A cow on a golf course taught me how to deal with unfairness in life - Future IQ

8,675 views Wait, is this logic right? • Feb 07, 2025

Slog Reference: Cow on a Golf Course

Description

In this episode, we will talk about how a cow on a golf course taught me something really important about dealing with life’s unfairness. Have you ever felt like life isn’t fair? Maybe you didn’t get what you wanted or someone was mean to you. It can feel really frustrating! But guess what? There’s a way to handle those tough moments without getting upset.

We’ll learn about a simple attitude change that can help you stop worrying about things you can’t control (like that cow on the golf course!) and focus on what you can change. Life’s unfair sometimes, but that’s okay! You’ll also hear some cool stories about people who faced tough stuff, and how they got through it. Plus, we’ll talk about how you can keep calm, even when things seem unfair, and figure out what really matters.

So, if you’ve ever been frustrated with life, or felt like things aren’t going your way, this episode is for you!

More Videos For You:
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Deliberate Practise: https://youtu.be/tysT6DMFGH4
Zero Sum Vs Positive Sum: https://youtu.be/_z7q02JxysM
Karmanye Vadhikaraste: https://youtu.be/95Zi_4OthbY

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

00:00 Cow on a golf course = unfairness
03:00 Unfairness in real life
03:47 Navin's thumb story
05:14 Unfairness is everywhere
07:19 How to deal with unfairness

#futureiq #unfair

Related Slog Matches

Cow on a Golf Course

Date Proximity

56.00

Transcript

- a cow on a golf course taught me how to deal with unfairness in life go cow what explain so have you felt that life is unfair uh people in your life are being very unfair to you it is very very frustrating right you're probably wrong there is one simple attitude change that the cow is going to teach you the cow on the golf course on the golf course that you met which will help you to deal with un why were you on a golf course so somebody once told me about a rule in golf I later found out it's not a real rule but that if you're playing golf and your ball lands right next to a cow and

0m 43s the cow is blocking your path to the U next hole huh and whatever you do the cow refuses to move as cows do what are you supposed to do right I mean one option is that you go whine and complain about how unfair life is you tell your play the other players with you that you should be allowed to move the ball to the side so that you can get a clear shot at the whole yeah but the rule huh is that the unwritten rule you mean Unwritten rule is that the cow should be treated as if it is part of the golf course right if there was a big rock there okay you wouldn't have done any of

1m 24s this you would have just dealt with it well if you can get it to move that's fine but if you cannot get it to move move then think of it as a tree in your path and just get on with life things that you have no control over right it is better to treat them as unchangeable things that this is what the uh universe is like and let's just figure out how to get around that so hold on are you telling me that if I go and sleep on a golf course exactly the point I was making right I mean there is a cow in front of your golf ball you think of it in a certain way instead of that cow if

2m 00s it was a stone your attitude is completely different and in fact instead of a stone if it's a homeless person your attitude would be very different okay right but in terms of out outcomes the whole thing is the same all three are the same and treating it like a stone would give you better outcomes in the other two cases also but as a human you are so I mean you have such a strong reaction against unfairness that you lose track of what you want to achieve and you get stuck into this oh I have to fight this unfairness no wonder there are no protests on golf course yes because the CEOs will probably play around all the protesters saying well

2m 43s it's the part of the course we can't do anything about it in fact real life that is exactly what happens right so what you're basically trying to say here is that the cow is a metaphor for things that happen in life you should basically uh you can't do anything about it correct so you know nobody most of you don't play golf and if you do play golf you don't run into cows so let's give examples that people you do play golf we are not watching this channel for sure right go on so for example if you have noisy neighbors okay and they keep playing loud mus I'm not saying anything during the day while you are trying to

3m 22s be on your work from home call right I mean yeah sure for a while you can try talking to them you can try getting them to not be noisy and so on but if it doesn't work at some point it is better to just say okay these are cows on my golf course and let me see how I can get around it maybe you buy noise cancelling headphones maybe you invest in soundproofing your windows something like that right but let me tell you a more substantial story okay let's start with the story of my thumb okay when I was a kid I got into an accident and my right thumb broke okay I was not at home

