Getting in touch with a new culture always puts pressure on yourself. Uncommon reactions and behaviour makes you reflect on your own frame of mind. In that way it can shake your own mindset upside down. Let me give a practical example. I have read a lot about the cultural redtape in India. In the magnificent book Maximum City from Seketu Mehta he explicitly describes India as the land of the NO. There is a local culture that inhibits that anything can be done but with perseverance a thousand NO’s ultimately change to YES. The key lies in the fact to keep asking.

I absorbed that observation. But I know, theory remains theory. However, today things got real. I had to call for a favour. There had already been some written discussion and things looked good. We had a phone call planned. With big expectations a dialed the number and the phone got picked up. I thought things were already somehow arranged but that was only my personal interpretation. I had to go to all the details again and had to convince the other party. I repeatedly ran into a big “NO, that’s not possible”. On that moment, the quote from the book appeared in my mind. I have got to hang on, I thought. I listened to the objections of the person and finally succeeded in getting some trust. I just kept asking gently and finally got to the grounds where I wanted to be. Afterwards both of us were really satisfied.

Bottom line: Hang in there and take the punches. Good things come to those who persevere.

In modern Western society the assumption that we can tackle everything with our hard-wired brain by conscious thought is widely spread. Whenever we encounter a problem we ponder our heads over it, cut it into bits and pieces we can handle and try to tie the ends together with a solution. Whenever we want to learn something new we think that knowledge (e.g. by reading a book) immediately will transfer into know-how. We have ended up to believe that with conscious thought we can manage – well – everything.

There is, however, another great force in play that we forget to give recognition: the unconscious mind. A way of thinking that does not lead us to straightforward solutions and does not tie every open end immediately. With our mind we learn just by doing and going along. Afterwards it is difficult to describe how we even learned to do it. In that way it is completely non-descriptive.

What I am talking about is the muse artists talk about when they describe their artistic process. What I am talking about is the giant leaps brilliant scientist are able to take in during their research. When asked about any analytics behind those discoveries they reveal that they cannot grasp how they came up with it.

Bottom line: Give way to the slower tortoise mind instead of the fast but superficial hare brain.