Who Dares Wins?

Today's musings are on the theme of risk, and as I was thinking of a title for the post, the motto of the SAS came to mind: "Who dares wins". Or maybe that should be who risks wins? The very language suggests that the SAS have a mindset where war is a game to be played. A game in which risk-takers (like the SAS) win, and everyone else is on the losing side. I would certainly prefer the SAS to be on my side if I found myself in a war!

For someone known to be a big fan of board games (local Settlers of Catan champion no less - frankly to the surprise of my family), you may be surprised to know that I've never actually played the game Risk. We even own a two player version that we've never quite got around to playing! But this seems to reinforce the stereotype that war is a game, and implicitly that maybe life is as well.

I wonder how competitive you are? Do you take more risks when playing boardgames than you would in real life? How about Monopoly? It's easy to stake plenty of money on an investment when it's only monopoly money.. different when we face tough financial decisions in "real life" though.

As I've been musing on the subject this week, I've been wondering whether it would help us live our lives better if we were more playful when it came to risk. Now I'm not advocating taking unnecessary risks with our health, our families, or our work - but I do think that there are plenty of times in our lives when we are faced with the choice of playing safe or taking a positive risk.

In my line of business I spend a lot of time assessing risk, often flood risk. This can be complicated, as flood risk can have many different sources (I won't bore you by listing them). Many of my clients would like me to say that there is NO risk of flooding, however this is never true. There is always a risk of flooding, however small, as you can never completely manage risk away. There can always be a bigger storm, or some unexpected circumstance which could lead to flooding. Whether or not risk remains is a moot point, the question is really whether the risk is something one can comfortably live with.

Risk takes on a whole new meaning when you have kids. Risks that you normally live with - plug sockets, cups of tea, crockery in cupboards, flights of stairs - all of a sudden these become life threatening issues, as our children don't have the same frame of reference or understanding to comfortably live alongside these risks. We introduce additional mitigation measures - plug socket covers, stair gates, cupboard locks, placing everything increasingly high up - to minimise the likelihood of the risk. But you can never eliminate the risk completely - that cup of tea gets put down within reach, that socket gets left open.. we still have to be on high alert as parents until our children understand some of the consequences of the risks around them.

Sadly, in many ways we live in an increasingly risk-averse and litigious society. Whether implicitly or explicitly, our culture seems to value conformity over diversity - evidenced by the incessant testing, measuring and standardisation imposed on the school system, seemingly to force as many of our children to conform to an arbitrary and increasingly meaningless standard. The truth is that we are all "fearfully and wonderfully made", unique in our potential and diverse in the passions, gifts and temperament we each possess.

There's a famous verse in Saint Paul's letter to the Romans, in the New Testament, in which we are encouraged not to "conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind" (Romans 12:2). In a society obsessed with standardisation, the best way to stand out is to embrace who you've been made to be - all the uniqueness and "you-ness" found in the deepest part of your being.

How often have we played safe, held ourselves back, suppressed our passions because we haven't wanted to risk disapproval of friends, family, or colleagues? Perhaps we've entered careers which we know will give us a steady income, but in which we feel we are secretly an imposter, or in which we wear some kind of professional mask to hide who we really are.

And yet, is NOT being the full expression of who you were made to be worth the risk? Is it worth the risk of settling for less, knowing you have more to give, living with regrets that you played it too safe in the big decisions?

There's a strong link between how passionate you feel about something and the risks you're willing to take. After I had been going out with Kate for a little while, the love I felt for her emboldened me to take the huge risk of asking her to marry me.. and I've been delighted ever since that she said yes. I can imagine the regret I would have lived with if I'd never been brave enough to pop the question. Strangely, I was more nervous buying the engagement ring a few weeks before than actually asking the big question itself! Go figure!

I'm a big fan of TED talks, as I love ideas and I love learning new things. As with anything, some are better than others, but I watched one this week (by Richard St John) about passion which was great. He'd interviewed dozens of teenagers, and something like 80% had said their number one goal was to make money.. which in his mind was tragic, as the people that tend to be most successful are the ones who follow their passion - who essentially risk being who they're made to be rather than playing it safe and settling for less. He encourages people to follow the "zing" and not the "ka-ching".. in other words follow your heart and not your paycheck.

Now I know that this is easier said than done, and maybe for many of us it's the ability to pursue our passion in our spare time that energises us to do what we need to do to provide for our families - we're all different (and in case any colleagues are reading, I do genuinely enjoy what I do for a living!). But the message is clear - in the long run it's worth taking those positive risks and embracing the passions that define you. For me, restarting this blog and intentionally spending more time writing, making and being creative has been a deliberate choice to risk putting some of me "out there".. but I have to say that it's been so energising and life-giving that I wish I'd done it sooner. I feel more "me" as a result, and am excited at where it might lead me.

When it comes down to it, I think we should all risk being a little more playful in some of the decisions we face. It's too risky to settle for being anything less than the person God made us (and to fully embrace who we really are we need to fully embrace the God that's made us - sometimes we need a heavenly mirror to see how we're really wired).

Instead, to embrace ourselves, our passions, who we really are, and step into the perfect plans God has for our lives - now that's a risk worth taking!

