get The Most Out Of Life
A simple way to shift your focus In the final chapter of his book, ‘Wait What?: And Life’s Other Essential Questions’ author James E. Ryan reflects on an important question about life: “And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? The “even so” at the end of the question, to me, […]
Lessons From Penicillin, Butter Chicken And Natural Selection
The surprising power hidden in small things In maths, ‘small is powerful’ isn’t just a cliche, it’s a fact. Take the number 10 and place a small number two next to it. Raising it to this power immediately brings its value up to 100. This isn’t just true in the world of numbers. History has […]
The Compound Effect of Love
The difference that red velvet cake can make “Cake delivery service! Check outside your door,” said a message that popped up on my phone. Sure enough, courtesy of my lovely neighbour Lucy, two tall red velvet slices lay nestled cozily beside each other in a clear plastic box on the mat. It was one of […]
Acknowledgement Is A Gift We Can Give Every Day
It may seem small, but it goes a long way The faces of the women around me mirror my own. They’re tired from getting through another long, grey Tuesday. They also seem wary of the new gym instructor — is he the type who makes allowances or will he expect us, inexplicably, to be fit […]
Finding The Highest Common Factor Is A Surprisingly Powerful Practice
All it takes is a little time, thought and some beetroot brownies You may or may not remember how to find the Highest Common Factor of say, 54 and 30. It’s simply a special value that connects the numbers. It shows that even though two numbers may seem different, when you break them down properly, […]
My Sister Knew The Keys To A Good Life By The Age of Three
Unintentionally, but still In a home video that will remain forever etched in our family history, my younger sister KD (aged two at the time) recounts a bedtime story. It involves a girl (we’ll call her Mia) who makes friends with several animals in a forest. At one point in her animated retelling of the […]
Why You Should Play Devil’s Advocate All The Time
What if the opposite of what you believe is true? Every number has a kind of opposite called a reciprocal. The reciprocal of 2 is 1/2, because dividing by 2 has the same effect as multiplying by 1/2: 10 ÷ 2 = 5 10 x 1/2 = 5 Reciprocals also teach us that everything (including a number!) can be […]