The Element of Resourcefulness and Its Hope for Living a More Constructive Life

Resourcefulness is finding new uses for things too

Quick who are the people you call the most outside of close family members?

I bet you the answer would be people who are resourceful.

People who are resourceful in the ideas, advice or information they can give you.

People who are resourceful in helping you connect with the people or resources you need.

People who are resourceful in assisting you with the things you can’t do yourself.

Or people who are even just resourceful in an emotional way (great to talk to).

Knowing resourceful people is great, and having them for a friend is even more wonderful.

But becoming resourceful ourselves is also important.

Dictionary.com defines resourcefulness as “able to deal skillfully and promptly with new situations, difficulties.”

Merriam Webster defines resourcefulness as “able to deal well with new or difficult situations and to find solutions to problems”

It’s the same definition in slightly different words.

So we each have to ask ourselves, is “how resourceful am I”?

Am I the kind of person who can be turned to for ideas and advice?

Am I the kind of person who can be approached for help with something?

Am I the kind of person who can be counted on for emotional support?

We can become that kind of person.

It starts with being resourceful in dealing with our own problems, goals and challenges.

I never used to think of myself as resourceful.

Then along came the internet.

I found that just by “keeping on searching”, I could find answers and solutions.

The internet helped me become resourceful.

Did I tell you about my eyeglasses?

I had these eyeglasses that I owned forever.

Though there was a generous vision plan offered by my company, I was addicted to my eyeglasses.

In fact, I ordered at least 3 new eyeglasses to replace the eyeglasses I was addicted to, but after a single day of use, each of these new eyeglasses would be consigned to a closet shelf where they would languish to become friends with the dust bunnies there.

And on my nose, would be perched that same old worn out pair of eyeglasses I had had forever and a day.

Eventually these favorite eyeglasses became so worn, one of the lenses regularly started falling out.

I would tighten the screws that held it in place, but it wasn’t sufficient to hold the lens within the frame.

So there I would be - reading a book or knitting (as if) - and out would pop the lens.

I was lucky it never fell out and hit concrete (frankly people like my daughter hoped it would) because that would have been the end of it.

One day, after the lens popped out and I was about to reach for the eyeglasses kit for the three hundred and fortieth time, I stopped and said, “I need a permanent solution. This is not going to work.”

So I put on my thinking hat and it said to me in a loud voice: “Minoo, you could superglue the lens into the frame.”

So not one to argue with such a great idea from my thinking hat, I superglued the lens into the frame and then placed my eyeglasses on a sheet of paper to dry.

Remorse struck when I returned to the eyeglasses only to discover there was dried superglue all around the periphery of the lens.

In a frenzy, and not willing to give up on my favorite eyeglasses so easily, I decided to power up my computer and search for answers on the net on “how to remove superglue from eyeglass lens”.

The internet did not let me down.

I learned the answer was nail polish remover.

And so I got out Tanita’s nail polish remover and went to work.

And just as someone had said on some internet forum, the dried superglue came right off the lens.

I felt so resourceful.

The internet has helped me be resourceful in so many respects.

Because the other name for the internet is “resourceful”.

Remember how I told you how I learned to make avocado pani puri?

That was an example of resourcefulness.

It came from wanting to be resourceful with what I had at home in terms of ingredients rather than running to the grocery store.

There are many kinds of resourceful.

Resourcefulness is knowing how to do more with less.

People who know how to do more with less will get into less jams than people who don't know how to.

Resourcefulness is knowing where the opportunities lie and where the solutions lie and where you can get the most for your money and how you can make the most out of a situation.

If you observe, you will see different people are resourceful in different areas.

My brother David is a cooking pro and is very resourceful in the kitchen. He can create a spread with whatever is available in any kitchen. No wonder there have been so many times when people have called upon his help to make their gatherings or events a success. And he has never let them down.

I once had a friend called Alfred.

He was amazingly resourceful about computers.

So whenever anyone had a computer problem amongst our group of friends, we would pick up the phone and call Alfred.