(This post was written as part of the Blog Buddies group. Here are some other thoughts on the subject by . If you want to join our blog buddies group contact  nicola@braveheartsolutions.co.uk)

Poem: Spilt Milk

A sad walk this morning, from the station to the office.

Grief surrounds me like the morning’s mist

Grief at the injustice in the world (brought on by a sad book).

The people I pass seem gloomy too today, heads down.

Outside a café a drying channel of spilt milk, dripping into the gutter.

Far too many spilt lives dripping onto the streets too these days.

More cries of “spare change” spilling from desperate lips and cold hands.

In the alleyways, on steps, on street corners.

It’s closer than we like to think. 

Only yards from my office.

Another spilt life sleeping in a split sleeping bag.

Leaving my banana won’t clean up the spill,

but I leave it anyway, although my misty sadness remains.

Poem: The first day of Spring

Running home through gentle rain.

Drifting through the creamy light,

the last few minutes before sunset.

Twilight reflecting off rinsed tarmac.

Vivid pink blossoms on lollipop trees.

My muted footfall a signal switch,

as I awake sleeping streetlights.

Metallic pinks and yellows and whites.

Running away from the deskbound day,

the congested train, my crowded brain.

Cars passing me with splashing sighs,

tiny tyre waves breaking on an asphalt beach.

Cresting the hill,

leaving the orange embers of daylight behind.

Returning home,

to grins and giggles, purrs and pasta.

Spring has sprung.

Musings on.. peace

Perhaps you can relate to this. Your baby's been grizzly all day, now it's way past their bedtime, they're overtired, you're under-slept, and after yet another 20 minutes of 'shushing' you've carefully placed them back in their cot, crept out of their room and now you're listening at the door, hardly daring to breathe until you're sure that this time they really have gone to sleep.. A moment's silence, then another, and then.. Peace. You can finally breathe out, collapse in a chair, have a cup of tea..

Do you have to go somewhere to find peace? Maybe peace and quiet? Perhaps climbing a mountain, or finding a remote wilderness.. even just shutting the bathroom door and soaking in a bath?

Or is peace something you're waiting for? When the kids have (finally) gone to sleep, when you can get home from a busy day, or when a difficult situation is over?

Is peace something you encounter on your own - on a cloistered retreat, shut off from the world? Or is it something that occurs on a bigger scale - like countries making declarations of peace after war?

Perhaps peace is something you have to make - making peace with a situation, a person, God?

I've been musing on the subject of peace this week, and when I think of the questions above it seems to me peace is needed in many ways in our lives, communities and world.  In some ways, I think that peace is like carbon. If you can remember chemistry at school (one of my weaker subjects I have to be honest, although having a chemistry teacher called Mr Work probably didn't help!), carbon famously has three forms - allotropes - ranging from diamond: crystal clear and the toughest material on earth; to graphite - black, opaque and soft enough to enable us to use it in our pencils. Peace also takes different forms.

I'm sure that we're all longing for peace in many areas of our lives and in the world we live in. Not a day seems to go by when the news headlines aren't dominated by conflict - on a domestic, political or international scale. We desperately need peace in our relationships, within our families, in our workplaces, in our hearts.

But how do we find it? Is peace a destination, a place we go to, or is it something we have to make? Is it an exterior thing or an interior thing? Personal or corporate?

Maybe it's all of these things at different times - maybe these are all allotropes, and maybe we need all of them.

I know that we have have many demands on our lives, and that life can feel relentless at times - the treadmill of the everyday, the rat race, can grind us down and leave us agitated, depressed, even ill. Perhaps we feel like peace is something we can only find occasionally - perfect peace like a diamond that's precious because it's so rare.

But I wonder whether if we're only looking for diamonds, for perfect peace, we can miss the other more everyday forms of carbon-peace that are all around us. Like carbon, I think peace is there to be found in our daily lives - in fact especially there.

Often on my lunch break I will seek some reflective time in the cathedral near my office. It's usually quiet, muffling the sounds of the busy city outside, and I find it helpful to be able to gather my thoughts and escape the tyranny of my inbox for a few moments. Often I pray, and herein I think lies the secret to discovering this 'everyday' peace - not necessarily in a cathedral - but in the deep knowledge that you are unconditionally loved and accepted by God. Diamond peace, perfect peace may be hard to find, but God wants us to receive his everyday peace in the midst of our turbulent lives.

Amorphous carbon is a third allotrope of carbon, aside from graphite and diamond, and as the name suggests, it is the least 'formed' of the three. In fact, this form of carbon creates more compounds than any other element, and carbon compounds in general form the basis of all known life on our planet. In a similar way, maybe we can allow peace to become a part of all the different elements of our lives.

This ability of carbon to form amazing new materials leads me to a different slant on 'blessed are the peacemakers' - what are we making with the peace available to us? Some carbon compounds are known for their lightness - carbon fibre for example - and in a sense I wonder whether prayerfully allowing 'peace compounds' to form in our lives can bring a lightness to situations and circumstances which normally weigh us down.

I've probably raised more questions than answers in this post, but also think that it's good for our health to be considering how we can engage with God's peace in the midst of our daily grind.

So I'll end with a simple blessing: 

Peace be with you.





(This post was written as part of the Blog Buddies group. Here are some other thoughts on the subject by Wendy. If you want to join our blog buddies group contact  nicola@braveheartsolutions.co.uk)

When the going gets tough..

