A Change Will Do You Good
With the tempo of student life changing around this time of year, Hope City Church Student Pastor in Director, Aidan Roberts ponders it’s scientific and psychosomatic repercussions (yeah right!)
What is it about this time of year that makes it come around faster than I can demolish an Easter Egg? I mean, you’ve finally ceased to loath the day that mince pies were invented and stopped finding stray bits of tinsel in your food when you discover that time has March-ed on and crikey mikey! It’s already the third month of 2008! Hardly fair, in my opinion, especially since most of us have only just rediscovered sunlight after January exams and suddenly you can’t walk down the street without your senses being ambushed by pastel colours and baby animals made out of chocolate…
It’s tempting right now to let time drift along and spend your time counting down to the crème egg-eating marathon you’ll undertake once you hit home for the Easter Holidays. However, don’t miss out on the realm of possibilities available to you right now! Here are some cracking tips on how to make each day leading up to Easter egg-stra special!
Bullseye!
If you’re anything like me, the amount of paper used to write out your new year’s resolutions back in January caused great concern among environmentalists. However, despite this, I have not yet successfully written a hit no1 single, painted a masterpiece or visited the gym. I also still wear odd socks and leave my washing up in the sink. Post Christmas excess-induced guilt is never a great motivation to make life changes: if you’ve made and broken resolutions all within the same time-frame as a ‘Hollyoaks’ storyline, maybe it’s time to take a look at how and why your schemes never really got off the ground…? While it’s great to want to better yourself, sometimes unrealistic targets mean that when we fail to meet our objectives, we give up completely, and this is a prime time of year for giving up, or worse: never starting in the first place! However, never fear! It’s not too late to make 2008 two-thousand and GREAT!
A great and very talented actress in her groundbreaking role as character ‘Sharpay’. In the motion picture ‘High School Musical 2’ profoundly notes - in song, may I add- the following:
‘It’s out with the old, and in with the new, goodbye clouds of grey, hello skies of blue.’
Resolution Solutions
Considering the unpredictability of British weather, this may not be literally the case yet! However, I think this is a great mindset to get into at this time of year! This is a time for re-evaluating, for cutting out the grey from our lives and adding some vibrancy and excitement! Spring will have sprung before you know it! Don’t wait until then to start gaining momentum, start now!
We’re in the middle of lent at the moment, and some people, me included, struggle through the period between shrove ‘pancake’ Tuesday and Easter day battling cravings for various foodstuffs or activities that we’ve ‘given up’. While this is a good discipline and one I’d recommend trying, I think that all the focus on ‘giving up’ stuff is too reminiscent of my list of failed New Year’s
I was using ‘Facebook’ the other day, and an invitation caught my eye for a group entitled ‘the great lent experiment’. Intrigued, I discovered that the purpose of the group was to encourage members, during lent, to take up activities each day: more specifically, performing random acts of kindness to people. The group suggested various activities that members could try each day, such as leaving some change in a phone box for the next person to use, or writing an encouraging letter to an MP. What really got me thinking about this group wasn’t so much the concept of making the world a ‘nicer’ place, although I’m certainly not opposed to the idea, but it was the idea that we can use this time of year to try doing new and different things, rather than simply giving up part of our usual routine.
A Change Will Do You Good
I reckon that lifestyle changes made now, rather than in wintery January, will be changes you’re much more likely to stick at than a hasty pledge to ‘go running more this year’ as you polish off the last of your Christmas choccies, or a vow to ‘shop less this year’ as you max out your overdraft at the sales! Don’t make decisions abut the way you want to live your life based on cancelling out mistakes, make decisions based on what will make your life healthier and happier! And don’t be afraid to make some changes! Out with the old, in with the new!
If you’re familiar with the Easter story at all, you’ll know that it commemorates Jesus Christ’s death, burial and being raised to life again. I reckon that’s a great model to follow! Let the dead things in your life die, and start something new! Is there something you’ve always wanted to try, but for one reason or another, never got around to it? Are there things in your life that you do day in day out, that maybe you used to love but now just find a chore? Don’t let routine cause you to miss out on being the person that you want to be! Shake things up a bit! Have a great Easter!
Have your say: Aidan Roberts