CHALLENGING CHANGE, Friends and Family, PRACTICAL STEPS, RELATIONSHIPS

KINDNESS

31st January 2018

I love it when signs point towards a specific theme or issue that I have already been open to. My desire to make contact with someone in need for 7 days was further endorsed and enforced when I came across The Thirty Day Kindness Challenge .The challenge is to be kind in words and actions to someone or several people you know for an entire 30 days. The hope is that like all habits that form when there is consistency and repeated behaviour, one can also train oneself to develop good and positive habits. The benefits are huge, not only…

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CHALLENGING CHANGE, FOOD: friend or foe?

PANDORA’S BOX

30th January 2018

I loathe shopping. I especially dislike shopping inside a large mall. After about an hour I lose the will to live. There is however, one exception and that is shopping for food. I am passionate about this pastime. I get this feeling of total euphoria, a zone of inner contentment that borders on obsessional. My interest is especially piqued when I am in a foreign country or in an unfamiliar or uncharted food market. I can literally spend hours wandering the aisles not just looking at the merchandise but as a paying consumer, happy to spend a small fortune on…

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PRACTICAL STEPS

SMILE

29th January 2018

Say something to make at least three people really happy in one day. BRET NICHOLAUS

PRACTICAL STEPS

SUNSHINE

29th January 2018

For the next 7 days I am going to reach out to at least one person a day especially where I sense that someone may be in need. It may be to someone I already know or it may be a total stranger. It will have to be a form of communication that requires more effort than just sending a text or an email. At the very least, a phone call. At best, my physical presence. After 7 days I will add a post describing how I got on.

RELATIONSHIPS

A FRIEND INDEED

29th January 2018

It was all going so well. I had driven about 100 kms from our house in France en-route to London. I was listening to some soothing classics as I sipped a shake I had made in lieu of breakfast. A long day’s driving lay ahead but I love driving, particularly in Europe and I am used to the trip and know the way well. I was considering listening to a podcast and so I cast my eyes to the floor of the passenger seat where my IPad was. Well, where it supposedly was because it wasn’t. Instant panic. I looked…

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CHALLENGING CHANGE, RELATIONSHIPS, Things around me

READ ALL ABOUT IT!

29th January 2018

I’ve just been to the library. As a child, this was where I found my solace, my nourishment and my escape. Without a father and with an absent mother, I would spend hours wandering between the shelves, the smell of old books pervading my nostrils and the silence strangely comforting. Without the distraction of television and well before the advent of social media and technology, books ( and the occasional film ) were the only means of escaping into a world of fantasy . Through reading and books I learned how to numb myself , to remove myself from reality…

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Spiritual

THE SOURCE

24th January 2018

When God crowns our merits, it is nothing other than His own gifts that He crowns. Augustine of Hippo

CHALLENGING CHANGE, Spiritual

SEND HER DOWN!

22nd January 2018

One of the biggest impediments and stumbling block to change has to be the concept of guilt. Whilst a conscience and realisation of something untoward that one may have done is good because it elicits some degree of culpability, feeling guilty about it doesn’t necessarily have the same desired effect. The former is likely to be something one has said or done that wounds another. The latter in many instances is about one’s behaviour ( eating or drinking too much, overspending, neglecting chores to rather sleep in or watch daytime TV etc ) and this is where the term ‘…

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CHALLENGING CHANGE, FITNESS, Spiritual

AN INDISSOLUBLE BOND

20th January 2018

’ Through Him each part of the body is joined and knitted together by every supporting ligament so that every part of the body may function as it should, building itself up in love ‘ Ephesians 4:16

CHALLENGING CHANGE

THE HORSE OR THE CART?

20th January 2018

I’m struggling to know where to start. Do I need to deal with what I do first or do I start with why I do it before I can move on to how to fix it? How can one process exist in isolation from the other? They are all intertwined afterall. An immediate vision springs to mind: I think of the magnificent Ebony trees that I have encountered over the years when on safari in South Africa. I draw parallels between the tree and myself. I see the solid trunk that I aliken to my central core, my soul, that…

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