McCulloch House Blog

The Illusion of 'I Can't Deal With This'

2008-11-14T19:54:00.001+11:00

At one stage or another you've said it, "I can't deal with this." You've probably said it at the time of a break-up, or a financial crisis, a family crisis, or maybe that work colleague's insensitive statement was the straw that broke the camels back? For me it pops up when I'm stretched past my limit, and then some. I feel nothing but overwhelmed.

So what about it? Well, it's a lie! As human beings we have a seriously warped view of reality, and we habitually describe reality inaccurately. We get into situations where we see absolutely no way out, through or around, and cry, "I can't deal with this." The lie is an assumption, an assumption built only on the small view we have of ourselves.

So what's the truth? Truth is an iffy philosophical topic, so instead I want us to consider what works. First of all, what won't work: "We can deal with it." You probably just pulled a face that looks like O.o, and that's because your still thinking about the truth. "We can deal with it," won't work because let's face it, you don't really know if you can deal with it. It won't matter how much you tell yourself it, you'll never truly get it at your deepest level. You'll spend your time trying to prove it and even if you did, you'd still doubt.

So what does work? ... Consider for yourself what does work, and give it a serious think before you view my answer. To view my answer, click the Show Answer link below.

My Answer: Show Answer"I haven't dealt with it yet."

Movember 2008 Day 14

2008-11-14T18:50:00.002+11:00

Day 14...Woah, it's been 3 days and my Mo has sorta stopped. What gives I wonder? Mmm. Let's hope it grows some more so I look more like a man and less like a boy! High res photo today, click it for the larger zoom in.

Check out my MoSpace and sponsor me/donate:
au.movember.com/mospace/1358431

Why am I growing a mo? Read here.

Exclusivity

2008-11-11T15:15:00.001+11:00

We love exclusivity.

Read that again, and notice I didn't say, "We love exclusively." I said, "We love exclusivity." We love to have explicit and specific explanations for why things happen and how things occur. We love to have _the_ answer.

Whether it be choosing a career or proving science vs religion, we must know which it is. In many cases proving which it is becomes proving that we are right, and soon we have division between the people. One side convinced they must be right, the other just as convinced.

Exclusivity fits a lot of circumstances like discussing the existence of God. But we overuse it and it is at the point where exclusivity has poisoned many topics where it doesn't need to exist and in reality is holding our understanding back.

Movember 2008 Day 11

2008-11-11T10:57:00.003+11:00

Day 11...You'll notice there was no Day 10, it's much harder than I realised trying to photograph and blog everyday! So if you only see updates every second day, don't dismay, I'm still here.

Check out my MoSpace and sponsor me/donate:
au.movember.com/mospace/1358431

Why am I growing a mo? Read here.

Movember 2008 Day 9

2008-11-09T13:06:00.002+11:00

Day 9...My moooo grooooooooows. It's now annoying my wife now, kisses are few.

Check out my MoSpace and sponsor me/donate:
au.movember.com/mospace/1358431

Why am I growing a mo? Read here.

Movember 2008 Day 8

2008-11-09T13:05:00.000+11:00

Umm...I forgot to do a Day 8 entry yesterday...Sorry!

Movember 2008 Day 7

2008-11-07T09:30:00.001+11:00

Day 7...Today I photograph in the morning instead of in the evening and I think I'll try and keep it up with doing it in the morning. It's a nice way of starting the day.

Check out my MoSpace and sponsor me/donate:
au.movember.com/mospace/1358431

Why am I growing a mo? Read here.

Movember 2008 Day 6

2008-11-07T09:29:00.000+11:00

Umm...I forgot to do a Day 6 entry yesterday...Sorry!

Movember 2008 Day 5

2008-11-05T13:03:00.003+11:00

Day 5...Today is here, and I know if you look at the photos I've been putting up proof of a Mo is difficult to see due to my lack of mo-genes, so today you get to see zoomed in proof that I am actually growing a mo! Click the photo below to see the proof!

Check out my MoSpace and sponsor me/donate:
au.movember.com/mospace/1358431

Why am I growing a mo? Read here.

Movember 2008 Day 4

2008-11-04T22:17:00.003+11:00

Day 4...Today happened. Mo continued to gro allllll the way through...but hard to tell. Tomorrow the high-res close ups will come out and you'll see there's actually a mo there!!!

Check out my MoSpace and sponsor me/donate:
au.movember.com/mospace/1358431

Why am I growing a mo? Read here.

Movember 2008 Day 3

2008-11-03T20:51:00.002+11:00

Day 3 has come and gone, and I've still sporting that very light shadow on my top lip...Hmm...I'm hoping I grow more than last year.

