RELATIONSHIPS – Growtogain

Still on Track

These past days have been fraught with so many issues that may have well thwarted all my valiant efforts in this huge challenge I am trying to overcome. Not only do I have physical injuries and pain to deal with but there has been the more mammoth and vastly more important death of our Queen Elizabeth. As with most of the world, my eyes and ears have been occupied by the coverage of all the events pertaining to and surrounding this sad passing of Her Majesty. Growing up in South Africa as I did, I never knew what it felt…

CHALLENGING CHANGE, RELATIONSHIPS, Things around me

BRAVE NEW WORLD

Getting across London today, from South West to East took me as long as it takes me to travel from London to Cambridge. I took a bus from Victoria to East Dulwich and it took over an hour for that leg of my journey. Sitting on the upper deck of the bus gave me a bird’s eye view of this amazing city and whilst observing my surroundings, many thoughts came to mind. We are all so comfortable in our own environments and tend to traverse the same routes and patches for the most part. When we occasionally step out and…

CHALLENGING CHANGE, Friends and Family, RELATIONSHIPS

BRAVE NEW WORLD?

One of the hardest things one faces when one has left one’s country of birth and settled in another far-away land, is that one is unable to support those left behind in times of need. The world is so accessible now and this has led to fragmented families as more of us choose to pursue our lives elsewhere. There are so many parents and grandparents who have to conduct their relationships and witness their grandchildren growing up via Skype or FaceTime. How many little kids think that their granny and grandpa live in their mom’s IPad? Its a sad fact…

FOOD: friend or foe?, Friends and Family, RELATIONSHIPS

BREAD OF LIFE

I’m not sure I could relate to someone whose idea of a sandwich is sliced white factory produced bread, spread with margarine and a slice of processed cheese. In fact, I think that sandwich making would be an excellent way to assess each other when meeting for the first time and would be a great way to figure out if one wants to further pursue a relationship. After all, if the thought of being forced to eat such a tasteless and bland offering as the cheese sandwich described above is abhorrent, then why would one imagine that its maker would…

FITNESS, Mental, RELATIONSHIPS, Things around me

LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR

Returning to London is a total onslaught. I feel like a kettle drum with an over enthusiastic trainee percussionist beating the living daylights out of me. I have two irksome and problematic, intense dislikes . One is loud noise and the other is inconsideration. I find that as I get older, these issues have magnified and I have to constantly talk myself out of letting anything associated with these bugbears get to me. I try to look at them as challenges that God has presented to me to test how far I am prepared to strive in order to have…

CHALLENGING CHANGE, FITNESS, RELATIONSHIPS, Spiritual, With God

THE ULTIMATE TEST

Examine me, O God, and search me; test my heart and mind. Test and confirm, O Lord, one way or the other who and what I am; search my heart and mind . PSALM 26: 2,3 Let us test ourselves; let us examine our lives and return to the way of the Lord. Let us lift not just our hands to God in heaven but also our hearts. LAMENTATIONS 3: 40,41

FITNESS, RELATIONSHIPS, Spiritual, With God

BLESSED ASSURANCE

I have just read Psalm 103. For me, it says it all and it fills me with hope, joy and inner peace. At those times when we feel overwhelmed by our daily battles, its such a relief to know that we can hand them all over to The One who created us and who loves us more than we could ever imagine. It is only right therefore to sing His praises and to adore Him !

CHALLENGING CHANGE, Friends and Family, RELATIONSHIPS

FRIENEMY

I have been thinking about the difficult people in my life. You know those people whom you dread having to encounter and when you do, they seem to suck the life blood and energy right out of you? Even if you are just thinking about them ( and they seem to occupy so much of our daily thoughts despite how we feel about them ), they have the extraordinary capacity to invade and pervade our beings as if by osmosis. If one cannot walk away from them or divorce oneself from them , then one needs to find a way…

CHALLENGING CHANGE, Friends and Family, RELATIONSHIPS

BLA, BLA, BLA

You know those moments when you have been talking to someone and it becomes blatantly clear that they aren’t listening to you? This has been occurring with some regularity when I am conversing with my nearest and dearest. He hasn’t yet figured out how to give the illusion that he so interested in what I am saying, when in reality , he is miles away. He is too honest and too transparent for that. Instead, his eyes start wandering and in his case, he will interrupt what I am saying because he has been thinking about what he wants to…

FITNESS, Friends and Family, Mental, RELATIONSHIPS

LETTERS

How we communicate says so much about who we are. How much of a part does nature play in our natural inclinations and our modus operandi? Surely the way we have been nurtured and raised has a bigger influence but as we develop as adults, will our inborn, inbred instincts rise again to the fore and play a major role in our personalities and lives again with a tussle between the learned behaviour and that which is intrinsic to our fundamental core? Whether it was nature or nurture in my case, I know not. What I do know is that…

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

Changing the habits of a lifetime