Four tricky questions - an olympic interview

Back in February I had my Gamesmaker interview, this was part of the selection process that whittled down the 250,000 people who applied to be a volunteer at the London 2012 Olympics. 100,000 people were being interviewed over 12 months with around 70,000 being needed to run the games.

I was delighted to be offered a place to serve at the Paralympics and I attend my first training session next week.

What stood out at the Gamesmaker interview was the four questions they asked:
1. What have you accomplished that you are proud of?
2. Describe a situation where you had to work together in a team situation?
3. What is your favourite Olympic sport and why?
4. Can you tell me about a time you have gone the extra mile?

Apart from olympic themed question 3, my answer to this is below, I think these are great questions that we should ask of ourselves every so often. So I'm asking you, what would your answers be?

My favourite Olympic sport is the middle to long distance and the greatest Olympian in my opinion is Emil Zátopek who at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, won gold in the 5 km, 10 km, and the marathon breaking the Olympic record in each of the three events! His final medal came when he decided at the last minute to compete in the marathon for the first time in his life, and won!

Habits of a lifetime can be changed

Do you have bad habits, recurring failures, addictions? If not you are one in a million (or fooling yourself!).

The rest of us know we have stuff that keeps tripping us up again and again.

If you're like me this stuff has become almost second nature, part of who I am. Therefore, if I want to change any of these behaviours and actions it is actually painful because in a perverse way they have become a comfort blanket.

I am trying to change a couple of my worst traits and recently I was listening to a couple of preaches from Mars Hill that I found helpful.

Shane Hipps spoke about the hundreds and thousands of choices that lead to situations of personal pain, bad habits or even addictions. We have to admit that we did make those choices, albeit they became more and more automatic responses the more we let the bad habit form. It was one of those sermons when it seemed the preacher was talking just to me. He went on to say there is hope as we come to God and make the right choices. These boulders of bad behaviour/habits will be worn down by the constant flow of God's healing water. (click here to go and listen)

Kent Dobson talked from the story of Ruth of hopeless circumstances. Ruth did all she could in her situation of just taking one step at a time to walk towards hope. (click here to go and listen)

I am trying to take one step towards hope each day and I am thankful for the lovely people I have around me who guide me, encourage me and pull me up when I stumble and fall.

If you are stuck in whatever way I would recommend listening to one or both of these messages, I believe they may just speak to and encourage you where you are at.

Judged - rejected, crushed, shunned, hurt, cast out, unloved

Judged is a short film of stories of people who were judged when they should have been loved.

Watching this can be hard and may bring up things in your life that have been hard to handle and there are no easy answers so I won't try and give them. I just hope that watching this will in some small way help.

A video of www.centralchristian.com.

Six Things

Later this week I will post the first of what I hope to be a regular feature of this blog - Six Things.

Six Things is a series of micro-interviews with interesting and creative people, in which they’re asked to respond to a standard set of six prompts.
• One thing that’s always worth getting out of bed for
• One thing about myself that often obstructs me
• One thing I’ve learned the hard way
• One thing that gets under my skin
• One thing I’d love to change
• One thing I hope for

I hope that you enjoy getting these little insights into people's lives and that they will amuse, encourage and sometimes inspire you.

Credit: Often you will hear a phrase alone the lines of "Six things you didn't know about...", I got this idea from a regular feature on http://www.thatelusiveclarity.com/ website - it is an excellent site why not go check it out.

Best apple ipad app ever?

A slightly misleading title, this post includes the Easter video of www.centralchristian.com entitled Masks. It really is the best use of an apple iPad I have seen so far! More importantly it gets to the heart of what is wrong with society, people and even sometimes in our churches - people putting on masks to hide the reality of what they are like or what they think they should be like. I love this church's message "It's OK to not be OK". I hope watching this video will help you to be OK with being who you are.

Thoughts on idolatry

A little while back Tony Thompson spoke at our church and asked the questions "What is your ultimate? Have you made what is good your greatest desire? What are your idols?"

I've been thinking about this and if I am honest and I look at how I spend my time I know God is not my ultimate. In terms of time God often isn't in the top three and I work for the church! Most of the other stuff is really good but the best (God) is often no. 3, 4, 5 or 10 on the list.

Does that make me a bad? No it just means I am often asleep, unaware of the grace of God on\in my life and oblivious to the many ways God wants to be involved in my life and wants me to be aware of my life in Him!

So I say to myself "Wake up O sleeper" so I can "taste and see that the Lord is good".

I don't need so much to change my life, maybe a few bits - less late night TV for one! It is more of a case of being aware and using...

• my eyes - to look for the hand of God
• my ears - to listen for the still small voice
• my mouth - to say less, so I can hear more

So in essence I need to go to be earlier but stay awake more - I love a good paradox!

What motivates us?

Below is an excellent video based on a lecture given by Dan Pink to the Royal Society of Arts in London.  It is wonderfully animated and it adds real depth to his words.

Watching it makes you think "What motivates us/you?" Is it just money, or is it autonomy, mastery & purpose as Dan Pink suggests? Most of the world is driven by the belief of a simplistic motivation drive of more money = better performance in work, in sports and even in schools (better qualifications = better job = more money!).

But how many people give their own time freely to contribute to things they enjoy and bless others? These are the things that we really enjoy and would (and are) doing for free, at our own cost.

If businesses, schools, churches, unions and governments can grasp these principles outlined by Pink then how much better and happier we would all be - that would be a big society where people are looking for greater (bigger) good!