Check out my MoSpace and sponsor me/donate:
au.movember.com/mospace/1358431

Why am I growing a mo? Read here.

Movember 2008 Day 2

2008-11-02T22:02:00.003+11:00

Day 2 is here, and I've got a light shadow on my top lip...Woot. Off to an okay start =).

Check out my MoSpace and sponsor me/donate:
au.movember.com/mospace/1358431

Why am I growing a mo? Read here.

Selfishness, Or Rather Not-Selfishness

2008-11-02T19:11:00.004+11:00

Tonight at Northside our senior minister's sermon was titled Against The Tide: Selfishness. The talk was really not what I was expecting, Graham took an entirely about-turn approach to discussing selfishness that while some might consider non-confrontational I believe was very insightful. Language plays a huge part in our world. We often use it to describe the world and don't realise the power language has in creating the world. For this reason when empowering someone it is typically more effective to identify what there is to be done, rather than what shouldn't be done. This is what Graham did tonight, he discussed selfishness by discussing what is missing when we are being selfish.

The qualities we discussed all came from Collosians 3:12-14 and includes compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another, forgiveness and of course love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. And I really get that if I am being selfish, I can't be all or any of those things. I can attempt to fake it, but where will that get me?

Graham said one thing tonight that stood out to me and challenged me. He said, and this is probably heavily paraphrased, we shouldn't just go out and try and be all these things, but instead spend time with Jesus and through getting to know him learn and discover these qualities. Don't interpret this as a it's-not-your-responsibility, or that it happens "magically". It happens with intent, but unless we spend time with Jesus how do we truly learn those things? How do we truly experience and can then follow our Lord's example. Without getting to know Jesus and learning from him the best we can do is imitate the idea of the qualities - we will miss the entire depth and breadth that comes with being compassionate, kind, and having humilty and so on (see above list).

The rabbit that visited us for the weekend

2008-11-01T20:00:00.000+11:00

This weekend we saw a pet rabbit walking around our front yard. So we caught it. It was pretty tame and we figure someone out there must be missing this lovable little animal. He's a poofy guy/gal. Donna called the RSPCA, but apparantly they only look after injured or sick animals to which I responded with "well we can injure him." She wasn't impressed. So we're stuck with the rabbit until Monday when we can call a Vet or the Council or until we get a call from the flyers we put up.

We're keeping him in a cardboard box for the moment, with some newspaper in the bottom, a bowl of water and rabbit food. Hopefully he/she'll be okay. Here are some photos of the cutey.

UPDATE: The owner who lives not far from us saw our flyer and has picked up the rabbit, who turns out to be a she. The owner was very nice and could identify the rabbit pretty well, so hopefully it is the true owner. It was nice to have the cute visitor for the night. Bye bye.

Movember 2008 Day 1

2008-11-01T15:28:00.004+11:00

Movember has started, today I start clean shaven, ready to embark on an adventure taken by only the bravest...To grow the Mo.

Check out my MoSpace: au.movember.com/mospace/1358431
and sponsor me/donate: www.movember.com/au/donate/donate-details.php?rego=1358431

By the end of Movember, hopefully I'll look something like this:

For those not aware of Movember, I am growing my Mo to raise money for Men's Health, to fight prostate cancer and depression. Every year around 18,700 Australian men are diagnosed with prostate cancer (7,000 more than the number of women diagnosed with breast cancer) and more than 2,900 die of the disease, and it is the most common cancer in men. Please donate, and please donate generously. In your lifetime you'll know people who have cancer and chances are some of them will have prostate cancer.

How the world distracts us from God / Dealing with everyday and global issues

2008-10-16T19:04:00.002+11:00

Most of the time when I am faced with challenges or issues in my life, at work or in relationships I try to relate to them in the context of God. I might speculate whether an issue is a challenge from God, or something new he wants me to learn or experience. Even global issues like the economy or climate change, many people I think would ponder what part it plays in God's plan.

It occurred to me recently that all the issues and problems that go on in our lives, regardless of what higher purpose they serve, are all distractions. We usually consider our issues urgent so we give into the distractions. It's so easy to give ourselves over entirely to the latest and greatest emergency, and in the process move our attention away from God.

When new distractions are thrown into our lives, community or world, we have a choice. Give ourselves over to the distraction, or give ourselves over to God.

If you're not sure what I'm meaning by issues or distractions, really anything in your life or the global life of us all counts. Maybe you lost your job, run out of money, crashed your car, have to move, had a baby, or maybe it's global like fuel costs, the economy crashing or climate change. Regardless of their higher purpose, they all serve as distractions from God.

