A friend told me that he found it hard to explain to his parents that investing in the stock market was not gambling. They were always telling him to stop gambling in the stock market. To that, I said that his parents were right. He was shocked. Why did I say that? Well, all of us have our own perceptions and, to us, our perception is reality. Remember the story about the frog and the fish which shared a pond? When the frog told the fish that there was a different world outside the pond, the fish didn't believe the frog. So, I told my friend that his folks were probably not able to understand concepts they had never heard of in their lives unless we put across the ideas in a way that they could relate to in everyday life. I came up with this: Try telling them that ......