Ups and Downs

Step aboard the good ship ‘Your Life’ for an exhilarating adventure on the high seas. Sailing, like life itself, is full of ups and downs. From the bliss of steady winds and calm seas to the terror of cyclones; from the relief of seeing the beam of a lighthouse to the anxiety of watching circling sharks; we rise and fall through good times and bad-and we can never be sure what is just over the horizon-shipwreck or buried treasure!

Like the sea we are constantly changing.

Like the sea, life around us is also in continual flux.

One of our sayings at Innovative Resources is that ‘change only happens when it’s noticed’. Just as a sailor needs to be vigilant about even tiny weather changes, so we benefit from noticing change. Positive changes have so much more impact and negative less power if they can be named.

Doom and gloom can descend as suddenly as fog in a shipping channel-paralysing us with fear and obscuring the light we know is out there. The gloom can seem impenetrable and doom our most likely outcome. But, if we want to see the lighthouse beam, sometimes we must be prepared to seek a new position. #UpsandDowns might just prove a means to make that shift; to challenge the fatalism that so often accompanies deficit-saturated thinking.

The 54 Ups and Downs cards portray scenarios any bathtub sailor might experience. And if we want a metaphor reflecting ‘change’ we need look no further that the waves, weather and tides of the ocean. Ray Bowler’s deceptively simple card images depict many of our own responses to the ebb and flow of life.

Extracted from the booklet accompanying  Ups and Downs Card set, published by St Luke’s Innovative Resources, 2010