Landmarks

Decorating our tree...

It's the time of the year when, if you're celebrating Christmas, then you're putting up your Christmas tree and maybe even putting lights up on your house.

Decorating our tree is something we enjoy doing as a family, although this year it looks a bit wonky, and as our kids are only a certain height the first pass of decoration hanging was predominantly only the bottom half of the tree - we had to do a certain amount of bauble redistribution afterwards!

Many of our decorations have a story behind them, so as we decorate we remember the stories, memories and landmarks that they evoke. It's fun, and I'm glad that we stopped using tinsel a few years ago - instead we picked up a few gold and red painted bead chains from a pound shop, which are much easier to adorn the tree with and are less "in your face"!

"Many of our decorations have a story behind them"

We've never put many lights up outside our house, but there are plenty of houses in the neighbourhood that do so with avengence! Certain houses become landmarks, visible for miles around due to their festive illuminations. Some, I've noticed, leave their copious stars and Santas and reindeer attached to their houses all year, clearly never quite as motivated to take them down as they were to put them up in mid-November! The decorations look a little sad and out of place in the summer to be honest. There's definitely a right season and a wrong season for Christmas house decorations!

"Certain houses become landmarks, visible for miles around due to their festive illuminations"

The Birmingham skyline is dominated by giant tower cranes at the moment, one with a seemingly alarming lean (and a notice outside the site saying that it's *meant* to be leaning... still looks a bit alarming if you ask me).

Apparently Birmingham was once home to over 400 multi-story towers (I hesitate to use the word skyscrapers), many of which were landmark buildings at the time but have since fallen into disuse for various reasons.

Some of the tower cranes are there to assist in the demolition of these concrete landmarks, and they're a sign of the ongoing regeneration of the city centre.

Many of the cranes have festive lights on them at this time of year - not a series of lights that I'd be keen to put up though!

Like Christmas lights or tower cranes, we all have landmarks in our lives that are appropriate for a season, and which we can get attached to. But unlike the houses in our neighbourhood, the trick is to know when to take these down when the season is over.

"Like Christmas lights or tower cranes, we all have landmarks in our lives that are appropriate for a season"

As we approach the end of the year I'm sure many of us are reflecting back on things we've done, or haven't done, or want to do. Perhaps it's a good time to consider if there's anything adorning our life that's served it's purpose and which needs to come down. Like the derelict tower blocks, things that need to be demolished to make way for new developments and new opportunities.

It's time to move on.

But it can be hard to let go of things can't it? I remember when my first car, a faithful white Peugeot 205 had come to the end of it's working life. It has seriously failed it's MOT, it was getting old and I needed a new car. I was very attached to it, I enjoyed driving it, I'd invested lots of time over the years mending it myself and I was sad to see it go.

But I couldn't just leave it on the street, and there would be no point paying road tax indefinitely for a car that didn't run, so I reluctantly called a salvage yard who came and towed it away.

It was a sad moment but also liberating, the exciting potential of getting something newer (in the end a red Peugeot 306 - I've always driven French diesel cars!).

"The trick is to know when to take these down when the season is over."

Enjoy this Christmas season, relish it, but please take down your decorations afterwards, and as we head into a new year maybe ask yourself if you've got any old cars, abandoned buildings or other landmarks in your life that have served their time well but need to make way for something new...

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Thanks for taking the time to read Landmarks. If you've enjoyed it please share it with your friends on social media! Why not subscribe to The Potting Shed Podcast on iTunes or Stitcher for expanded musings and much more (direct RSS feed is here). 

I'd love to hear from you, so feel free to comment below or email me at stricklandmusings@gmail.com 

If you want to stay up to date please sign up to my mailing list, and do check out my book Life Space on Amazon.

I was recently interviewed for The Zone Show and the Changeability Podcast, both of which are well worth a listen!

No Room At the Inn?

How can we simplify things?

How do we avoid becoming saturated? I don’t know about you, but the run up to Christmas always seems so busy. There’s extra events to go to, extra food to buy, extra people to see, extra presents to give and receive, extra programmes on the TV – extra, extra, extra!

Now it’s not that these things are necessarily bad or wrong, it’s just that we can too easily become saturated that we can miss out on what’s really important.

Christmas can end us as a time of mindless overload as we stuff our diaries with events, our shopping trollies with luxuries, our stomachs with vast amounts of food and our relationships with strain.

"Christmas can end us as a time of mindless overload"

You can have too much of a good thing, as the residents of Cumbria have experienced with the recent flooding. Our land needs regular rainfall to support habitat, agriculture and amenity – but when you have a month’s worth of rain in a day the ground becomes saturated and damaging flooding results. If we’re not careful, we can flood our life with too much over the Christmas period and wash away some of the important things in our lives in the process.

"At the heart of the Christmas story is an overcrowded inn"

Don't let the important things get washed away...