What's the hardest thing you've ever done? And what's your relationship with it? 

The phrase we're musing on this week is "The toughest thing you ever did could well be the best thing you ever did". This has got me thinking on my own achievements: which ones hold the most value to me, and why do I feel that way?

Compared to many people's incredibly tough lives around the world I am aware that life hasn't been too unkind to me on the whole, but we all face challenges whatever cards we are dealt. 

Reflecting back on my life, I can see that things I may have considered tough at the time when much younger I now take for granted - for instance speaking in front of others, singing and playing guitar at the same time, long runs - all of these have felt tough challenges at different times and for different reasons.

In my mind, there is clearly a link between facing (and overcoming) tough circumstances or situations and growing as a person. In some ways it can be a means of developing our inner strength in a similar way that resistance training can build our physical strength.

I'm resisting the urge here to regale to you all the amazing achievements that I have made, as this isn't meant to be that kind of post - and I'm in a more philosophical mood as I write anyway!

I do think we can often take ourselves and our abilities for granted. If you're anything like me then you can overplay the circumstances and situations that trouble you, and underplay your own powers of endurance, imagination and creativity. 

This brings to mind a quote from Dr Mike Stroud who as a doctor has been researching the ability of the human body to endure. He has famously accompanied Sir Ranulph Fiennes on some of his more extreme polar adventures - and more close to home was also attached to the same Dietetics and Nutrition department as my wife when we lived in Southampton! 

In his excellent book 'Survival of the fittest' he talks about the delay between starting exercise and our brains sending out the signals to activate the required energy systems in our bodies. Counter-intuitively, it can feel harder to do a short run than a long run, as we start by accumulating an oxygen debt, and by the time the brain gets round to sorting this out, we've accumulated lactic acid which needs clearing: 

"This takes some time, so the first couple of miles of any run can be rough. It leads to an odd phenomenon. Most people feel less fatigued after running five or six miles than they do when they have run one or two. Some inexperienced runners never realise this, and even quite reasonable athletes may believe that distance running is not for them. they have never run far enough to reach equilibrium and comfort and so have never found the capability that evolution bestowed on nearly all of us".

So thinking about tough things reaping rewards, sometimes we just need to go further to realise that we can actually do it. Enduring will be worth it - perhaps we will gain a new perspective, perhaps facing a tragedy will help us come alongside others in the future, other opportunities will arise as a result, and like resistance training it's all strengthening and shaping our character (perhaps knocking off rough edges!). We may even find that we feel less fatigued after enduring for longer!

I deliberately haven't gone into detail in this post about the difference that a healthy relationship with God can have on our perspective of tough times and on the manner in which we approach and endure them - that could be an entire blog post in itself! Suffice to say that I passionately believe in a loving God who plans the best for us no matter what happens, and helps us to make the best of what we consider to be broken situations, circumstances and lives. God can, and does, help us be the very best representation of who we can be and I do not believe we can reach our full potential without God's help - but that's a topic for another time.

Some years back I had reached the point in my career to undertake my professional review with a venerable engineering institution. I carefully prepared all my documents, submitted them in time, prepared presentations and with some trepidation travelled to London to be interviewed by two reviewers. I felt prepared, I felt I deserved to pass - but it didn't go well. In fact I felt utterly ripped to shreds and in due course I received a letter going into great detail about how I hadn't made the grade. 

Needless to say I was crushed, my colleagues cried foul and family and friends provided much needed support. I slowly picked myself up, took a long hard look in the mirror, tried to take the review comments on the chin, rewrote all my documentation and re-sat the next year.

Except this time, although the day itself went better, I still received a regretful letter identifying how short of the mark I still was! At this second setback I did seriously consider leaving the industry, but while I was picking the pieces of my professional confidence up off the floor a wise old colleague suggested an alternative path with a different institution -  and in hindsight one much more suited to my experience and skills. 

Happily the story ends well, and the more I look back on it the more grateful I am to have gone through the trial I did, since focusing on water and the environment rather than pure civil engineering has actually been much more fulfilling and has opened much more interesting doors for me since! One of my toughest things has proved to be one of the best.. and I'm sure many of you could relate similar stories.

I'll finish with a quote from Sir Ken Robinson's book 'The Element' (a book about finding your passions.. the place where you're in your element, so to speak) in the context of how we can underestimate the potential we have for growth and change: 

"For the most part, people seem to think that life is linear, that our capacities decline as we grow older, and that opportunities we have missed are gone for ever. Many people have not found their element because they don't understand their constant potential for renewal."

So when the going gets tough, as it often does, let's remember that it's often the first few miles that seem hardest, but that we can go much further than we initially think we can..





(This post was written as part of the Blog Buddies group. Here are related posts by Nicola and Wendy. If you want to join our blog buddies group contact  nicola@braveheartsolutions.co.uk)

Musings on.. Rest

Life can feel full-on sometimes can't it? I know my life can! We can feel out of control with the demands of our work (or the pressures of looking for work), the demands of our family, the demands of others - our world is very demanding! We can also demand a lot of ourselves (anyone else set themselves ridiculously high expectations?)

