Slowing down & taking care of yourself: Part 2 — Morning Devotions

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If you joined me yesterday morning, I was talking about this topic, slowing down and taking care of yourself. Do you take good care of yourself? I said that often, what we really do need to understand is to live a balanced life. A politician who missed out on getting a safe seat said for his electorate in the politics, said, No man ever said on his deathbed, I wish I’d spent more time in the office.

And I also remember John Lennon, he wrote something before he was tragically gunned down. He said, life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

Slowing down & taking care of yourself: Part 1 — Morning Devotions

We need to observe what’s going on around us, and I think a balanced life’s very important. I mean, negative thoughts. I guess we all have negative thoughts, but they can destroy people. Maybe we should remember that Mark Twain said: most of the things we worry about never happen. That’s why insurance companies are so rich.

And sometimes a break can make all the difference. If you lived in France, you know, they have a 4 day working week in France, people relax a lot more, I guess, than we do.

Taking care

Don’t take yourself too seriously. Don’t take the weight of the world on your shoulders alone. And you remember the, the illustration of the geese. You, you see the geese flying, and as each bird flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the, the following bird, and you might notice they fly in a V formation, and the whole flock actually adds 70% greater flying range as a group rather than flying alone.

Well, we can share a common direction, but if you’re part of a community, part of a group of people, of course things will get done. And these geese, if a goose actually falls out of formation, suddenly feels the drag of trying to fly alone and gets back in front. And when the head goose gets tired, it rotates back into formation and another goose comes and flies in that first position. It realises, I think somehow that others can take the lead and share the responsibility.

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And so often we beat ourselves up thinking, well, I’ve just got to do this – so much depends on me.

But of course like the geese we need people to keep us going to encourage us. The question I think I want to ask, have you got someone in your life who encourages you and urges you on?

Have you got someone in your life who encourages you on?

Interesting that during the 50s and throughout the 1960s, 1970s and the early 1980s, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged, if you remember in this supremacy, race supremacy, for space. And they wanted, for example, earlier on the NASA scientists realised that the ballpoint pen, for example, would not work in space because it relied on gravity. This was a problem that needed to be solved. Why, it doesn’t sound very important, but the astronauts needed to make notes of what they discovered in space. So they did a lot of research over this, a lot of money.

And what has come to be known as the space pen, and the space pen actually doesn’t require gravity, and it’s marketed, I think today even as a pen that writes at any angle.

And when faced with the same problem of this conventional ballpoint pen, the Soviets approached it from a very different perspective. What did they do? They issued the cosmonauts, the Soviet cosmonauts with pencils.

Well, we can be like that too. We can sort of take a negative viewpoint. We, we don’t want to continue looking at things. Why? Because we’re tired. We may need to get into some physical activity. If you’re feeling that life is out of balance, you may need to get out, do some walking or running or playing tennis, whatever it is that you like doing, because, as simple as it sounds, these physical activities will relieve that feeling that you get sometimes. sharing stress is a very important thing, it is important to talk to someone else about the worries you have.

And maybe there’s someone in your family, a teacher, or a friend that can actually help you see your problem in a different light, even if you feel that problem is serious. You can talk to people. What about knowing your limits? If a problem is beyond your control, and it can’t be changed, don’t fight that situation. Learn to accept what it is for now. Take care of yourself. Make time for fun. Participate in things. Must you always be right? Like, do other people upset you?

Give and take. You don’t always have to be right, and ask here, am I taking care, proper care of myself?

Let’s Pray

Heavenly Father, we do say we need to learn this lesson. Help us to sometimes just stop, pause and reflect, and thank you for who you are in the name of Jesus. Amen.

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