FISH! For Life

I read the above book by Stephen Lundin, John Christensen and Harry Paul late last year.  It tells the story of two people who met at Seattle's famous Pike Place Fish Market and later fell in love.  The FISH! philosophy, which started at this Fish Market, became a world-wide phenomenon.  What was so successfully applied in the work place can now be transposed to that of the home.  The book narrates how the two people endeavoured to apply the philosophy in the area of stress, weight control, personal finance and much more.


What is the FISH! Philosophy then? It is encapsulated in these 4 points:
Play:  Carry a light heart with you wherever you go
Make their Day: You can make someone's day simply by the way you engage them
Be There: Bringing consciousness, body and spirit into the same space is a gift to yourself and to the world
Choose Your Attitude: The attitude you have right now is the one you are choosing; choose wisely


Play talks about not taking things too seriously all the time; sometimes humour can liven up the atmosphere and change the course of how things would eventually turn out.  Children are naturally good at this. They can diffuse a tense situation with their innocent comment.


Make their Day means to be others-centred and not focused too much on oneself.  If we carry this mindset with us, we can certainly influence and impact alot of people in a positive way.  And as believers in the Lord, this should come naturally to us.


Be There has to do with giving our undivided attention to a matter or person.  How often times in worship services are we present to truly worship God?  We cannot worship God aright if our mind is forever thinking of lunch or work matters or problems that bug us.  Being present for our loved ones is also vital, to be fully engaged with them in work and conversations.


Choose your attitude - yes this is a choice we have to make as well.  What kind of attitude do we want to bring with us to work, church or home?  We can choose to be angry (and stay angry) or we can choose to forgive (and move on).  A lot of circumstances in life would militate against us choosing a positive attitude.  But the Bible tells us to have the mind of Christ (Phil 2:5) whereby He humbled himself to the point of death on the cross.  Often times, our pride gets in the way of a positive gracious attitude.


Recently our children we very sad and grieved over the condition of one of their hamsters.  It was suffering from fur loss and was looking rather sickly.  This caused them to research on hamsters on the web and call up a vet to enquire about it's condition.  As parents, we were not prepared to waste money bringing it to the vet as it probably was nearing its life expectancy.  But they persisted and continued to dig up information and bargained with us.  You see they were there for their pet hamster and very much wanted to make the day for their hamster by seeing to it that it is nursed back to health.  To cut a long story short, they did bring it to the vet eventually on their own and was given medication for it. The hamster is now on the road to recovery, separated from the other hamster of course.  They chose an attitude of compassion and love towards their pet hamster while we chose one that is disconnected from the hamster because we had no relationship with it. Certainly children can teach us much in life as we do to them.


Here's wishing you a blessed and fruitful Lunar New Year! 新年快乐