I've just returned from a great family holiday, and as we've been travelling I've been musing on holidays, rest and busyness. If you're like me, it can take time to switch off from whatever mode you've been in before you take a break. Maybe it's work-mode, with the problems and issues of our business clamouring for our attention in the back of our heads. Maybe it's mum-mode or dad-mode, where we've been hard at work dressing, feeding, delivering, collecting, raising, cleaning, controlling our kids. Whatever mode we've been in, it's no easy thing to just flick a switch - much as we'd love to be able to switch off immediately from whatever has been holding our attention.

Something I've noticed in myself at times and observed in others is a tendency to just try and make it to the next break, to the next weekend - always anticipating the next time we can flick the switch to "off" and give ourselves a rest. Of course one of the problems this poses is that we can place too much pressure on our "off" time which can subsequently be a disappointment. We can also miss what's going on around us in the day to day (something I mentioned in my last post).

It seems to me that our culture always expects us to be living at 90mph, always sprinting to the next milepost, to the next goal. Of course it's no bad thing to achieve things, but we do seem as a culture to have an obsession with measuring things, of recording progress, of comparison.. perhaps all stemming from an underlying unease or dissatisfaction with who we are or where we are at the moment.

If you've ever been on a car journey with kids of almost any age you will be familiar with the (endless) back-seat loop of "are we there yet?". But even as grown ups we can be guilty of being destination-focussed, goal-focussed and missing out on the enjoyments of the journey to get there. Since we've had a sat nav I've found myself on certain journeys being obsessed with how many miles are left, and what our anticipated arrival time is. I find myself racing the sat nav, seeing how much I can reduce the arrival time, and taking great satisfaction in proving it's predictions wrong! (This is not something I endorse by the way, although it is a guilty pleasure of mine). If we're fixated on the next destination - the weekend perhaps, or our next holiday - then what's going on around us can become a nuisance, something we put up with, something we endure instead of enjoy.

If you've ever watched the swimming on TV you may have noticed that the competitors don't tend to take many breaths - they'll race the 50m or 100m with barely a gulp of air.. similarly with track sprints, breathing slows you down, it's all power, power, power. Life can feel like that at times when we're sprinting from destination to destination.

But if we're always sprinting then the lactic acid of life can also easily accumulate and force us to stop. I've seen too many colleagues, friends and family burn out over the years. So how do we avoid the lactic acid of life and live at a sustainable pace? How do we shift from being destination-focussed to enjoying the journey we're on?

Well, I think slowing down has a lot to do with it, and getting into a good rhythm. Some years ago I decided that I wanted to get into triathlon - but one problem was that I couldn't do front crawl very well. At all really. It was all about the breathing - I just couldn't seem to get this right. So I decided to take some swimming lessons (somewhat embarrasing being in my mid-twenties at the time, but sometimes you've just got to swallow your pride instead of the pool and get back to basics). Painstakingly I built my front crawl stroke up from scratch, doing drills to practice each element and then carefully, slowly, assembling the whole.

Even after I'd mastered breathing (or at least stopped swallowing most of the pool), it took some time to build up my swimming fitness - I had to slow my pace right down to be able to complete the mileage I needed for completing a triathlon (1500m for an Olympic distance race). For quite some months I thought I'd never be able to achieve it, but after finding a sustainable rhythm and building up my strength I did - and I'm proud to have completed, even enjoyed, numerous triathlons since.

My point is that we need to find time to breathe - to flick the off switch - more regularly. Short intense sprints are ok in the short term, but in the long run we need a more sustainable rhythm. There aren't any set answers to this I don't think - what the off switch means to everyone will be different, but it's important to find ways to recharge, to take deep breaths, in our daily lives in some way. This might be taking a walk, watching a film with your loved ones, turning off the tv and playing a game, choosing to leave work on time. Whatever this is, choosing to slow down will get you further in the long run.

Recently I've been re-watching a favourite documentary series of mine, "The Long Way Round", where two friends motorbike overland (as much as possible) from London to New York. In the first few episodes they are very destination focussed, meticulously planning their trip, training and then obsessing about the mileage they need to cover each day. But after a while they begin to immerse themselves in what's going on around them - forgetting about the destination and taking great pleasure in the places they're passing through, the people they're meeting and the experiences they're sharing.

We ate out at a favourite restaurant in Naples, Florida last weekend - Pincer's Crab Shack. They've got a great sign there which states "free beer tomorrow" - and of course tomorrow never comes. It's a privilege to be on the journey of life - many people's tomorrows re taken away from them prematurely. As I've been musing on rest, I want to encourage us to take our eyes off our sat-navs, take our foot off the accelerator, and make the most of the moments we find ourselves in. Holidays can be great, weekends can be great, so can work and the spaces in between - but life is for embracing not enduring.

The way you do anything is the way you do everything

It's always a busy time in the lead up to a holiday. Busy at work trying to get things finished, and trying to remember all the little details of the projects I'm working on so that I can brief my colleagues sufficiently. Busy at home trying to remember all the little things that we need to take with us on holiday.. And there always seems to be at least one detail that gets missed! 

Details are pretty important really, and as I've been reflecting on this week's blog buddies title whilst driving between US cities (in a haze of travel weariness), it strikes me that 'the way we do anything' speaks about the importance of the little things, those details that accumulate to make up the big picture.

Yesterday at Downtown Disney there was a Lego store with various life size characters including the Incredible Hulk, all made up of thousands of pieces of Lego, which got me thinking about the myriad of small things that make us up (admittedly we're not made up of multicoloured small plastic bricks, I'm not trying to introduce a new foundation to science!).

