Learning to Lose

I hate losing. We lost our football match yesterday and I intensely disliked the experience. When I was a young child, when things did not go my way I would throw a massive tantrum. I remember playing my brother at tennis and having a mighty strop when he won - sometimes even when he won just a single point! John MacEnroe had nothing on me :-)

I remember on holiday amidst one of these tennis strop incidents my Mum said that it was more important playing than winning - I'm not sure if I have ever accepted that reasoning, in fact for a while I really felt that this advice has caused me to lose my competitive instincts, although I see it a little differently now. When I went to America to sell books I learned the positive side of losing. 90% of people would not buy books from me, but the other 10% who did helped me to make quite a bit of money. I learned that every 'no' brought me closer to a 'yes'. I would review each presentation for ways to improve the next time (although sometime I over analyse way too much which is counter productive - but more of that another time).

Set backs, I believe can contain many great lessons - they show up weaknesses to strengthen; things to do differently and provide motivation to do better next time. Defeat also helps with something I constantly need to work on - humility.

My desire to win came from a belief that I have to be the best at everything I do. I do not think this is bad in itself, but only when it is combined with the realisation and acceptance that I still have a long way to go to be better does it become a positive motivator. I realise more and more (although slowly) as I get older how much I need to improve in all aspects of my life - particularly how I deal with set backs and disappointments when things do not go my way. After all, who wants a 32 year old throwing a strop on a football pitch anyway!

Strangely satisfying................

In 101 things to do before you die, this should definitely be at least in your top ten!!

http://www.therightfoot.net/mystuff/whatever/swf/bubblewrap.swf

Check out this link and tell us one word or phrase that describes your experience.......

Mine is: "Strangely satisfying and remarkably relieves stress!"

Your starter for ten...

Gosh, Wood Street Girl here, and this is my first post and first foray into sharing my innermost thoughts with the masses. I notice that people who blog regularly rant, question, laugh at themselves, laugh at others, comment and observe in turn. Where should I start? One big question I have been mulling over for the past few months is whether feminism has become an opiate of western womanhood, which tends to wear off when women realise they cannot 'have it all' and in fact, must make a choice between the killer career and a family. I don't mean to imply that opting for one precludes the other, but instead that woman must accept that the lesser priority will suffer (sometimes significantly). More to come on this one, but if I ever meet Germaine Greer I have some issues to resolve.

A more recent question is, do people regret having children? even a bit? A blog I follow wrote with a degree of shock, that today his eldest started high school and something to the effect of, as a parent, 'doesn't time fly when you were having fun'. Is having kids so great? As a childless woman, from the outside looking in it, life with children seems to go in cycles; ecstacy and joy seem to turn to frustration and personal limitation not just within single days but across seasons in a parent's life. Is what children bring worth what you have to give up? And what gives adults confidence they will be good parents? In response to the rather pathetic view that people who choose not to have kids are selfish, I heard a woman say 'I'd rather be called selfish than a bad mother'. Is that just a clever response to a narrow minded opinion or do young (and not so young) women today really doubt their ability to parent?

I read a commentary on a book written about a woman who genuinely regrets having her kids. In fact the book was written by a single (or at least childless) woman, and was simply the product of her imagination, however she was flooded with letters from women who emphathized with the sentiments of the book. Wow. Do women really feel this way? If so, why? Thoughts please.

For myself, God willing, a family is definitely on the agenda for me (and Wood Street Man), as some knawing voice says that children are not just a way to make me feel loved and needed, but will in time lead to them having happy, fulfilling and productive lives. But is this feeling a biological trick to keep us reproducing? Who knows, and in a sense who cares, because since God first said 'be fruitful and multiply' I don't remember Him changing his mind.

Kicking off the new season

I played my first competitive football for a number of months today in a friendly for ICC against another first division side, Avendale. Throughout the summer I have struggled with a back problem, but today after 5-6 weeks of chiropractor help and a lot of stretching exercises for my hamstrings, I made it through 45 minutes without any problems whatsoever. In fact I would go as far as to say I am fitter than I have been for the last two years.

I get a lot of stick from the boys for being 32 when most of them are early to mid twenties. I hope to prove to them that I can still cut it and am adamant that I can even be fitter than most of them.

As a team we are going to be truly challenged this year after winning the league and cup double last season. A few of the teams are beginning to take training as seriously as we have for the past two years and have enlarged their squads too. We are now the team to beat and others will raise their game when they play us. Probably the biggest challenge we will face is that if we continue to be succesful we can easily get arrogant and then lose respect from other teams. I hope we can remain humble and respectful of other teams that we play. It may however be a bit early to think about that as we have not played all the other teams yet and do not know what they have been doing to strengthen and improve themselves over the summer. All we can do is keep working hard to improve and do our very best in every game, leaving the rest up to God.

I'm so thankful for the football team, it is such a blessing - not least keeping me physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually fit. Thank you Lord that you have brought me to this place with this group of people at this time in my life.

Humilty or Self-belittlement?

Did you ever have one of those moments that alters the direction of your life? I think I just had one yesterday. Having been recently challenged by Lynn http://www.helpiworkwithchildren.blogspot.com about being stuck in May :-) I wanted to share it with you.

Recently I have been reading 'Every Day with Jesus' a daily devotional written by Selwyn Hughes. The particular message that day was "The true way to be humble". Up until this point I unfortunately agreed too readily with the picture above. I fostered the belief that humilty was to put myself down so as not to promote myself or be too forthcoming for fear of becoming proud or overbearing. It has been a truly sad state to be in. I have had a reluctance to exercise my gifts and abilities and in many ways allowed myself to be a shadow of the person God has created me to be. I allowed myself to have an inferiority complex, always comparing myself to friends and colleagues that were realising various levels of success in whatever they were involved with.

The true way to be humble according to Phillip Brooks: "is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is."

When I read this I was really struck by two things: Firstly that God gives me permission to try my best at everything - it is a privilege and freedom that I can rejoice in knowing that even if I make mistakes he will still love me. Secondly that no matter how hard I try and how successful I get I will still be overshadowed by the greatness of Jesus and what he has achieved for us by choosing to endure death and separation from God the Father on the cross.

Selwyn Hughes points out that humilty can never be self-belittlement, it can only flow out of a conciousness of God's greatness. I heard someone say once that: "humilty is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less". I now realise that when I am focussed on doing my best in everything I am always thinking less of myself and more of the projects and people I am trying to serve. Praise God!

If I could change the message on the sign above it would read: "Think great things of yourself, you can be safe in the knowledge that there is one greater still who deserves all the praise!"