At the heart of the Christmas story is an overcrowded inn with no room to receive the son of God. Listening to a talk Leon Evans recently he reminded us that we can be like that inn – too full to receive what’s really important.

It’s an on-going challenge in my own life not to over-commit, not to become too saturated with good things, so that I can leave space for the important things. I love being busy, love doing all kinds of things, but the knack I’m slowly mastering is getting a sustainable balance with my time.

It’s usually in the new year that people start making resolutions, after the excess of Christmas. It's after the floods that people start to rebuild. But how about avoiding the saturation in the first place?

How can you simplify your Christmas season this year? How can you make space? What about having one less appointment in your diary a week? Or having one less drink and mince pie at your Christmas Party? How about setting a spending limit on your present buying, or agreeing not to exchange gifts but give to a worthy charity instead?

Let's have space this Christmas.

There’s lots of things we can do to make a little more space in our hearts for the things that really
matter in our lives, without being a Scrooge or a skinflint! Let's not be an overcrowded inn this Christmas.

"We can be like that inn – too full to receive what’s really important."

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Thanks for taking the time to read No Room At The Inn. If you've enjoyed it please share it with your friends on social media! Why not subscribe to The Potting Shed Podcast on iTunes or Stitcher for expanded musings and much more (direct RSS feed is here). 

I'd love to hear from you, so feel free to comment below or email me at stricklandmusings@gmail.com 

If you want to stay up to date please sign up to my mailing list, and do check out my book Life Space on Amazon.

I was recently interviewed for The Zone Show and the Changeability Podcast, both of which are well worth a listen!

Taking the long perspective

Where 'ya heading?

While the world's leaders meet in Paris this month to discuss climate change I've had the opportunity to write various blog posts for the environmental consultancy I work for, which has been really fun.

In one of them I wrote about the need for long term thinking in our decision making, and how this especially applies to situations which aren't obvious threats.

I'm sure we’re all familiar with the “fight or flight” response that we humans exhibit when faced with a threat. It’s been key to the survival of our species but could arguably be getting in the way of making effective decisions about the long term future of our planet.

Our ability to face immediate problems isn’t the same when facing delayed or longer term issues, such as climate change, since it’s not such an obvious threat as encountering a predator in the wild.

"I'm sure we’re all familiar with the “fight or flight” response"

President Obama identified that we need to switch our focus from the short term to the long term in his speech at the opening of the COP 21 conference earlier this week. He said:

‘For I believe, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that there is such a thing as being too late.  And when it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us.  But if we act here, if we act now, if we place our own short-term interests behind the air that our young people will breathe, and the food that they will eat, and the water that they will drink, and the hopes and dreams that sustain their lives, then we won't be too late for them.’

Are your dreams stuck on the sofa?

For most of us, big decisions about climate change and government policy aren't what we face every day. But our fight or flight reflex can still get in the way of good decision making.

I should probably do more exercise, but at the moment I'm reasonably healthy so it's harder for me to motivate myself to do more.

Now, if I was to enter some kind of competition or race, then my survival instinct would kick in and I'd get down to some serious training!

It's the same with my eating habits. I'm pretty sure I eat too much, too often. I haven't weighed myself on the scales for many months, but for exactly the same reasons as above (ie I'm still pretty healthy), I find it hard to be motivated to do something about it.

If I had a health scare then I'd be much more motivated, or if I was giving up certain foods during Lent - my problem, and maybe something you face too, is that I'm far too easily on of off. I'm often either full speed or nothing.

"I'm pretty sure I eat too much, too often."

A familiar theme here in The Potting Shed is following our dreams and creativity, and this is also an area where it's hard to take a long perspective - without our survival instinct kicking in, without an obvious threat, we can merrily plod through life never fully engaging or pursuing what might really make us shine.

We need to play the long game...

So how can we help ourselves to take our dreams and gifts more seriously? How can we effectively play the long game, making regular good commitments to ensure we're travelling forward to the place we want to be?

Well, perhaps we need to turn our dreams into goals, and remind ourselves what's at stake if we don't achieve them. Or maybe we need to turn it into some kind of competition! Perhaps we need to get others around us, confess that our dreams are out of shape and commit to giving them a regular work out!

I'd love to hear how you take the long perspective - your hints and tips!

Or maybe, like me, you've got areas in your life that need some exercise - how about leaving a comment with a promise to yourself about what you're going to do about it?

"We need to confess that our dreams are out of shape and commit to giving them a regular work out!"

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Thanks for taking the time to read Taking the Long Perspective. If you've enjoyed it please share it with your friends on social media! Why not subscribe to The Potting Shed Podcast on iTunes or Stitcher for expanded musings and much more (direct RSS feed is here). 

I'd love to hear from you, so feel free to comment below or email me at stricklandmusings@gmail.com 

If you want to stay up to date please sign up to my mailing list, and do check out my book Life Space on Amazon.

I was recently interviewed for The Zone Show and the Changeability Podcast, both of which are well worth a listen!