Overwhelmed?

Last night as I went to bed feeling overwhelmed by life - water leaks, broken boiler, pressure of work, personal challenges and issues - as I lay in bed I just felt like running away, life was just too much.

I woke up the next morning to find out thousands of people had actually been overwhelmed by a massive earthquake and an enormous tsunami in Japan. Later that day seeing the news coming in from Japan gave me a large dose of perspective.

I'm not saying that my troubles are not difficult, in the context of my life they can be significant but with a bit of perspective from life, family and friends they are shown for what they are - the normal stuff of life.

So like all of us I get overwhelmed, most of the time its because I procrastinate and things just build up or stuff just happens which I don't expect. But most of the problem is inside me - worrying, not talking things through, not remembering what I said, not being honest and open about my fears and feelings - not so much my circumstances then than my inner world.

So I pray for those in Japan, knowing that the reality they face is truly overwhelming and my issues are just part of life and my journey.

Is it OK to not be OK?

Let’s be honest we prefer to be around fun people more than miserable people – that’s an easy choice! But what would you choose – ‘happy’ unreal people or real but flawed people?

It strikes me that we have to make that choice everyday when we ask and answer the question, “How are you?”. It’s an easy question to answer when things are good or OK. When life is difficult I tend to make a choice along the lines of this flowchart:

When people really ask us "How are you", I think what we all want is to be heard, accepted, receive some empathy about our situation and then if needed maybe the offer of help, care, prayer or all of the above! The first and most important is to be heard and accepted – to know it is OK to NOT be OK. When this happens we can be real.

However, when we suspect that the person we are speaking to will be uncomfortable with our difficult situation or will rush to suggest a solution to our 'problem' – then it might just be easier for both of us if we keep our masks on and look for another place where it is OK to NOT be OK.

Dexter

One of my favourite TV shows is Dexter - it has a great opening credits (see the video)

Dexter is a drama series about Dexter Morgan (played by Michael C. Hall), a forensic bloodstain pattern analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department who moonlights as a serial killer (you can see the references in the video).

Set in Miami and based on the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay. Dexter structures his killing around "The Code of Harry", a body of ethics and procedures devised by his adoptive father Harry Morgan (who was a Miami cop) to make sure Dexter never gets caught and to ensure that Dexter kills only other killers. As an adult, Dexter has largely escaped suspicion (with some exceptions) by being genial and generous and maintaining generally superficial relationships. However, his attachment to his sister, Debra, his wife, Rita, his stepchildren and later his son both complicate his double life and also help him re-connect with normal human emotions.

Whilst being a great drama, with an excellent cast, it is also a great insight into a troubled and traumatised mind and even though most of us are nothing like Dexter I'm sure that we all have blockages or disconnects like this in some area of our lives - I know I have.

Dumplings

The other day I came home to a lovely meal of sausage casserole with dumplings.  When I saw this on the cooker I knew it would taste fantastic. However, something inside of me went uuurgh! Seeing the dumplings I was taken back to my childhood meals of soggy, greasy dumplings and casseroles that smelled, looked and tasted awful.

It's a funny thing memory, our brain stores all sorts of stuff and often past traumatic memories, no matter how big or in my case small, are triggered by situations in the present. The emotions we feel and our responses are actually more about the past memories rather than the present. Many people unfortunately are regularly triggered by events in their daily lives which bring up powerful emotions and responses that the have never been dealt with. They may actually be unaware of the trigger or past hurt. When triggered we react not to the event before us but to the emotion from the past.

For me I know there are times in my past that have given me significant self worth issues and if I'm in a situation where I feel attacked, rejected or criticised I know this can easily trigger me and I start to get the numbing feeling of being worthless.  If I don't realise it I can very easy retreat into my shell scurrying away from the world - becoming little Steven again.

The good news is that I am becoming more aware of these triggers so I know why I feel so bad about myself, out of all proportion to what is going on in front of me.  This is the first step in redeeming my past and moving on from hurts that hold me back.

So back to the dumplings, a silly example I know.  Well they were delicious and I am sure after 5 or 10 more dumpling meals I will have provided myself with enough positive memories of dumplings so that this food 'scar' will be healed once and for all!

The greatest love of all?

Do you remember Whitney Houston’s 80’s hit “The greatest love of all”

I used to hate it with a passion, especially the lyric “learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all”.

How self indulgent! What about others? Surely the greatest love is the selfless sacrificial love of others before yourself.

Well now I’m not so sure.

Jesus said, the two greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbour as yourself (Matt 22:36-40). Now lets read that backwards and what do you find that you can’t love your neighbour very well if you don’t love yourself.

What does it mean to love yourself? I think it means you really need to know and accept yourself, warts and all - and we all have warts (using mental & emotional ones).

I’m sure most of us have done some sort of personality or physcological test (Belbin, Myers Briggs, Emotional Health) these are useful for us to know ourselves, but how much do we really look at these to understand and accept and know ourselves.

I think we almost always need help to really understand ourselves.  Having had some counselling I know more about myself (and also about others) than I could have ever known on my own – no matter how many tests I did.

Richard Rohr said,
“How you love people is how you love God,
How you love God is how you love people,
How you let God love you is how you let people love you"

There is so much in this and it is so challenging. I want to add a line to this statement:

"How much I will love (know) myself I can love people and therefore God."

So take some time to know, accept and love yourself today.