It's really all the little 'anythings' that we do, the everyday things, that sum up to become the 'everything' of our lives - but sometimes we can get so focused on the big picture that we can spend our lives living only in anticipation for some future event, like we're stuck in Narnia's 'always winter and never Christmas', and missing out on the details that are good to appreciate and enjoy in our daily lives.

As Ian Stackhouse has put it in his excellent book 'The Day is Yours' (not, incidentally, yet another self help book about time management, but instead a great exegesis on the theology of the 'day'), we can only ever live in 'today' and therefore we should do our best to live each of our days well, as this is what in the end will result in us living our lives well - a series of days lived well, the summation of our 'anythings' into our 'everything'.

So lets be faithful in the small things and appreciate the daily Lego that's accumulating to make each of us the masterpiece that we are becoming. Lets embrace those 'days of small things' from the book of Zechariah, or as Robert Brault put it:

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realise they were the big things.”

Poem: Full Moon

Saturday night. Full February moon.

A starlit walk to clear my head

from a day indoors with a poorly son.

Gales and storms have rinsed the sky,

leaving behind branches on the ground,

a deep black blank canvas above.

Full moon, casting bright milky glow.

Centre stage, stars hidden by light as if by shadow.

Only brave Orion holding back the reflected light.

I walk through urban silence.

Little sound but distant cars and muffled tvs.

Too late for songbirds, too early for owls.

Drawn through the streets to the edges.

Walking until the lighting columns end.

A strategic gap. Darkness of fields between towns.

This unlit road is ancient, they say.

A road back in time.

Across neolithic fields.

Another night I'll cross the calling fields.

Another night, another moon.

Tonight my home calls stronger.

Poem: Lost in a book

Lost in a book.
Insulated from the gentle hubbub around me.
Immune to the chatterers, the munchers,
the cheap headphones leaking driving drumbeats.
Lost in a story, swayed by the rhythmic rocking of my carriage.

Station names from the tannoy float over me like bubbles,
until one pops and like Pavlov's dog I rise.
Book closed, bag grabbed, join the queue.
The trudge of fellow commuters stepping out into fresh air
Snapping out of our journey's reflective reverie.
Finding ourselves at our destination.

Finished or perfect?

"It's better for something to be finished than perfect" - discuss!

I don't know about you, but to me this sounds like the title of an A-Level English exam question, something which (ironically) is best to be both finished AND perfect when the invigilator signals for pens to be put down and essays handed in!

And as I've been thinking about this statement, I've questioned whether being finished and being perfect are mutually exclusive. Like the exam example above, there are certain things that we want to be both finished and perfect! But does everything have to be perfect? And what is perfect anyway?

As someone with perfectionist tendencies, I've noticed an unfortunate side effect in myself and in others over the years. Sometimes, maybe even quite often, wanting to make something perfect can mean that same thing never gets finished.. it remains incomplete. This inevitably leads to frustration!

When we moved to the West Midlands a few years ago, we bought a house "in need of some work". In fact it needed an awful lot of work. It had no carpets, no central heating, half a kitchen, single glazing, terrible colours, dodgy electrics, gardens waist high with overgrowth.. and it had been unoccupied for six months. It was so bad that even the estate agent tried to put us off (about the only time ever that an estate agent was anything less than effusive about a property). It was, however, pretty good value for money, and we do like a challenge!

But (and it's a big but), in order to make it habitable, in order to make it a home, it needed lots of work and quick. For a perfectionist like me (especially in the area of DIY and making things), I needed to take a deep breath and recognise that it was more important to redecorate the house and get it finished (so we could move in) than do everything absolutely perfectly. And so we did.. we got it finished (enough) rather than perfect.

Over the last few years I've been thinking a lot about creativity. After I'd been working at the same company for a decade it dawned on me that I'd put many of my creative passions, ambitions and desires on hold - subconsciously waiting for the perfect time to undertake them.

Of course, we know that there's never a perfect time to do anything - and waiting for this elusive serendipitous moment can lead to a kind of paralysis, a "rabbit in the headlights" effect, just like when we try to make things overly perfect and end up not making anything at all.

With many things in our culture we can become obsessed with "destination" and miss out on the day to day journey. Too often our head can be immersed in what might or might not happen in the future and we can miss out on the importance and engagement with our day to day life.

Perhaps especially in the area of creativity, the sense of honing our craft means that we need to go through creative cycles - and finishing is an important (if not the most important) part of the creative cycle.

Discussing songwriting with a friend many years ago, he confessed that he'd started lots of songs but had never been able to finish one, as effectively it had never been perfect enough for him, which is a real shame. I feel fortunate that as a teenager, a wise musician friend taught me about the discipline of completing songs. I remember sitting in his lounge talking around his piano, as he told me how important it was to come up with a complete song "even if there's only one part of the song you really like". This nugget of advice has been very freeing over the years, although not always easy to apply!

Another unfortunate side effect of being a perfectionist can be impatience - especially with ourselves. We can set ourselves ridiculously high standards and then expect to be perfect at something from the start.

