donot's world
Once upon a time in a land far far away, there lived a learned Guru called Donothavetounlessyouwantto (known as Donot to his friends (although most people pronounced it "Doughnut")). The world that Donot lived in was very strange indeed! In this world people had come together to make their lives easier and more comfortable. When a group of people came together or one person got a lot of people together they called themselves "companies". The idea was that they could all work together and be much better at what they did. This meant that everyone could get paid money and they could use this money to enjoy their lives.
It all seemed like a very good idea indeed and lots of people started doing it. As time went on the people who were not working for companies saw that the people who were working for companies appeared to have more money and be happier, so, like sensible people, they too joined companies and everyone was very happy.
Many years passed and some people started noticing that something was not quite right. They met in the pubs and talked about it and they talked about it at work and they talked about it to their wives and husbands. After many more years some people started to understand what the problem was: they were not happy!
But how could this have happened?
This is the world that Donot lived in.
Donot was part of a strange cult called "Management Consultants". No one really knew what Management Consultants did. Some people thought they were Managers who did consultancy. Other people thought they were people who consulted with Managers. Still other people thought they managed Consultants. But no one knew what consultancy was anyhow, not even the Management Consultants!
Like most cults they had quite a mix of people. Some of their members really knew their cookies and some of their members didn't know a horse from horseradish. But Donot was a pretty smart guy. He had spent many years sitting on top of a skyscraper contemplating the workings of the corporate world when one day (for no apparent reason at all) it all became clear to him. So Donot packed up his things and left his skyscraper to share his wisdom with the rest of the world.
He decided that the best way to share his wisdom was to run seminars which lots of people could attend and so went about hiring venues and doing marketing and all the other things he had learned during his apprenticeship with the cult.
the first seminar
So finally after much planning the first seminar ran. Unfortunately the advertising was not quite right and on all the posters he was called "The Guru Donothaveto". (The company who had produced the posters were not that great on their forward planning and had run out of space for the "unlessyouwantto"). This gave people slightly the wrong idea about the seminar but Donot wasn't too concerned because he could straighten things out when he talked to them.
So at the appointed time Donot got up to speak. There were lots of people in the hall and Donot was very happy that he was about to get his message out to so many people. He had decided to make his point by telling a story. His story went something like this:
Once upon there was a world filled with people, not unlike you and I, who believed that there existed a type of being very different from them. These beings were invisible but could exert an immense amount of power on people. These beings were called "haveto"s.
There were different types of "haveto"s. Some were very big indeed and exerted a lot of power on people. When the big "haveto"s got together they would have baby "haveto"s but for some reason big "haveto"s and baby "haveto"s also seemed to appear out of nowhere.
Different people also seemed to have different "haveto"s that were attracted to them. Some people's big "haveto"s were other people's little "haveto"s and vice versa. The people in this world were so worried about all these different types of "haveto"s that they spent a lot of time setting up ways of sorting them out and became really very good at dealing with them. They called these ways of dealing with "haveto"s things like "time management" and "problem solving" and "Critical Path Analysis" and such like and many people spent all their lives finding out new ways of dealing with the "haveto"s, big and small.
But one day quite a normal bloke called "Aha" realised something really deep and profound, and like most things that are deep and profound it was actually very simple once you got your head round the idea. In fact it was so simple that most people did not believe it at all no matter how eloquently Aha explained it.
The simple and profound truth that Aha had stumbled across was this : you did not need to do the "haveto"s at all. All you needed to do was ...
disaster strikes
Unfortunately just at that moment all the electricity went off in the hall where Donot was giving his seminar and he never did get to finish his story.
What had happened was this:
An engineer monitoring electricity usage at a power station had to go for a break. At just the same time all the people who were at home watching the television had to go and make a cup of coffee during the first commercial break in a very popular programme. When the engineer came back from his break he saw that there had been a surge in electricity usage while he was out. He felt that he had to ask his boss if he could shut down the generator in case there was a fault. His boss thought that he had to play it safe and shut down the generator because he had just had a bad job review with his boss and had to keep his job. His boss felt that he had to give a bad review because he was starting to get sloppy at work.
Anyhow a long chain of events meant that the electrical generator was switched off and the electricity in the hall where Donot was speaking went off as well.
mr haveatryatit
At the seminar was a man called Mr Haveatryatit. He thought the ideas he had heard before the electricity went off were very interesting indeed and thought that he would try to apply them to his business life. For a week he paid attention to all the times he or other people used the phrase "have to". Each time he heard this phrase he thought about why he or other people thought they "had to". Next what he did was start ignoring the "haveto"s. He found this seemed to work very well for a while and his life got much easier and more fun. But then he started noticing some interesting things. Some of the big "haveto"s which he ignored just disappeared but some of them seemed to hang about. What was concerning about the ones that stayed was that he found he was worrying about them constantly and because he was not dealing with them he kept worrying about them. Overall though he was pretty happy about his progress. He felt happier about things and was much less stressed. But then after another while he noticed something else. He found that he was not very happy at all and that his stress levels were just as bad as ever if not worse. Then he realised that although some of the little "haveto"s just went away of their own accord others had grown up into big "haveto"s and they were breeding.
