Why making decisions can be a flawed approach to make choices.

Most of the time we don't distinguish between choices and decisions, when they are in-fact two very different things. When we think we are making a choice or decision, we are first making a decision, and then making a choice.

A decision is the process we go through before making a choice, it's the process of elimination. We start with a set of options, and narrow the set down by comparing things like our likes and dislikes, past experiences or the opinions of others. We finally make our decision once that set has been reduced to a single option.

A choice is the action of picking a single option from a set of multiple options. A choice requires no reason, no elimination and can therefore make available to us more options than if the decision process had selected the option for us.

Of course, choices without decisions in some cases could be very dangerous. The whole processes of making decisions and choices together is one way that we take things we've learnt and apply them to our lives. For example making a choice between touching a stove top can be helped by a decision, eliminating the option of me touching it because I would burn myself. But we collapse the decision and choice making process so that we rarely give ourselves the choice of making choices without a decision. For example, the people we date are often influenced by the people we've been with in the past. Mr or Mrs Right could be standing in front of us, but because of an experience with a previous lover our decision making process will never making him/her available to us.

After saying all this, I should highlight from the title the word 'can', not 'always'. Decisions are very powerful, and I'm sure if you ceased to use them you'd probably start to make some very bad choices, like touching the stove top. So be wary. Make decisions when you want to, and be aware of the options your eliminating. Try to consider what choice you'd make if you weren't going to go through the process of elimination. You never know, you might discover Mr or Mrs Right were standing in front of you all along.

How to Invest

Today I was thinking about investing, or rather my lack-there-of. Being young I suppose I haven't thought too much about big investments like houses or shares, and I've always had the mentality that investing is something that I'd start to do in the hopefully near, although likely far, future. Then it occurred to me today I've already been investing. In fact from the first cent I spent I've been investing, I just didn't know it.

You see, every cent we spend and every hour we devote is an investment. The $7 I spend for lunch everyday is an investment. The money I pay for my public transport ticket is an investment for work. The time I spend working on my personal projects is an investment.

Realising that I'm already investing now gives me access to seeing where I'm currently investing and evaluating those areas. For example, my lunch money. Does it have a good return on my health? And my personal projecs, do they provide satisfaction, make a difference to others lives or bring back a monetary value? Most of my investments have a small if not negative return. So it's now my responsibility to start identifying where my losses are and start looking for things I can invest in that will give me a good return. Whether that be in money, health, satisfaction or in the results it creates for other people.

Love

Love is what has been on my mind since doing a S.O.A.P. reading the other day.

I had read 1 John 3:11-3:24, and felt the passage had a strong message that love is essential. It gave practical points on how to love, and talked about how the world would hate us and it was essential for us to love. Although this was all very good, I felt like I was missing something. Like there was something in the passage that would have a huge impact on me, I just couldn't see it yet. I explored what it is for me to love, and then I explored what it is that gets in the way of me loving, and that's when it came to me...superficial judgment.

On thinking further I determined love and superficial judgment cannot exist in the same space. One way I think of love is: accepting who someone is and who someone isn't, and giving up having to change them. When I get to that point with someone, I can be in that persons presence without anything getting in the way of loving them, even in a sacrificial way. No matter who they are, or what they have done.

That realisation had an immediate impact on my life, and the relationships with several people I know were altered because no longer did my judgment of them stand in the way of loving them.

CarPC Planning Part 1

Some months ago Donna and I decided to install a car PC into our car. While we have the unit mostly ready and running outside of the, today marked the first day of investigating actually installing it into our car.

Our first steps were to determine where to store the device in the car, and how to hook the device up to power.

Where to Store the Car PC
We decided to place the PC under the front passenger seat. We realise this is a big no-no on most car PC forums due to heat, but that was the easiest location in our car so we're sticking with it.

Hooking it up to Power
After reading a thread on MP3Car.com's forums we've decided to use the following method:

My realisation that God can care for me better than I can.

