In the last week or so, we’ve both experienced the thrill and the joy of being cheered on in our personal lives, by people we don’t know. We’ve been encouraged to press on and continue to pursue the challenges we’re facing.
As some of you will know, I embarked on a challenge at the beginning of 2021 to be through the Bible in a year. I had attempted it on a few occasions and though I’d eventually completed the challenge, I’d never achieved it within the timescale. So what was different with 2021? Initially, it was finding a friend who was in a similar position, so we encouraged each other and both felt that having someone we were accountable to gave us that extra push that we needed. We used the Bible app, which provided regular emails during the year congratulating me on my achievements and cheering me to press on. I was surprised at my response to auto-generated emails and texts, but we all respond to praise. During the last week of the year, the encouragement to complete the challenge was amazing and having completed it, I was a little blown away to receive a number of congratulatory emails from the app.
Ruth decided for the New Year, that we needed to be more physically active. She was encouraged to join an online community on Twitter that uses the hashtag #nhs1000miles. It appears to be mainly made up people connected to the nhs, but is open for anyone to join. You can walk, run, cycle or swim, all you need to do is keep a record of your physical activity, then each Sunday, you’re encouraged to tweet your weekly total. With slight trepidation, on Sunday evening Ruth uploaded her totals for the first two days of the new year. Within a couple of hours she’d had more engagement than any of her previous tweets. How encouraging to have numerous people who you don’t know, who either comment or like or retweet it, with no ulterior motive or anything to gain from it.
We’ve been challenged about how we react to people we come into contact with, do we encourage and cheer on those around us? How can we do it better? How can we adapt what we’ve experienced for the benefit of others?
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