The wisdom I gathered from attending Christmas parties

Office parties help set the mood for the holidays and are full of nuggets of wisdom. PHOTO | FILE 

By BONIFACE NGAHU

Christmas is a time when many people get into the festive mood as they enjoy the holidays. It also marks the end of year where many offices hold end of year parties to thank employees for the hard work. 

I am a fan of Christmas parties mainly to set up the holiday mood and secondly because they provide nuggets of wisdom and entertainment.

In one of the parties, I overheard a girl talk about a young athletic Santa. According to the story the traditional Santa had retired and his grandson had taken over.

Pictures of the young Santa have been trending on the Net, to the delight of many young girls. But the children are not impressed by a thin young Santa and this means that the traditional charismatic old Santa cannot retire yet.

In one of the speeches someone quoted Dalai Lama on the some of the most surprising things about life. According to the quote human beings are surprising because they spend their early part of life working hard and messing up their health.

They then spend the latter part of their life using their hard earned money to take care of the health they messed up.

This inspires thinking on living in the present not the past or future. You can factor in this in your New Year resolutions by living in the moment, spending time in nature and with the most important people in your life.

The other story is about a professor who invited his students to his house for a cup of tea.  He had two types of cups – plastic and silver. All the students chose to drink in the more glamourous cups.

The professor observed this and commented that many times in life we choose what is most impressionable. He advised the students to always be more interested in the content than the presentation.  He implied that some of the greatest things in life do not look great.

Many times when there are problems in a business there is always a blame game as juniors look at the seniors for solutions. But in reality there is always something that even the most junior person can do to solve the problem.

In the most engaging workplaces every employee is focused on the big picture.

I heard the story of a cleaner at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) who was asked what he does and responded that he was helping take a man to the moon.

In the Biblical story of Moses in Exodus 17:8, the Israelites at the battlefront were winning as far as his hands were up. When he got tired he put down his hands and the Israelites begun losing the battle.

The solution was from the followers who supported Moses’ hands to keep the Israelites on the winning path.

The lesson here is that in any situation everyone has a strategic role to play.