A few months ago I bought myself an accordion from eBay (my learner theme manifesting again.. I do love to learn new instruments!). After the shock had subsided of submitting a far higher bid than I intended (£1100 instead of £11.00), but subsequently having won the auction for a mere £12.50 (thank goodness I was "sniping" and no-one had time to bid me up to my maximum!) I collected my new instrument from the vendor and brought it home.

It needed some repair, a few new keys and key tops for example, which I was happily and successfully able to do myself in my workshop. Having repaired it, I set about playing it. Now this is a "daddy" accordion.. a massive 1930s vintage Hohner 120 bass.. which means it's fully chromatic and can be played in any key. I can play a bit of piano, and I understand chords, so in my (perfectionist) mind I expected myself to be able to pick my accordion up and dazzle straight off! As usual, the reality didn't quite match my aspiration and it's been a bit harder to learn than I hoped - for one thing you can't see your left hand at all, and there are 120 identical buttons to navigate by feel alone!

My point in saying this is that it's easy to get impatient with ourselves when things don't work out perfectly straight away. For creative types it's ok to allow ourselves to create imperfect things - often its more important for us to finish something than for it to be perfect. Knowing you can do things better next time round doesn't mean you're a failure. It's important to aim high, it's really important to do the best we can, but that doesn't mean we should beat ourselves up in the meantime (although we so often do). Some things genuinely take time.. 10,000 hours according to Malcolm Gladwell (and if you've never read Malcolm Gladwell please go to the library now and borrow every single book of his they have, especially Outliers and Tipping Point).

My dad is a hero of mine. He is a master craftsman, and we think in very similar ways, especially in our approach to making things. I wish I could make things as well as my dad but I can't - not yet at least! You see he's got many many years more experience than I, and it would be foolish of me to expect to be as brilliant as he is without going through all the hard work, mistakes and sheer elbow grease he's put in to his craft. Of course I can learn from him, but I have to allow myself to be "imperfect" in the meantime. So I have to force myself to finish my many making projects in the workshop EVEN THOUGH THEY'RE NOT PERFECT, because I need to learn the art of finishing them off, varnishing etc. And every time I am improving, learning from mistakes and getting better.

There's an old adage that many of us will be familiar with, that you can't turn a stationary ship - you need it to be moving. And of course some ships have larger turning circles than others.. so too in our lives some things take longer than others. And maybe creativity is something that has a large turning circle.

One of the important things I'm continuing to learn is that it's healthier for me to enjoy the creative journey I'm on than to be overly focussed on the destination of being "perfect" at it. Accepting that I can make things better, but that the imperfect things I have made are the foundations on which the perfect things will be built.

In Stephen Covey's influential "7 Habits of Highly Effective People", the last habit is to "sharpen the saw".. to go through to process again, but better. This is one of the reasons why the art of finishing is so important, as it gives us the opportunity to start afresh and to apply the learning we gained on the last creation to the next one.

In New Caledonia there is a particularly bright species of crow. We know that all corvids (crows, rooks, ravens, magpies etc) are extremely clever, but this particular sub-species displays a remarkable characteristic previously only observed in humans. You see, they make simple tools - but more astoundingly, each generation has managed to communicate this knowledge to the next who have not only applied it, they have refined it! This is called the ratchet effect, and it's another fascinating perspective on the art of honing our creative skills - the more we go through the cycle, the more we can refine our tools, and the better we become. This is one of the reasons I'm blogging to the same title as my blog buddies each week - to sharpen the saw and improve my writing.

So is it better for something to be finished than perfect? Well yes and no, but the art of finishing is an important skill for us all to develop on our path to perfecting our craft.

(This post was written as part of the Blog Buddies group, to see what the other group members had to say on the same title have a read of  Nicola's post. If you want to join our blog buddies group contact  nicola@braveheartsolutions.co.uk)

Poem: Brain Wind

Wind whistling outside,

blowing hard over the hills all day.

Blowing clouds and cobwebs away.

I'm sitting down to write, mid-evening,

with decaf tea beside me.

My reflection in the window for company.

Outside the world is dark,

though sodium lights twinkle rhythmically in the rain.

A fluorescent daisy chain

beside the distant motorway.

Wind gusting in bursts,

blowing raindrops on the window pane

and blowing creative sparks in my brain.

Fanning embers back to flames.

Blow hard brain wind.

You've been still too long.

Fair is not everyone getting the same, but everyone getting what theyneed.

Justice is a big and controversial topic that dominates our news channels and makes headlines. Whether it's justice against an individual for a crime they've committed, or the injustice of human suffering, justice - what's fair - has been big news since Cain and Abel.

On November 21st 1974, not far from where I now work, two bombs exploded in two pubs 50 yards apart in Birmingham city centre. The explosions were so powerful they wrecked a passing bus and blew a number of victims through a brick wall. A third bomb was placed outside a nearby bank but failed to detonate.

Twenty one people were killed and one hundred and eighty two people were injured. The bombs were believed to have been planted by the IRA, and six Irishmen were arrested that day and subsequently jailed for this act, amidst calls for the reintroduction of hanging. 

Justice had been served - or had it? Sixteen years later their convictions were quashed due to the unreliability of the evidence and the fact that their "confessions" had been extorted through violence. Just last year, the brother and sister of one of those murdered petitioned for the case to be reopened and the perpetrators brought to justice. 