I wish politicians didn't argue their case by complaining about the opposition.

2008-10-14T08:12:00.002+11:00

For a long time I've been peeved at politicians who run their campaign by focusing on how you shouldn't vote for the other guy. Recently my local council had an election and I had to choose between two parties to vote for. I had promotional material for both parties to help me decide which to vote for.

One lot of the material was very constructive. It was promoting to re-elect the councilors who were in council previously and discussed things they had done to help the area, it explicitly addressed issues that hadn't worked out well, but showed what they had attempted to do to lesson the blow to us local residents, and it spoke constructively on what they as leaders would bring to this local council.

The next lot of material was promoting a new team of councilors who had plenty of experience it seemed. This material however was very different. 80% of the material was bagging out or trashing the opposition.

Now it's no hint of which one I voted for, but unfortunately the ones that did all the complaining got in. I am always dumb founded by how that tactic of self promotion works, by talking so much about your opposition and not yourself. This morning a news post over on the Least I Could Do RSS feed talked about this in the context of the US Presidential elections, and I totally agree with what the author has to say.

"I don’t want to hear why your opponent should not be president. I don’t want to hear how past associations makes the other guy dangerous.

I want to hear why you should be prime minister. I want to know how you’ll address the economy. I want to know how you’ll make the world a little bit safer for our children. I want to see your track record in keeping your word. I want to know what change entails. I want to know who you’ll bring with you to run our nation. I want to see your plans for getting us off our oil dependence and moving towards clean energy. I want to know what you’ll do, why you should lead. I want you to speak clearly, concisely and intelligently. I want you to speak to the smartest of us, not the most ignorant."
-- sohmer (ref: Least I Could Do News - Not So Great Debates)

iPhone vs Stone

2008-10-13T11:56:00.003+11:00

A friend sent me this image, I've attempted to locate any ownership of the image, although at this point I can only accredit it to the distributor of the image who sent it to me, Morteza Manouchehrzadh. Thanks mate this one made me smile.

A Stupid Attempt at Advertising

2008-10-08T09:21:00.010+11:00

This morning as I walked past my local train station, there was a man standing handing out flyers. It's a common occurrence at the station, so I took one.

The flyer I was handed is laughable if not ROFL (rolling on floor laughing) hilarious. It promotes a local "boot camp", an exercise program that will make you "fitter, leaner, stronger and meaner." The back of the flyer is below, but out of respect of the company I decided not to upload the front of the flyer which contained the companies name and contact details.

Click for Full Size ImageYou can see there are two "before and after" cases shown. The first is Joe and is pretty impressive. Joe goes from being overweight with extremely poor posture and grey hair to being a well built hunk with no grey hair. I'm not sure why the change in hair color happened, but maybe they dye your hair for you as part of the boot camp? Seriously though, while it may be possible, I doubt the two guys are the same person.

The second is Penny and is even more impressive. Not only does Penny go from being overweight to having a skinny bod, she seems to have changed skin color rather dramatically, has a change of hair and hair color, and even has different eyes if you look closely. There is no way that the before Penny is the same person as the after Penny.

Underneath the "before and after" cases it says "REAL RESULTS... AND NO B#LL SH#T". Which is just laughable with the amount of "B#LL SH#T" that went into the flyer.

Edit: Okay so my wife pointed out to me it's humor, tongue in cheek. :P I'm really bad at detecting intentional humor sometimes. :) Thanks Bub.

Movember 08 - Raising money for Prostate Cancer research!

2008-10-07T14:54:00.002+11:00

November, ahm, I mean Movember is fast approaching and it's time to start taking a focus to Men's Health. Starting the 1st November many of the worlds men will be starting clean shaven and growing a mustache with the common goal of raising awareness and money for prostate cancer research and depression that affects many of us.

If you'd be kind enough to be involved, there are two ways you can be:

Make a Donation / Sponsor us Mo-Growers
If you'd be kind enough to make a donation to the cause please following the following link:
movember.com/au/donate/donate-details.php?type=team&team_rego=32646&country=au

Gro-A-Mo / Rally Sponsorship
If you're a guy or a girl, and want to join the mission for the month of Movember head over to movember.com and register, all the instructions are there and it's easy to receive donations using their website.

If you'd like to come join my team, The Furries, please go the following link and use my details below to join:
Link: au.movember.com/register/register-team.php?join=1
Captain's Reg #: 1358431
Captain's Email Address:

I'll be uploading photos at some key moments during the month of Movember, so stay tuned. Thanks in advance for anything you do to further the awareness or financial aspects of this cause!

