Tag Archive for: experiments

The Stationery Aisle Experiment

I read a lot. Its been a habit of my lifetime.
If anything, though, I probably read too fast.
Occasionally I use a well-worn red highlighter pencil to mark memorable passages. I had picked it up somewhere and I’ve been using it for ages.
But with all the thoughts recently at work about little experiments and micro habits, I decided to make a small behavioural change in early March.
It started, slightly randomly, in Tesco.
I was in the stationery aisle and decided, for no big reason, to buy a new set of highlighting pencils. And then a pencil case, because once you start, you may as well commit properly.
The idea was simple. Slow down. Pay attention. Make reading a bit more deliberate.
Now when I’m reading, I’m looking for something. Not in a forced, academic way. Just 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆. When a sentence stands out, I stop. That’s the key change. I actually stop.
I pick a colour, underline it, maybe read it again.
That pause is doing more work than I expected.
It breaks the habit of rushing through.
It makes me sit with the idea for a second instead of immediately moving on. It turns reading from something passive into something a bit more active, without making it feel like hard work.
I’ve noticed too, somehow it’s strangely more satisfying.
There’s something about having a pencil in hand, about marking a page, that makes the whole thing feel more intentional.
And when I flick back through, seeing those bits of colour scattered across the pages, it feels like a record of what actually landed. Not what I read, but what stayed.
It’s early, but I think it’s working.
I’m not reading less. I’m just reading with a bit more awareness. A bit more care.
All from the idea of experimentation with behavioural change and a small decision in a Tesco aisle.
It turns out slowing down isn’t about reading less, it’s about 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆.
Where else could a small pause make a big difference for you?

The Laboratory of Life

Life is a laboratory, much like the scientific lab where our son Kyle works tirelessly to test and refine ideas.
As a PhD student in Chemistry, Kyle’s experiments often lead to setbacks, frustrations, and occasional breakthroughs.
He invests countless hours in refining, testing and validating something over long periods of time, transforming theories into realities.
Sometimes he fails, things don’t go quite as expected and yet every small action he takes, contributes to the bigger picture.
Yet, through his experiments with different strategies, learning from those experiences, continuously pushing forward that ultimately leads to success and sometimes unexpected results.
His insights and knowledge grow through his struggles.

Life Lessons

Like Kyle’s research, life provides opportunities to learn from successes and failures, just as those experiments do for him in his laboratory.
Similarly, life’s challenges and experiences test our character, faith, and resilience, shaping us into who we are meant to become.
Our everyday experiences and situations act like a science lab, where we learn, experiment, and observe how to navigate different challenges and situations.
Like Kyle’s experiments, each of us are in a way, proven in the laboratory of our own life.
Sometimes in life, things don’t go quite as we had hoped or planned.
We experiment with our human experience, and through our struggles, our efforts and hard work, truths are established.
I believe that the purpose of all of our life experiences, or those testing experiments we sometimes endure, help us to grow and become more like our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Personal trials, family difficulties, financial struggles, and health crises, each push our faith to new limits.
By facing each trial, we learn more about ourselves, and more about the gospel principles that can carry us through each test.
In my own laboratory of time, my testimony has been shaped not by one grand moment, but by a thousand small experiments, to trust in God.
“..awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith,… even if ye can no more than desire to believe.” – Alma 32:27
Just like Kyle’s scientific procedures that establish truths, a spiritual experiment produces, conviction, knowledge, light and eternal truths.
Begin your spiritual experiment today.
Act on even the smallest desire to follow Christ, and watch as your faith grows into conviction.