When I was a kid, I remember being bullied a fair bit. I was small for my age, bespectacled, shy. The teachers didn't help by putting a target on my back by making me Vice Head Prefect. I would get my stuff just taken away from me by bigger kids, dragged out into the field to be tickled until I collapsed (much less fun than it sounds), and pushed into the storm drains. Not all the kids were full-blown bullies of course. But I remember some of them standing by, and politely holding my spectacles (so they wouldn't be broken) while the bullies did their work on me. Most of this stopped when I got to secondary school, where a much larger proportion of my fellow students were now just as nerdy! And of course I grew up too. I don't really look back on those days with any kind of animosity, because I think it never occurred to me that it was unusual. But I do think my experience made me a bit more sympathetic about people around me who...
Someone told me recently about a "life exercise" in which one compiles all the stuff that makes up your life, and puts it in a pie chart. So let's say for me, something like this. The idea is to visually demonstrate to myself that, in the event I lose one of these things, then I can see that, hey life is not so bad, that wasn't such a big deal. Say for example, if I suffered a blown ACL, and couldn't run or play basketball any more, like this: At first blush - I'd say, hey, I still have my wife, children, parents, career, church life - so, chin up, things are not so bad. Pretty good life visualisation tool to bring some optimism back into play! ... But what if, a month later, something happens at work, and boom, career gets sidetracked, I lose my job, or get put in cold storage somewhere, like this: Oops, now only half my life is left! With only half of life's meaning left to me, what do I do? And what if something happens to...
I was at a work offsite recently, and one of the warm-up exercises was to share what are our key relationships, why we come to work, and what we would like to get better at. I've spent years in a weekly faith community setting with a small group of people, and my whole faith is built on the premise that *I am completely flawed and yet incredibly loved*. So I am quite used to sharing my faults with others, and how I'd like to get better, with no need to censor myself. One of the things I shared at the offsite was - I've always wondered if I really fit in the group. It often feels like I need to learn how to put on a cloak of some sort so that I look and behave more like a corporate leader, and take on more of a slick, corporate persona (or as Barney Stinson would say, "SUIT UP!". It was a great encouragement to hear from a few of my colleagues later on - yup, you *are* different from the rest of us. But that doesn't mean you don't *belong*. Your *differe...
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