Our expectations of God, and the impact they have.

2008-09-16T23:00:00.002+10:00

What expectations do you have of God? What expectations do you have of what God will do?

Imagine you turn up to what you believe is a music class. The teacher is an art teacher, and the room is decked out ready for an art lesson. But you're wearing glasses. What you see of the classroom and your teacher is altered. To you the classroom looks like a music room, and your teacher a music teacher. No matter how hard you try to relate to your music teacher, you end up lost because you're relating to him as a music teacher. There are even moments you don't even realise your teacher is commicating with you, or doing stuff for you. And you miss opportunities your teacher presents to you.

This badly written metaphor is like how our expectations of God cause us to relate to God as someone he isn't. When I do not see God for who he is, I cannot effectively communicate with God. I get lost in his teachings, I don't see what he is saying to me or doing for me, and I miss opportunities he creates for me.

Quite simply, the expectations I have of what God will do and who he is get in the way of me seeing God for who he is, seeing God in my life, and seeing the opportunities that God create for me.

Why the Universe makes perfect sense...

2008-09-15T10:11:00.004+10:00

I love that there are things that don't make sense in this world. Physics for example. Physicists still don't have a unified system that explains why things happen. In our everyday life we experience Newtonian physics but when scientists look at really small objects those laws no longer work, and the same with really big objects. Then there is light, that has a whole lot of rules that are inconsistent with other matter.

I don't proclaim this to be truth, but I really love the idea that this world only continues to exist because God chooses to act within it. Consider that for a second. The reason that science can't explain the universe could be because without God's intervention the universe just could not exist.

If that is true, then everything makes sense...

Smelly Gamers Charity - Donate and Save a Life

2008-09-11T19:12:00.003+10:00

I try to limit the things I post that are from other peoples blogs, but I couldn't resist with this one...

Religion vs Spirituality

2008-09-09T00:00:00.000+10:00

I've been thinking about religious and spirituality lately, about how they interact, how we confuse them and how I think we relate to them as the same thing even though on some intellectual level we think they're different. The below I do not profess to be truth. It is my thoughts and what I've come up so far about religion and spirituality. I will value your comments and opinions on the issue, please share them. So let's get started...

What is RELIGION?
According to my dictionary religion is "the belief...in a superhuman...power." While this is true for some people, I find the definition really only covers a subset of religion. Funnily enough Wikipedia provided what I believe to be a much more complete definition:

"A religion is a set of [beliefs, principles] and practices, often centered upon specific supernatural and moral claims about reality, the cosmos, and human nature... Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience."

What stands out to me in this definition is the bolded section, where the author notes that these beliefs, principles and practices are often based on spirituality. This raises the possibility that religion while often associated with these things, does not have to be.

What is SPIRITUALITY?
Spirituality has many definitions and from one person to the next you'll get many different interpretations of those definitions. One thing seems rather consistent though, that spirituality has something to do with there being more to reality than what we can see, smell and touch. A Christians spirituality is the relationship they have with the one and only God.

What does Religion have to do with Spirituality?
We often relate to religion and spirituality as the same thing even if on an intellectual level believe they are different. We live like RELIGION = SPIRITUALITY. Religion and spirituality actually exist as two entirely different concepts. We relate to them as one and the same, because at some point in our life we collapsed them into being the same thing. The issue with this is that spirituality is now related to as religion and vice versa, and it creates a lot of confusion and misunderstanding around religion and spirituality. It is a large reason many non-Christians have a misinformed idea of Christianity.

What does this mean for Christians?
If we accept that every human being has a spiritual life, whether they choose to acknowledge it or be ignorant to it, Christians are beings who are _in touch_ with their spirituality and follow God. This spirituality we explicitly refer to as our relationship with the one and only God, the God who refers to himself as I Am. All Christians have a similar spirituality, but there is a vast number of religions that are centered on Christianity. For many Chrisitians it can be difficult to distinguish our spirituality (i.e. relationship with God) from our religion. Christians should expect that their relationship with God will impact their religion, and that indeed our religion will also have an affect on our relationship with God. However there exists an issue when our religion defines and therefore restrains our relationship with God. In these situations we relate to God as if he exists in a box we own and control, performing the necessary functions consistent with our religion to keep us happy and comfortable. When this happens we no longer have a relationship with God, but have created a god out of our religion. Religions aren't all necessarily, but can be idols and false gods in themselves.

