Two rabbits, Guru and Shambu, were good friends and enjoyed their strolls together. In their walk today, they came upon two carrots.  One of the carrots had large leaves sprouting out of the top and the other looked much smaller from the surface. Shambu was excited and ran up to the carrot with the larger leaves. “I’ll have this one,” he proudly exclaimed and proceeded to extract it from the ground. Guru shrugged and pulled out the other carrot, which turned out to be much bigger. Shambu was surprised and asked how this could possibly be. Guru looked at his friend and replied, “You can’t always judge a carrot by its leaves.” They kept on walking and came across another pair of carrots, again with differing sized leaves. This time Shambu allowed his friend the first pick. Guru hopped to each carrot, inspected and sniffed them carefully and, to Shambu’s surprise, chose the carrot with the larger leaves. As they each extracted their carrots from the ground, Shambu was bemused to see that his carrot was smaller than Guru’s. “I thought that you said that small leaves meant it would be a larger carrot.” He said. “No,” replied Guru, “I said don’t judge a carrot by its leaves. It’s also important to remember to think before you choose.”

It is the same difference between a chef who understands the underlying flavours and a cook, who knows how to make a set recipe really well. Between a great coach, who understands the underlying play and an amateur instructor who has studied and knows thousands of patterns of play. The phenomenon is called, first principles thinking.

If we need to know who’s the chef or find a great coach, observe them when things go wrong, when it’s all new or unexpected.

Inspired by https://betterlifecoachingblog.com/2012/01/13/the-two-rabbits-a-story-about-wisdom/