My friend Nadya (one of the mosquitoes in my life) is resourceful when it comes to any kind of gadget or gizmo – whether it is deciding which one to buy or installing it properly and figuring out how to use it.

My friend Armando is very resourceful about cars. After my accident, he bought my totaled car, made a few repairs to it and started using it.

My friend Julia (also one of the mosquitoes in my life) is resourceful about nutrition. She also is resourceful about new ideas in self-help. I am always looking for new ideas in self-help and love to share them when I find them. Remember this one?

My brother-in-law Mohammed is resourceful about gardening and farming and computers and so much more.

So as we see, different people can be resourceful in different areas.

Often we are resourceful in the areas in which we are passionately interested in.

Of course we feel more resourceful when we can help other people with our knowledge or skills.

I love helping people who have tax questions and investment questions.

I am resourceful about taxes and investments.

Not as resourceful as my friend and guest poster Ajay, who has been in the stock-broking business all his life, but enough to be of help.

When we are resourceful, we think of clever ways to approach something.

When I gave a workshop on Wise Spending to the GATE students of Bertha Taylor Elementary School, I had to be resourceful in order to get my message across.

What I did was to break out the group of students into three groups and hand out grocery flyers and instructions to each of them.

One group received instructions which said: “You are on a tight budget.  You have 20 dollars and you have to buy enough food for your family of four to last a week.  The Lucky grocery flyer tells you what it available at the store and for what price this week.  How will you spend your money?”

Another group received instructions which said: “You have been asked to pick up the groceries for an hour long event which will be attended by 5-10 people. Oprah will be a special guest at this event.”  The Lucky grocery flyer tells you what it available at the store and for what price this week.  What will you buy?  List your purchases and the price you paid for each of them and the total dollars you spent.”

Another group received instructions which said: “Your mum has asked you to pick up what is needed for your birthday party. The Lucky grocery flyer tells you what it available at the store and for what price this week.  What will you buy?  List your purchases and the price you paid for each of them and the total dollars you spent.”

The 3 groups did not know they had received 3 different sets of instructions.  All of them thought it was a competition of some kind.

After they had completed the exercise and presented their purchases to the whole group, they learned that the purpose of the exercise was to understand that the mindset with which we go to the store will determine how much money we spend and what we buy.

People in charge of managing money should be resourceful.

If they are not, money can run through their hands.

It is possible for a person who is not resourceful with money to spend 5 times as much for the same thing as someone who is resourceful.

This is because there is a huge difference between the way resourceful people spend money and unresourceful people spend money.

Unresourceful people will spend money without thinking about the impact on their unpaid bills, their debt, their budget and their savings, and will not look for the best values and deals.

Resourceful people will try to get the maximum value for every dollar spent and keep their budget, bills, debt and savings in mind.

I have observed that people are all over the spectrum when it comes to the way they spend money – some think twice before they buy anything and get the maximum value for every dollar spent and some don’t think for a second before they buy anything and get the least value for every dollar spent.

We should all aim to think twice before we buy anything and to be resourceful so we get maximum value for every dollar spent.

We should all aim to become like my friend Nadya and my friend Sharon – whom I call the Deal Queens.  They truly are able to get the maximum value for every dollar spent.

To an employer resourcefulness is one of the most attractive traits.

Some books help you develop an attitude and a spirit of resourcefulness.

Richard Nelson Bolles' What Color Is Your Parachute? was one such book for me.

I like books which make me want to be more and do more.

Richard Nelson Bolles's book was one of the books that made me want to be more and do more.

So was Three Simple Steps by Trevor Blake and Spartan Up by Joe De Sena.

Resourcefulness often means thinking out of the box.

We quickly adopt “this, then that” thinking in our lives; meaning this has to happen before that can happen.

But why does it have to be that way?

We may think “I have to join a company to be able to prove myself.”

But what if you could prove yourself to a company before joining the company?

“How is that possible, Minoo?”

Yes it is possible.

I will give you an example.

When I went to the interview for my current assignment, I wanted to leave the interviewers with something which would prove the depth and breadth of my capabilities.