4m 00s putting it mildly you realize right broke is not I have aumb so when I was I was not at home with my parents I was with my grandfather so when my mother met me it was a few days later okay and I remember when she first met me she didn't cry she wasn't sad she was just like okay fine let's see how are we going to deal with it now within a couple of weeks when the bandages and all had come off we had got gotten ourselves a felt pen and I was trying to figure out okay how am I going to write and then in about 3 months I was writing with this hand just using my three

4m 40s fingers as well as I was writing before right you have to see this we'll make naen write with a pen he the way he uses those three fingers is fascinating to watch so throughout that because of the attitude of my mother it never occurred to me to think of oh my God unfair life is or to just go into a spiral of depression and Trauma and so on right I was just okay fine people get hurt all the time what's the big deal and that's how I continued and it has never ever been an issue let me give another example which will resonate more with our listeners please please the one of the smartest young programmers I know

5m 23s turned out to be a bcom student from ratnagiri okay okay now that doesn't make sense sense okay programmers are supposed to be from fancy engineering colleges yeah you've said as much in a few of our episodes about engineering colleges so um when I found out that he was writing excellent programs I called him I spoke to him and I found out that he was selftaught by using online courses oh and I was I asked him what are you doing in bcom that's not the normal path and he said that around the 12th standard exams he fell ill during the math exam he did very badly in math so he couldn't get into engineering College oh so what did he do he took a

6m 07s bcom and then he started teaching himself the things that his friends who were in engineering were supposed to be learning but because he was teaching himself he was more invested in it well not just that I mean the amazing thing is that our bad colleges keep the students so busy with pointless and stupid stuff that they didn't have time to teach themselves the way he did whereas while he was doing a bcom he had nothing else to do so he had lots of free time that's why he became a better programmer than most of his friends who got into be uh engineering okay he just started a comment flame where I me there are students from engineering colleges who

6m 48s are going to be flaming in the comments there are students from bcom who are going to be flaming in the comments we have things to do we want to become Cas and CPAs anybody in an engineering College will agree with me that they're doing stupid stuff all day okay if you don't leave a comment we will see he treated his bad math exam he didn't say oh my God life is so unfair and go into a spiral of negativity right instead he said fine let me see what I can do with the hand that has been dealt to me my life so what you're basically saying is life if life is unfair just roll with it

7m 24s be like not really no that's not what I am saying okay here the ser it prayer is important what is the Serenity Prayer God grant me the courage to change the things I can change the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference the third part is where it is missing for me yeah so uh you know for me there is the 97% rule 97% correct very specific number yes in life 97% of the things are the things that you should accept because you cannot change them only 3% are things that you can change and that you should fight for that but if you try to fight uh Tilt at everything that you

8m 10s think is unfair you're just going to spread yourself too thin and not get anything useful done tilting at windmills it's called I believe but where does the 97% number come from I have no idea okay when I was very young I remember reading this somewhere and then after that I have tried to find it and not found it ever but it's a good number right this is a rare occasion mark it na doesn't know the answer to a question yeah no but I like the number okay being specific like that helps because it I mean broadly the idea is true that there's a tiny tiny fraction of things that you should fight everything else accept it as if it's a

8m 49s cow on your golf course yeah so that's exactly what I was coming to so 97% of the things in your life are cows on your golf course life being a golf course and whatnot and 3% are the things that you should actively uh look to uh change or I think what you want looking for is one it should be important enough okay don't go around fighting minor things right which don't make any difference to anyone second it should be something that you can actually do something about right there should at least be a tiny tiny small percentage chance of success right right and third is that you should do something about it okay posting on

9m 28s social media doesn't qualify us do something that is slacktivism okay do something involves getting up in your real life and doing something and it should be a costly signal check out our episode on costly signaling if it doesn't cost you in terms of effort or money or time then you're not doing anything useful then it's just virtue signaling not costly signaling exactly there we go costly signaling the episode is the link is somewhere here up on your screen go check it out and meanwhile we'll see you in the next episode of future IQ Shri Kant naen