Tuesday, March 29, 2011

My Defective Travel Cup Part 2

So did you figure out what was going on? The first step to solving any problem I believe lies in the questions we ask. If we ask the poor questions then inevitably poor answers will come out of it, wouldn't it? If we ask better questions, we get better answers. Are you with me so far? Sometimes we only get to the better questions by struggling long enough with a series of poor questions, though. It's interesting how our education system puts a premium on knowing the "right" answers and is less than encouraging about asking a bunch of questions. Anyways, I digress, but on a similar vein...I once did a a very simple card trick for a friend of mine, and he asked me to do it again to figure out how I was doing it. I'm not a professional magician, so I broke the cardinal rule of magic and did it for him, again... and again and again. After a while he said something like, "I'm looking and looking, but I can't figure out how you're doing it. I'm really looking, too." I simply said, "What do you think you're looking for?" The truth is that many times in life we are looking for answers where we can't find them, not for lack of effort, but because we don't know what we're looking for... are you following me, here? Good, so here we go with the cup.

The first thing was what if there was nothing wrong with the cup? Then the issue lied with me, but what about me? Was I not using the cup correctly? Well, how could that be? I've been drinking out of cups most of my life, right? What if there was a design issue with the cup and the way that I used the cup was combining to create this issue? There was the answer, literally at the end of my nose. So what was the issue? The way I was using the cup and the way it was designed, when I tipped the cup to drink from it, my nose was covering the vent hole. This obviously restricted the flow, and when I pulled the cup away from my nose, just enough for the air to go through, this action caused a sudden surge of liquid to come pouring out when I wasn't expecting it to. This was what caused the spill. Problem solved! Now what possible life lessons come from this?

Well, I got some good lessons out of it, but for this time I'd like you to simply think it through for yourself and email me or comment on what you got out of this post, okay? That's all for now, and until next time...

Live FREE!

Monday, March 28, 2011

My Defective Travel Cup

I was having a cup of coffee this morning when I remembered something funny that happened a few years back that has a life lesson in it, so...

My wife decided to buy me a travel cup, one of those cups with a lid on it that keep your coffee warm. I'm not sure why, but it's probably because she loves me. :) I'm not all that in to gifts, but when I do get a gift I tend to use it right away and I use the heck out of it. When I got this travel cup I decided to brew a cup of coffee, just so I could use it. I was very excited to use my new cup! I poured the coffee in it, put in a bit of sugar and cream and went to take a sip. Much to my surprise, hardly any coffee came out. I literally had to suck on the opening of the cup for any decent amount of coffee to to come out of the cup. I thought perhaps I wasn't tipping the cup back far enough, so I tipped it back. Still hardly anything at all. Then, ust as I was pulling the cup away from my lips a bunch of coffee came pouring out. I now had coffee all over my face and shirt. Suffice it to say, I was a bit annoyed. I thought it strange, and quite frankly, I'm a bit of a slow learner, so I decided to take another sip. Wouldn't you know it...the same thing happened, again. Like I said earlier...me, slow learner...so I did it again and again, until I decided that there was something wrong with the cup. I decided to return the cup and get a new one.

A few days went by, and I hadn't returned the cup yet...it just wasn't that high on my list of priorities. Then it hit me like a bolt of lightning, I knew what was going on. I ran to the kitchen, took out the cup, poured some water in it and took a drink. This time it worked just fine, and I had figured out what was happening. I am happy to say that was over six years ago, and I have used that travel cup many times since with absolutely no problem whatsoever. So what was going on? I'll let you know tomorrow, but if you want to venture a guess, please do so. :)