Change One Thing
'Change one thing' says the sign outside Boots, cashing in on our desire to make this particular round of new-year resolutions pay till at least the end of January. It's a neat idea, though it proceeds to list several things you could do: eat well, get fit, lose weight, stop smoking, de-stress, look great... At which point, it feels like 'one' is not enough...
If you want to take it further, the Boots website underlines the need for focus. 'Most of us lose the motivation, and usually for the same reasons: We aim too high, don't have enough support and don't plan or prepare properly.'
They're almost certainly right. We start the year with all sorts of good intentions, to cease bad habits, to dream new dreams and to change our own world, if not everybody else's. But it's easy to lose the heart, and to lose the plot. If we fail at the task we can end up wishing we hadn't tried in the first place.
When you're a Christian, the impulse to create big change can place an even greater burden on you. You want to live life as an adventure for Christ; you want to make a global difference. As Bono once sang, 'You're trying to throw your arms around the world.'
The danger is that we dream so big that we do nothing. Imagine the possibilities, however, if we resolved to change just one thing this year about our selves or the world around us. Even if they were minor changes, they could stack up.
Fittingly, the theme of this week's Holocaust Memorial Day is 'one person CAN make a difference'. We can do so by bearing 'small fruits', as Mark Greene puts it. For small fruits can yield big results.
Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote the best-selling book The Tipping Point, talks of 'social epidemics'. Small changes across society can lead to big change collectively. And people can start 'positive epidemics' of their own, he argues. 'The virtue of an epidemic, after all, is that just a little input is enough to get it started, and it can spread very quickly.'
So, beyond the usual stuff - getting fit, looking great, losing weight - what one, small change might you want to make this year? My own arms won't stretch around the world; but if we join hands, together we might just reach.
Brian Draper
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