"Hum" he thought to himself in a depressed sort of way. "This doesn't seem to be working" and he went to the bar in a very melancholy mood indeed.
in the bar
So Mr Haveatryatit went to the bar and had a few drinks, getting more and more depressed as he drank more and more. He felt intuitively that there was something in this stuff but he couldn't seem to get it to work properly. Just then the Guru Donothavetounlessyouwantto walked into the bar and sat down beside Mr Haveatryatit and ordered a drink.
Mr Haveatryatit sat there for a while until he summoned up the courage to start a conversation.
"I was at a seminar that you gave recently", he said.
"Oh really, which one was that?", asked Donot.
"The one where all the electricity went off", replied Mr Haveatryatit.
"Oh dear", said Donot, "I didn't get to finish what I was trying to say at that one".
Mr Haveatryatit then proceeded to tell him of all his experiences since the seminar. He told Donot of all the good bits and bad bits and then ended up telling Donot about how badly he felt.
"I really am sorry that I didn't finish my seminar and that you only got a part of it", said Donot, "and I am really very sorry that you have had such a bad time. Let me see if I can make amends by giving you the key points of the rest of the seminar" and he proceeded to tell Mr Haveatryatit the key points:
• We have lots of things that seem to be "haveto"s in our lives but if you try to spot them in yourself and others then you have a chance of thinking about them and seeing if they really are "haveto"s or not.
• This then gives you the option of doing them or not doing them as you choose.
• If you choose to do them then just do them and be happy about it. After all it is you who have chosen to do them, no one else is forcing you to. There must be a reason for you choosing them so you must be happy about doing them.
• If you choose not to do them then don't do them! You have made a choice. Stop worrying about them, you have decided not to do them so you do not need to think about them.
"Hum", said Mr Haveatryatit, "is it really as easy as that?"
"Yes", said Donot.
"But it sounds too easy to be true", said Mr Haveatryatit.
"That's not my fault!" replied Donot with a smile.
"But there are some things that you have to do." countered Mr Haveatryatit.
"No there aren't", said Donot.
"Yes there are", said Mr Haveatryatit.
"No there aren't", said Donot.
"Yes there are", said Mr Haveatryatit.
"OK", said Donot, "give me an example".
"Well for instance I have to go to work", challenged Mr Haveatryatit.
"Why?", enquired Donot.
"Because I want to get money so that I can feed my family and do the things I enjoy", replied Mr Haveatryatit.
"So you choose to go to work so that you can have these things?" asked Donot.
"Well I suppose so", replied Mr Haveatryatit.
"So you are happy about going to work then", asked Donot.
"Well I suppose so", said Mr Haveatryatit.
Mr Haveatryatit sat staring at his drink for a while and when he looked up he was smiling.
"So it is as simple as that, but this is crazy, why have we all been spending so much time being unhappy when we have been doing what we wanted to do all along?" said Mr Haveatryatit.
"Beats me!", said Donot.
"But this applies to everything!", said Mr Haveatryatit excitedly, "we must tell everyone else".
"That's what I have been trying to do", said Donot.
They both thought for a while and then Donot said "I want to go home now but I would like to try to summarise this for you in a slightly different way. If you are thinking about doing something try thinking about it like this:
• Ask yourself "Can it be done?". You need to think about this for a while because if you think long enough you will find that anything can be done (but that's another story). But if you really think the answer is "NO" then stop here, forget about it, stop worrying about it and be happy. If the answer is "YES" then .....
• Ask yourself "Can I do it?". Think about all the skills you have and all the things you know or could find out about. If you think long enough you should come up with a "YES" but if the answer is "NO" then that's fine, stop here, forget about it, stop worrying about it and be happy. If the answer is "YES" then .....
• Ask yourself "Do I want to do it?". If the answer is "NO" then forget about it, stop worrying about it and be happy. If you feel guilty and feel that you "haveto" do everything that you can do,then you need to remind yourself of what the "haveto"s can do to you. If the answer is "YES" then go do it! And enjoy yourself while you are doing it, after all it is your choice!
"I hope this helps", said Donot.
"It certainly does", replied Mr Haveatryatit. He paused for a moment and then said, "You know, I was about to say that I would try it but I realise now that what I shall actually do is just do it! Thank you very much indeed Donot, this is going to change my life."
Donot smiled and went home, happy that his work was done for the day.
The End
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