one thing Archives - p.s. That's Life!

I have a rule that I follow with most things and it is this: only change one thing.

When you need to make a change to something, anything, it doesn’t matter; just make one change.

If you just make one change, you can see the impact of that change and can then figure out the next change to make if there needs to be one.

A good example is when I’m in the car with my wife, Lily, and she says it’s too hot or too cold. She will immediately reach for the temperature dial and move it and, at the same time, adjust the fan.

I tell her all the time that’s she’s doing too much, and we will invariably very soon need to adjust the temperature in the other direction.

Of course, that next change will be too much as well, so we just go back and forth.

It is better to adjust one thing – like only the fan – and then wait to see if that will bring the desired result. If not, then move the temperature down one click of the dial.

And again, wait. It’s the way to tell what affect the change is making.

If you make more than one change, you don’t know which change did what and you don’t know what to do to correct it.

It’s simple and it works well.

Today I signed up to play shinny hockey for the first time this fall. I played hockey a few times last month on rented ice but this was the first with city-run shinny.

There are new rules with COVID and I wrote about that experience in a previous post. You can read about it (here).

For the sake of arena staff safety and social distancing, there were a number of changes that have been put in place.

I was fully prepared that those changes would be the same for shinny as for rented ice. I figured I would still have to get my hockey gear on in the rink parking lot … no big deal.

But they did something else – that extra change that makes it impossible to see if their first change was enough.

What they did was reduce the time allowed on the ice from one hour and twenty minutes to fifty minutes.

Why?!

City shinny has been one hour and twenty minutes for the last twenty-four plus years. Why make that change?

How would that help with COVID? How could it add to the safety of anything? All they needed to do was the one thing to make it COVID safe.

When I went to shinny there were only three skaters. Last year at this time they had to turn people away.

So why were there only three people? We don’t know whether people don’t like the COVID restrictions or whether they don’t like the reduced time.

They should have made one change only.

Here’s the thing: When we ask God for something, often we will still try to handle it ourselves. If you don’t give God time to answer your prayer, when the answer comes you won’t be sure if you brought the answer or God did. That will lead you to miss seeing God’s desire and ability to answer your requests. If you want God’s help, just do the one thing: ask. Then be patient.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What issue in your life do you just need to do one thing for right now? Leave your comments and questions below.

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It’s just past the middle of January and you know what that means, don’t you? It’s time to take that vacation to some place warm, with water and beachfront right out your window.

No, that’s only for the few and fortunate! For the rest of us, mid January signals time for the winter blahs.

The best some of us can do, in the words of the song by Smash Mouth, is take a “Holiday in my Head”. We can only dream of taking off, leaving work and responsibilities behind, for some carefree recreation and rest.

Many of us get out of bed in the mornings in the middle of January and have an overwhelming sense of overload … and dread.

You’ve got too much work to do, and dread that your goals and plans for the year are not going to be reached. You even feel like throwing in the towel and giving up, like there’s a looming catastrophe just around the corner.

Is that how you feel right now? You didn’t get in this place all of a sudden, even though it seems like one day you just woke up and, BAM!, all life is crashing around you.

No, it happens slowly and over time. You miss a deadline; you schedule it but don’t get it done. So you push that work off to the next day or the next, and soon it becomes critical.

That same sequence of events happens over and over with other things in your life, your goals your plans, your commitments, demands and requests from others.

And every day the build-up goes unnoticed until one day you wake up and it all seems like it’s crashing down on you, like a waterfall cascading over the rocks, thundering to the pool of water below.

You’re standing in that pool of water with that waterfall beating down on you. It seems hopeless to get out of it and it’s pounding you down.

It’s only mid January! You have the whole year still ahead of you, but all you can think about is that the whole year is a bust. You’ve blown it, or circumstances have made it impossible for you to have a profitable year.

What do you do when you are in that place? How do you get out from under such an intense feeling of utter defeat?

Well, there are a couple of things you can do when you feel that way. First, you can just forget about some of those things; they may not be as important as you made them out to be.

Second, write everything down, so you can see them all together. When your work and demands are just swirling around in your head, it seems like more than it really is. Seeing all your tasks before you gives you perspective.

Then focus on one thing at a time. Complete it and move on to the next, not thinking of all you have to do, but just the one thing that’s next.

Here’s the thing: To even get to the place where you are able to write everything down and then work on one thing, first turn to God and ask Him for help. Seek His guidance and wisdom to get out from under the downpour. Request His protection to stand over you so that the water beats on Him and you just experience the spray. Then you will find the calm, the presence of mind to do what you have to do.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What has got you overwhelmed at this time? Leave your comment below.

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