What does this mean for non-Christians?
We said Christians were beings in touch with their spirituality, so to be consistent with that definition non-Christians are those who are ignorant to their spirituality. They are unaware, or have chosen to ignore God's desire to have a relationship with us. Although they may not realise it, non-Christians are very religious. They have their own religion and engage in religious acts and rituals daily. For non-Christians who are aware of God, but choose to ignore or disbelieve of God think they are often opposing spirituality, when in-fact they are merely opposing somebody else's religion while being ignorant to their spirituality. For these people a relationship with God doesn't naturally present itself as they are actively ignoring it. Unfortunately many churches are caught up in religion, and aid this misunderstanding. Making it easy to think God and Christianity are religions rather than a relationship we are privileged to have access to.

Can Spirituality exist without Religion?
Try to imagine a life where you are spirituality aware but have no religion. It's rather difficult, because even if you are like me and don't actively associate yourself with a specific religion, you essentially still have a religion. You still have beliefs, principles and practices, and these things are the basis for a religion. Your religion may not have a name, but it's the underlying system by which you profess to live your life.

Can Religion exist without Spirituality?
There are many people proclaiming to be Christians who live a life intending to be good and making every effort to adhere to the ten commandments who aren't really connected with God. Some of these people may not even realise that. It is very easy to live a life surrounded and devoted to religion and still be disconnected from God. You might think of it like a marriage, where we are married to God. If the marriage has no passion or connection between the husband and wife and if they rarely talk, spend time together, interact, or connect on any intimate level, the marriage still exists as a way of living their lives together, as a legal bind, but there is no connection and no experience of being one. Religion can exist without an awareness or connection with God, and for many people this is how they experience their Christianity.

What now?
Depending on where your at and your own situation there may or may not be action for you to take. If you feel that there is, take a look at yourself and honestly answer the question, "Am I actively involved in a relationship with God?" If so that's great. Take a look at your life and your religion and have a think about how your relationship to your religion might be putting God in a box or in which ways you might be glorifying your religion as opposed to God. If you don't have a relationship with God, he's right there waiting to talk to you.

Mastering Passion and Motivation

2008-09-08T10:46:00.008+10:00

Being passionate, motivated and sticking to your commitments is a function of your ability to:

generate yourself

construct your environment such that it is responsible for generating you

be in the right place at the right time, so that the universe lines everything up just right, i.e. fluke it.

Some of those things probably won't make sense to you just yet, but stick with it, I'll get to them.

Most of the time when we, human beings, are passionate or motivated to do something it's a fluke. It's something we're temporarily fascinated by, or maybe we're passionate about something because of our parents or a past experience (e.g. a friend dying of cancer, might compel us to start a charity). Whatever the reason, we are commonly motivated by our environment. Something happens, and we respond by becoming passionate or motivated about something new.

What you want to know about this is that having your passions driven by your environment gives you little control over your life**, and will commonly leave you with a sense of dissatisfaction. Take a look and I think you'll find this to be relatively true.

So if fluking it gets the job done, but isn't on the road to a fulfilling life, then lets talk about the other two options. Generating yourself and creating your environment such that it generates you really go hand in hand. So what is "generating yourself." If you imagine yourself as an entity with one responsibility: being. Not doing, not having, just being. You have the choice of being happy, sad, joyful, free, loving, passionate, excited, ... etc. Generating yourself is basically taking responsibility for who you are being, and without needing anything or anyone else, creating that state of being in yourself, authentically. It's important to note generating yourself isn't faking something and it definitely isn't pretending. It creating that state of being for yourself. It will take some practice, but don't force it, just give it a go.

You'll find generating yourself can be difficult at times, and everyone has moments where they are unable or not willing to generate themselves. Having your environment setup to encourage your passions and to motivate you creates a very powerful space for you to operate in and is really a physical form of your commitment.

If you can master generating yourself and successfully setup your environment, you will be on the track to passion and motivation. And as time goes on you'll find yourself being less dependent on your environment and surroundings to motivate you. There will just exist you and your commitments being fulfilled^.

**For all the Christians out there don't read this and go into defense mode about how only God should have control over our life and confusing your environment with God, this isn't what I'm talking about. You should hand your life over to God, but that doesn't mean you become a leaf in the wind. God wants us to develop consistency and control over ourselves, and part of this is developing our ability to be focused.

^There are many things that can get in the way of you being passionate and motivated. The above is one approach and it won't necessarily make a difference to you. Stayed tuned though, in the not-so-distant future I'm writing about another thing called INTEGRITY which will open a whole new world to fulfilling your commitments.