My only connection to this story is the squat stone memorial I pass every day on my way to work, the side inscribed with the names of all those who tragically lost their lives that day. There are flowers laid by this monument all year round. Even after all this time, the unfairness of this act is fresh in many people's minds, and the sense of injustice remains.

As I was discussing the bombings with one of my colleagues in the office this week, I learnt that in the anti-Irish reprisals following the event his young Irish parents had been forced to close their newly opened butchers shop having had bricks through the windows and deliberate lack of custom. They'd come to England to escape the troubles back in Ireland, and the shop was going to be their big break, but circumstances and anti-Irish feeling ruined them. Hardly seems fair either does it? 

As I continue to watch my kids develop (with great joy on the whole) it seems to me that a sense of justice seems to be hard-wired into us from a very young age - or at the very least a strong awareness of when things are unfair. Arguing over toys, over who gets into the bath first, over who gets to sit on my lap.. seemingly trivial situations often rapidly degenerate into an argument about what's fair and what's not. (Usually that 'it's not fair'!).

But what is fair? Is it always about equal portions? Dividing things up exactly? Everyone getting the same? When I was growing up and we were treated to tinned peach slices for pudding (or goldfish as we often pretended they were), each of us kids had an equal number of slices publicly counted into our bowl, to at least minimise the chances of an argument (if not eliminate completely).

But we all know that life tends not to be as clear cut as the number of peach slices you have in your bowl. My wife's family had a great saying when they were growing up, that 'life's equally unfair', which I think does a good job capturing the general injustice we face in the world around us, especially when growing up with numerous siblings!

I've been reading the Psalms again recently and a phrase leapt out at me when re-reading  a familiar one the other day: 

"Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it." (Psalm 139:14 NLT)

I love the thought that we've been made to be wonderfully complex. As someone with a tendency to overthink things, I found this really liberating. And it's this wonderful complexity that makes fairness less about things needing to bethe same for everyone and more about recognising the fact that we each need something different.

We're uneven, each of us with multi-dimensional needs - and it's the variation and the texture between us that makes our relationships so rich. We don't all need the same things - consider someone with a visual impairment who reads braille through the textures their fingers encounter. To this person, fairness wouldn't be to give them a print version of the daily paper to read just the same as everyone else - in fact our sense of justice tells us this would be discriminatory! 

Now then, dear reader, you may be thinking to yourself that it's all very well to recognise that our needs are different, but how on earth do we do something about it? It can be hard enough to know what we really want or need ourselves, let alone others around us! 

One book I've found very helpful on this topic over the years is Gary Chapman's 'The Five Love Languages'. This is a very readable exploration of the different 'languages' we use to communicate, not in terms of French, German and Spanish, but about how we emotionally communicate love to those around us. 

He talks about five primary love languages: Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch. Each of us needs all of these in different forms, but we'll often have one which is the main way in which we give and receive love.

Recognising one another's love languages can help us to relate to each other better. For me, one of my main love languages is Acts of Service, which is one of the reasons I make so much tea for my colleagues in the office! I appreciate it when people do things for me, it makes me feel loved - and isn't the need to be loved that the deepest need we all have?

On this earth we'll never fully be able to make sure everyone's needs are completely met. Life will always be 'equally unfair'. Terrible acts of injustice will continue to occur. But to do our lives justice let's embrace each other's wonderful complexity and look for individual and personal ways to meet the needs of those around us... Fair is not everyone getting the same, but everyone getting what they need.

(This post was written as part of the Blog Buddies group, to see what the other group members had to say on the same title have a read of Phil's, Nicola's and Wendy's posts. If you want to join our blog buddies group contact  nicola@braveheartsolutions.co.uk)

A mid-afternoon office haiku

(This haiku inspired by office tea-politics..)

Another cuppa
Please Ray will you make me one?
It's your round I think?


(..and yes.. Ray did make some tea)

Poem: A daily pilgrimage

Here's a poem I crafted this week about my journey to work, enjoy!

Monday morning commuter train, 

Black Country to Birmingham. 

Twenty five minutes of heavy sighs and bleary eyes 

before we pour out of green carriages like treacle.

Broken footfalls echo beneath artificial lights 

as we ascend from sunken platforms, 

emerging into the pre-dawn city.

From shrouded buildings drills like Tibetan horns 

blare a booming call to prayer, 

summoning workers to their daily desk worship.

Over rippled granite slabs, 

chewing gum like candle wax 

dropped from a thousand silent pilgrims 

passing beneath an avenue of bare plane trees, 

their branches lifted in praise.

Up steps and through glass doors, 

into open plan floors, 

the pilgrimage-commute complete. 

Ready enough for another working week.

Musings on... why I sing

I love to sing!

Why do I sing? This is something I've been reflecting on recently. What is it about singing that brings me so much pleasure? It's definitely something that I feel wells up from deep inside of me, something hard-wired right at my core. The older I get (and when you find yourself saying things like that, you know you're reaching a certain point), the more I think that singing is something, maybe, that helps me express my "me"-ness - a core expression of who I am.

Music has always profoundly affected me. My mum says I used to happily sing hymns in my pushchair as a toddler. And there are times, certain pieces of music, I can't quite put my finger on quite which ones and when, but times still when the deep emotion expressed in music stops me dead in my tracks, and the tears well up from that place in me that's lost in music. 

