The Lost Art of Affirmation

You remember how as a kid you would do something. Maybe a blob of paint on a page that you passed off as art on par with anything Monet ever produced. Or you wrote your name on a page, even though it looked more like those puzzles where you follow the fishing lines to find the treasure rather than the old boot. But it didn’t matter. Because in your eyes it was the greatest thing since…well at that age, ever. You were so proud of yourself and all you wanted to do was show someone. Anyone. Just to show them that you could do something. That you had learned a skill you didn’t have yesterday. That’s an important step in our development I think. To show another human something we created and have them tell us how good it is. But somehow we lose that. Instead when we grow up a little we like...

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Quitters Anonymous

I'm a quitter. There I said it. I don't like seeing things through. When something gets tough I take the easy route and bail. It's easier. It means no emotional involvement and it means not having to face yourself. Which may be a good thing short term but not so much in the long term. Take writng for example. Already I have started to write something three times and deleted it all because I thought it was rubbish. Which it may have been. But the truth is I just wanted to stop. Close my computer and go and do something else. Not have to deal with the part of me that tells me I need to write. Does that happen to you? If you are a human reading this then I am pretty sure the answer is yes. Maybe not writing but maybe following a dream, or an opportunity. How often do we give up on the first...

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Poverty

More and more recently I have been considering poverty. A thought occured to me that there must be enough resources in the world for everyone; it just isn't being distributed well enough. I mean if one footballer can earn himself £250'000 a week and is playing terrible, there is something gravely wrong. But it can be easy to blame the world's poverty on the insanely rich. I work in a shop and we throw food out all the time. Whenever bread has reached one day before its sell by date we throw it out. And that's its sell by date, not it's use by date. Think about the last time you had a meal with a lot of people. Did you finish everything on your plate? Then think about the last time you had a big feed. Did you get to the end and then feel full or could you have stopped a lot earlier? There...

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