Since I couldn’t control how the interviews would go and what questions they would ask me, I prepared a list of questions to get information about their sales compensation plans.

I was interviewed by 3 people.

At the end of the interview with each of the 3 people, I handed the interviewer my list of questions and said “I am not sure if you will decide to take me on, but whether you do or not, these are the list of questions you will need to answer to help the person you hire understand what needs to be done.”

The list of questions helped me get across the breadth and depth of my capabilities even before starting the assignment.

I encourage myself to “think resourcefully” and I encourage you to “think resourcefully” too.

Whenever, we are presented with a new idea, device, tool or strategy, we should spend some time thinking how we can use it to our benefit.

I remember when my niece first introduced me to the social media site Pinterest.  I could not think how I could use Pinterest.  Pinning this or that article of clothing or home décor item or decorating idea or recipe didn’t appeal to me (people who know me will understand). But a wonderful and resourceful idea came to me in the middle of the night. “I know what I can do.  I can pin my blog posts to Pinterest” I said to myself.  

I got up the next morning and created 37 Pinterest boards. My niece went “Yeah!”

Today, all my posts, and the guest posts written by Ajay, Anita, Cindy, Jacinta, Juliet, Shantel and others are available not just here on Google Blogger, but also on Pinterest boards as well.  In fact, Pinterest is the easiest way for a reader to navigate my blog.

I have all sorts of Pinterest boards.  I have a Money Board, a board called 8 to 5 about work life, a Hope Board.... I even have a Big Bang Theory board which might give you a chuckle.

In this Harvard Business Review article, John Baldoni talks about how “an experienced mechanic can do wonders in car repair with a combination of after-market parts and his own resourcefulness.”

I have seen both my friends Armando and my friend Nadya do wonders with their cars by modeling what the best mechanics do.

A resourceful person will never go by the book.  They will rely on their knowledge and their own resourcefulness, learning from their mistakes as they go along.

Of course, we are all afraid of people who think they are resourceful in some area when they are not.

One thinks of the episode where Bill Cosby decides to repair a leak in one of the bathrooms and turns a small repair into a giant one.

A resourceful person will never say, “Oh I don't do that!” and will rarely say “I don't have a clue.”  They will think about your problem and say, “Oh I know just the person who I can direct you to.” Or they will say, “Give me some time. Let me see if I can come up with some answers”.

Resourceful people say yes to more things.  They welcome challenges. Dr. Seuss was resourceful when he agreed to write a book using only the 100 words every child should know.   Thanks to him saying yes and being resourceful, every child and adult has been able to read and enjoy The Cat in the Hat.

No matter what the problem is, if we are resourceful, we can find a way to do something about it.

Resourcefulness consists in tapping untapped resources to solve or achieve something (hint, hint....look at the picture at the top of this page).

Resourcefulness is a quality looked for by angel investors and venture capitalists.

Paul Graham states that he looks for resourcefulness more than anything else.

Graham makes a distinction between resourcefulness and motivation.

He says resourcefulness is needed when the obstacles are external, whereas motivation is needed when the obstacles are internal.

Mahatma Gandhi was resourceful when he decided to lead the famous 24 day Salt March, one of the most creative acts of civil disobedience in history.

Resourceful people are typically more interesting.  They tell you about how when faced with a tricky problem or an unusual jam, they solved it in a clever, unusual way.  This makes them fun to listen to. Isn’t it so much more fun to hear how someone cleverly and smartly got out of something, than to hear them whine and complain? Jeff Bezos said “Life's too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful.”

Of course there's the other side – where people mess things up by thinking they are resourceful when they are not.  Of them, Scott Adams says: “There's nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.”

Bad teachers and limited information and skills and resources make people more resourceful.  I wrote a post about how constraints can help us come up with inspired solutions; every example in that post is an example of ingeniousness and resourcefulness.

Every country in the world likes to think their people are the most resourceful.

Here's Joseph B Wirthlin on the resourcefulness of the Dutch people: “Much of the Netherlands lies considerably below sea level, as you well know. Through the process of building dikes to wall out the salty sea and through pumping the water into canals, the country of the ingenious, resourceful, and doughty Dutch has literally been born of the sea.”

