When It Comes To The Crunch

‘Some day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.’  Phillips Brooks, American Clergyman and Author

I stay up too late. I kid myself it is because I am a night owl not an early bird, the truth is I should just get to bed earlier.  Apparently, the easier something is to do the harder it is to change.  Why should I get to bed earlier, in fact, why should we pay attention to any of our bad habits?  Do bad habits really matter? The short answer is:  they do when it comes to the crunch.

The crunch is that decisive point, maybe not today but an invitable sometime, the day on which our future course is determined.

I’ve been reading this book called Inviting Disaster by James Chiles.  Chiles is a man who has spent much of his highly trained life working out why disasters happen and what we can do to avoid them.  He has consulted with NASA, on oil rigs in high seas, at huge international factories, for airlines.  His numerous articles on how disasters happen and how to prevent them have appeared in Smithsonian, Air & Space, Harvard magazine.  The man knows what he is talking about.

All disasters happen on crunch days. Every single one of the world altering disasters that Chiles has investigated, from the sinking of the unsinkable Titanic,  to the capsize of the world’s mightiest drilling rig Ocean Ranger, to the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, they all had one thing in common.  They all started with tiny problems, little slip ups. Stuff that really shouldn’t matter but when it came to the crunch, really did.

The unsinkable Titanic was manufactured with safety compartments to hold water at bay if the ship was struck by an iceberg.  The safety compartments failed because the rivets or iron bolts holding the compartments together were manufactured in haste, costs were cut and so were corners, as a results the rivets were of a much lower quality and strength than they could have been.  The iceberg found the ship, the sea found the weaknesses in the safety compartments and the rest is history.

The indestructible Ocean Ranger oil rig floundered in the kind of high seas that were typical to the Grand Banks where the rig was located.  The rig had been specifically designed to survive these high seas, the collapse and eventual demise of the rig started with a tiny window that someone forgot to shut.  The space challenger’s much anticipated launch ended in tragedy because of the failure of a tiny part, an O Ring, that had been hurried through testing due to timing and budget concerns.

‘We weave a thread each day, and at last we cannot break it.’  Horace Mann

James R Chiles argues that all of these disasters were avoidable; they all started with tiny problems, little slip ups.  Stuff that really shouldn’t matter but when it came to the crunch, really did. And like a ship that was built to survive a collision, an oil rig able to survive an almighty storm or a space craft that should have got to the moon, the way we decide to live today determines how we will survive when it comes to the crunch.

So what has this got to do with taming bad habits? If I get to bed late every night, I wake up tired, I put unnecessary pressure on my day, my health and even my family.  We are, like it or not, made up of the sum of our daily decisions, our habits good and bad.  So what are you doing over and over ?  Maybe it is time to change the thread?

‘The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.’ Matthew 7 v25, NIV

He believes in you.

ClairesTeaParty just relocated 6761 airmiles from the UK to Singapore. She has also been asked to write a 50,000 word book in two months. No pressure then Consequently, she will be blogging intermittently until she’s at least 35,000 words in. Please pray for me. Thanks so much for stopping by, it’s better with you here xxx

Tagged as: change your habits, crunch days, Encouragement, God, Inspiration, love, overcome bad habits, self help, when it comes to the crunch, why bad habits matter