As I walked down to the shops for lunch this afternoon, water drops started to lightly hit my body. It was the warning of rain to come. Inside me I felt a sigh of disappointment. I had no umbrella, I'd either get wet on the way there or wet on the way back. I prayed in my mind, "Please don't rain." But I felt rather guilty praying for not-rain. In Australia there's a shortage of water with our dams running low. Wouldn't me getting wet be a small sacrifice to provide water for my country?

It then occurred to me how naive I was being about God, and the huge lack of faith I had. You see when it started to rain I immediately jumped to keeping myself dry. I knew if it didn't rain, I would stay dry. But I wasn't having faith in God to care for me. I was taking a problem, finding a solution and asking God to implement my solution. I was telling God how to care for his creation, and what I was asking was selfish.

God has more solutions available to him than I ever could and he knows how to care for me. This is what I then prayed:

God. Please keep me dry, but if the only option to keeping me dry is turning off the rain, please make it rain.

As I continued to walk on the footpath, a scared feeling rose up in me, not knowing what was going to happen next. Then the rain then picked up and I smiled. I knew God had responded to my prayer.

In hindsight, if God had held back the rain like I was asking it may not have been in my best interest anyway. If there's a lack of water in my country it affects me in the long run.

Prayer Requests

Most of the time when I'm asking God for something, it's asking God for guidance, healing, and wisdom. All great things, and I think they all are great to ask God for. They're practical, they're probably some of the most prominent things in an active Christians mind. "Where do you want me God?" "What should I be doing with my life?" "Please help me to understand this so I can figure it out." "Please take this pain from me so that I don't suffer anymore."

It occurred to me last night at Connection Group while me and my Christian family were sitting around praying. How much more impact would it have if I asked God to fill me with love and compassion. Doesn't the need for Christians to have love and compassion overshadow so many other needs we have?

I'm not saying don't ask God for what we need. Rather I'm saying we're forgetting about essential things we need.

My MacBook Pro Gives Me Electric Shocks

I've owned a MacBook Pro for 17 months and on and off when touching it there is this strange bumpy feeling.....Okay so I should probably point out while I do spend a lot of time on computers, its not that much time. On top of the odd bumpy sensation, the edges of the laptop would sometimes shock me too.

Up until today, I had no explanation for it. Until I found this. Apparently the 2-prong connector for the charger causes the laptop to have no earth, resulting in the build up of current in the casing, and it's transfer out through my fleshy body giving that strange bumpy feeling, and the odd shock for fun.

From now on I'll use the three-prong connector and see if that makes a difference, but it still makes me concerned and skeptical. Tomorrow I'll be phoning Apple regarding the issue to rule out it being a known malfunction or known flaw in the MacBook Pro I own. Hopefully they'll either be able to fix my laptop, or can replace it. Giving my body electric shocks is not something I purchased the laptop for.

2nd Anniversary of Blogging

Okay, so it's technically not the 2nd anniversary of the first post on this blog, but I'm close, it was actually 2 months ago today and I didn't notice till today.

*celebrations* *fireworks* *yey*

Please, save us from poisonous gas heaters

I was watching TV last night watching a documentary about "un-flued gas heaters". Now up until then all I knew was there were gas heaters, and electric heaters. Typical gas heaters rocked, I suppose in the rabbit vs the tortoise race gas was the rabbit and electric was the tortoise.

Turns out there are un-flued and flued gas heaters. What does this mean you say? Un-flued gas heaters release high levels of toxic gases, specifically nitrogen dioxide, carbon dioxide, formaldehyde and carbon monoxide. The levels at which these gasses are released is considered poisonous by most countries, although oddly enough these heaters are being used in schools.

Manufacturers of such heaters include in instruction manuals that ample ventilation is required when operating these heaters such as keeping all doors and windows open in a room. Now, who, on a cold winter day, thinks to open all the doors and windows when operating one of these gas heaters? I think no one!

The reason these gas heaters are being given attention is because researchers have discovered this gas is likely to have a direct link to kids developing asthma.

Sooo what can we do about it? Well in Australia, there is cough.org.au, a group of people raising awareness and a petition to show the Australian Government that we take growing kids health seriously and that we want the un-flued gas heaters issue taken seriously.

Sign the petition to help out. It only takes a second, and I'll risk saying, you'd be pretty pathetic not to ^_^.