Here's Bill Frist on America: “America is moving forward and gaining strength. We have been tested, and we have proven ourselves to be a tough, resilient and resourceful nation.”

And on this delightful blog piece written by a Russian author, the author gives us examples of the resourcefulness of the Russian people.

Every parent from the beginning of time has wanted to raise capable resourceful children.

No wonder children’s tales from all over the world are filled with examples of resourcefulness.

Such as this famous Aesop’s Fable:

The Crow and the Pitcher

Or this famous Panchatantra story:

The Monkey and the Crocodile

Or this famous story from One Thousand and One Nights,  familiarly known as Arabian Nights:

The Fisherman and the Jinni

When we are resourceful, we try to come up with an answer, however tough the predicament, like the monkey in the Panchatantra story or the Fisherman in the One Thousand and One Nights story.

Resourcefulness is being constructive to engage with.

In an emergency or a really bad crisis, we are really grateful for resourceful people. They are the ones who say “Hang tight. I know a way to get us out of this”.

Some people have it in them to be resourceful in emergencies and crises.

Rebecca Solnit of Mansplaining fame says “Women often find great roles in revolution, simply because the rules fall apart and everyone has agency, anyone can act.”

Emergencies and crises enable women to shed the passive roles they traditionally identify with.

If being resourceful is important when we don't have resources, it is equally important when we have resources.

Which is why Tony Robbins says:  “The defining factor is never resources, it’s resourcefulness”

People can win the lottery, but not do anything useful with the money and lose it all.

On the other hand, there are people who have achieved a lot, in spite of having limited resources. You can meet some of them in my post How To Let Nothing Come between You and a Fulfilling Life.

If we are not resourceful, we can get stuck, we can be wasteful, we can spin our wheels and go nowhere.

But here’s the thing….

As Tony Robbins says, we can’t be resourceful if we are not in a resourceful state.

If we are hungry, we will not be in a resourceful state.

If we are tired and lacking in sleep, we will not be in a resourceful state.

If we are upset, we will not be in a resourceful state.

So if we want to be resourceful, we should be mindful of our state and take steps to improve our state. 

You can check on your state right now.

Ask yourself, “am I in a resourceful state? ” 

If the answer is yes, ask yourself “What can I do with this resourceful state?  Can I create something or solve or fix something?”  Look at the picture of the makeshift jewellery holder for inspiration.

If the answer is no, ask yourself  “How can I put myself in a resourceful state?”

Some days, we get very little done, even though we planned to do a lot.

This is because we were not in a resourceful state on that day.

And some days we get so much done, we are amazed at ourselves – that’s because we were in a resourceful state that day.

Even if we are not perpetually resourceful or resourceful in every area of our lives, we can all be proud of at least a few resourceful moments, or specific areas in which we are “king” or “queen” of resourcefulness.

I read this article about Peter Sellers.  I found out Sellers was a terrible man when he was not in front of the cameras.  He was impossible to be around and a belligerent, obnoxious and revengeful husband, father and friend.

But Sellers was amazingly resourceful when it came to acting.  He could take on a wide variety of quirky characters.

Raise your hand if you loved him in The Pink Panther Series, The Girl in My Soup, The Party and Being There.

I will end with a quote about resourcefulness which reminds us that even if a person is able to get by because of their resourcefulness, it doesn’t mean they do not feel alone and have needs for friendship and company and love just like everyone else.

Want to guess which movie it is from? You can let me know on Facebook. Here's the quote:

“Despite the fact that there are over eight million people on the island of Manhattan, there are times you still feel shipwrecked and alone. Times even the most resourceful survivor would feel the need to put a message in a bottle, or on an answering machine.”

As always thanks for reading and have a great day….M….a Pearl Seeker like you.  As Charles Schulz says, don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia. Thanks to Abbas, Ajay and Urmila for their comments and insights on my last post The Element of Creating A New Reality and Its Hope for Living A Powerful Life and thanks to the rest of you for your pins and votes.  Much appreciated.