"Music has always profoundly affected me"

I feel lots of things deeply. My wife will confirm that I cry at most films I watch - but it's music that is often what stirs those deep emotional waters. Most recently it was the film of Les Mis - the powerful music, the rich redemptive story, that primal emotion - that churned me up. How I'd love to sing a part of that story!

I was a choirboy at school, not the best treble in the choir (I never got the main solo in Once in Royal David's City), but passable, and I certainly enjoyed singing. I distinctly remember the first time I sang with the senior choir, in four part harmony, with the tenors and basses joining us - I was filled with wonderment, not quite believing that we were making this amazing sound. I'm almost certain we were singing Christmas carols, and even now I love those rich harmonies in the traditional arrangements I grew up with.

I fell out of the choir when my voice broke, but it wasn't long before I was back in the choir after a road-to-Damascus moment one summer day led me to abruptly change my GCSE choices to include music.. and the deal was that those (few) of us studying music had to sing. 

Singing in South Africa... in an empty pool!

This time I was an enthusiastic bass (!), relishing this time the bass parts of those beloved carols, even belting them out on my bike as I cycled home from school on dark winter evenings after choir practice. 

With my studies I also joined a barbershop quartet with Mr Knights and fellow music students - painfully learning the value and necessity of attentively listening to my fellow singers.. even if we were only singing "Toot, toot, tootsie" and other barbershop classics!

It's funny how there are certain accidental nodes, compass points around which our lives turn - waypoints that we observe upon looking back over time. One sticks in my mind, when as a self-conscious fourteen year old I was embarrassed to sing too loudly in our seats at church. 

I can't remember whether it was in the car on the way home, and I'm certain that it was just a well meaning but essentially trivial comment, when my mum said to me something along the lines that there was a lovely voice inside me waiting to get out. I think this was probably the Speech Therapist in her saying something reassuring to a teenager suffering the trauma of his voice breaking (not that mine broke all that dramatically anyway, just suddenly went down a few octaves!) and the general awkwardness the teenage years bring. 

"It's funny how there are certain accidental nodes, compass points around which our lives turn..."

Regardless of the intention, the words lodged in my heart and released in me a new found confidence to sing, which led to me singing more.. which has, in time, released that inner voice, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I'm glad and grateful for that offhand comment - and it shows what simple words of encouragement can lead to.

My big sister is an exceptionally talented artist, and with a strong sense of compassion (she also feels things very deeply). When I was a gaunt university student and she could see how much singing meant to me, out of her meagre teacher's salary she generously paid for me to have singing lessons. 

My singing teacher, Angela, wasn't your run of the mill, sing scales at a piano type teacher. She was all about the mechanics of the voice ("I want to give you your instrument"), and her lessons were unconventional - singing while bouncing on physiotherapy balls, singing crawling like a cat, singing while stretching giant rubber bands, singing with a toothbrush in your mouth - but the more I look back the more I realise this period was one of the most significant events in my life because she really did teach me how to use my voice as an instrument. Studying Engineering (in a pretty loose sense for my first couple of years at Uni) I really "got" her approach to the mechanics of the voice.

Singing with my daughter...

I'll never forget the first time I went to see her. I sang her a song I knew and she just walked around me looking and listening. After I finished she sat down, looked me in the eye and asked me how many teeth I'd had out (lots.. apparently it was obvious because my tongue was slumped in the bottom of my mouth!). After that she challenged me on my posture, how I walked, how I breathed.. all kinds of seemingly minor things. 

To be honest, I think at some point in their life everyone needs someone neutral with a critical eye to point out bad habits, slouches, feet dragging, missing teeth! 

And for Angela's direction I am also profoundly grateful. As a by product I've also worked hard since then not to have any more teeth out (it significantly affects vocal tone)... enduring hours of uncomfortable dentistry over the years as a result!

It's been well over a decade since then, and in that time I feel I have grown into my voice as it's matured. My range has extended, my tone has improved, my power increased. In a real way, my singing lessons connected up my voice with my body, but also helped my voice express my "me"-ness. When I sing, all of me comes out. The tone and timbre of my voice is an expression of all I've ever been through, an extension of my heart. That's what I hope anyway. I sing with joy, pain, anger, frustration, peace.. the whole spectrum of human emotion is there in some proportion.

"When I sing, all of me comes out"

When I was four I started to learn the piano. When I was fourteen I picked up the guitar. I play a number of instruments (it's my learner theme), but these days when people ask me what my main instrument is there's no hesitation. It's my voice. I'm a singer. It's me. I can't seem to help it, but it's deeply, profoundly, fundamentally an expression of who I am.

I hope I can sing long into old age. It's been over a decade since my first album, but I hope I can sing more songs from my own heart. I hope I can sing more with my children, and their children, maybe even their children's children. More than that, I hope, somehow, that my singing encourages others to reach inside themselves and draw out those things that are uniquely them.. those precious talents and gifts bestowed on us by a loving God. Those are things we're made for.

So when I sing, I sing out the song inside me, the song of all I have been, all I am, and all I'm made to be. 

And that, for me, is why I sing.

*************

Thanks for taking the time to read my Musings on Why I Sing! If you've enjoyed it why not share it with your friends on social media? Why not subscribe to The Potting Shed Podcast on iTunes for the audio version of many of my posts and much more (direct RSS feed is here).

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