Developing a habit
“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”
According to the dictionary, a habit is “an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary: the habit of looking both ways before crossing the street.” We have some we like (such as bathing in the morning or brushing our teeth) and many we realize we need to eliminate (drinking coffee or sodas) and develop (regular exercise, healthy nutrition). Most of us have struggled all our lives with some habits, and have allowed our repeated failures at not changing them discourage us from even trying. As a matter of fact, you’ve probably developed a habit of failing at changing your habits! But let’s not think too much about that.
I’m here to encourage you that you can change a habit - you can eliminate bad ones and you can develop new ones. Unfortunately the process takes t-i-m-e. You’ve all heard messages that say you can develop a new habit in 21 days or 30 days. However, we’ve probably all done things for 30 days, been really excited about hitting the mark, and then completely stopped the new behavior for reasons we can’t even identify. I’m here to tell you, you can’t develop a habit in 30 days. Thirty days is enough time to be able to see the first signs of positive change from a new behavior; that can be motivation to continue. It will get easier every month, but even at the end of one or two years, you could still be telling yourself to do whatever it is you want to do. It will probably take 3 to 5 years of regular repetition before you’ve done it often enough that you perform it without conscious thought.
Before we go into the steps of developing a new habit, first let’s talk about the guilt you feel when you do something you don’t want to or fail to do something you believe you should. Let me bring up something I read about the vagus nerve - which sends and receives messages between the brain and all the different organs in your body. It’s the main way your brain keeps up with your body and determines which hormones/factors/etc. need to be distributed to respond to the current situation. And if the brain is getting too many messages from the vagus, it will get overwhelmed! According to Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz in their book YOU: STAYING YOUNG, The Owner’s Manual for Extending Your Warranty (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 100: “From experiments with rats we know that the vagus plays a role in overall immunity. When they’re given an infection in the gut, the rats go into septic shock. Their blood pressure drops, their organs fail, and then they die. Now give the rats the same exact infection and cut the vagus nerve. What happens? Bingo. They live.” Apparently, if the rodent brain gets too many messages from the body, it overdeploys the immune response, and the body’s own immune response will kill it, not the infection. We also know we can “soothe” the vagus nerve through meditation to prevent the overreactions of the body’s response system. We see the effectiveness of this type of meditation in the case of firewalkers who walk slowly over burning coals barefoot and other such disciplines - the ability to soothe the vagus nerve from sending too many messages to the brain.
As Paul said in Romans Rom 14:22, “The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves.”(NASU) The habits you have are the habits you have. And being anxious about them is just going to add to the messages your brain is receiving about what’s going on in your body. If you think every time you drink a cup of coffee, “This is really bad for me,” you’re more likely to talk your body into a negative response to your habit.
So what can be done? Well, first consider all the things you would like to change about yourself. Make a written list, and don’t just write down goals (lose 30 lbs), but write out the necessary activities (exercise 4 days a week, eat five small nutritious meals a day). Also list the negatives - no longer drink alcohol or soda or Starbucks, etc. Include goals in all the four major areas of life: physical, spiritual, mental, social. Create a visual image of yourself with all the changes made. This can be your five or ten year end result.
Next, once you have your list, set your priorities. Identify the ones that are most important to change. For example, if you think you might be on the verge of getting fired for being late, your priority might be getting out of the house on time for work. And then place descending priority levels on the remaining items on your list. You can have two or three at each priority level, but don’t try to change too much at one time - that could overwhelm your brain! Then divide the items up into years - so many the first year, so many the second year, etc. on out to five years. Once you have all your habits prioritized, just tell yourself next time you feel guilty about drinking cofee, I’ll take care of coffee drinking next year, right now I’m dealing with XXXX. And enjoy the coffee! That way, you “soothe” yourself with your plan for dealing with it, without distracting your focus from what you’re trying to change right now.
I find that if I want to work on several things at one time, it’s easier if they’re in different arenas. So I’ll have one or two physical habits plus one or two spiritual habits I’ll be working on at the same time. It doesn’t seem as hard to me if they’re in different arenas to be doing them concurrently. But I know from experience that if I try to cut out sodas and Starbucks at the same time, I fail at both!
Third, write out a plan for the first thing(s) you want to change. Let’s say you want to quit drinking sodas. You might write out that you’ll drink only one soda a day for the first two weeks. Then drop down to one soda a day on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays only after that. I know from experience green tea will virtually eliminate the caffeine withdrawal headache you get when you stop drinking sodas, so I would write to drink green tea three times a day for the first two weeks. Also, drinking 8 oz of water when you want a soda will take the desire for the soda right out of your head, so I would write, drink water every time I think about soda. I would make a list of rules for myself such as: only drink soda at restaurants, never drink soda any day until I’ve had 4 cups of water, drink green tea every morning before going to work, etc. Make a list you believe would work for you. Just a note, quitting cold turkey will usually be too much to maintain, so I wouldn’t recommend that approach for changing a long term habit.
Make a push within the first 48-hour period after you implement your plan to make it as easy as possible for you to succeed. In the soda example, I would throw out all the sodas in the house, have plenty of water and green tea at the house, take a box of tea bags to work, and have healthy snacks on hand to reward myself. I wouldn’t carry change to work so I couldn’t run to the soda machine. I would take steps to help myself avoid the temptation to return to my old habit.
Once the first item seems somewhat under control, start on the next item on your list. Try to develop a tentative plan for all the items in your first year. Give yourself plenty of time to get used to the new behavior, because you want to maintain the first behavior when you start on the next one. For example, I start with eliminating sodas in January, then in March, I start walking 30 minutes a day (while still not drinking sodas). In July, I add eating 5 servings of raw vegetables a day. Or let’s say for spiritual goals, I start in January with reading three chapters in the Bible a day. In March, I’m going to add 15 minutes a day in prayer. In April, I’ll add 30 minutes a week in meditation and scripture memorization. And so on. Hang on to each new behavior when you start working on the next one. If you feel overwhelmed, return to the previous schedule until you’re ready to move on to the next step. It doesn’t do any good to move on to the next behavior if it causes you to let go of the first one. And remain positive. God will help you to make the changes He has led you to pursue.
Fourth, stay on course. If you totally blow it one day, get back on track the next day. Or if it’s a repeated activity such as eliminating or adding certain foods to your diet, get back on track the next meal. Don’t berate yourself for the failure, but look ahead to the next success. Forgetting what lies behind, looking forward to what lies ahead . . . keep returning to the plan you’ve established.
Finally, keep your eye on the goal. Put a reminder of where you’re headed in a place where you’ll see it daily. You need a DAILY reminder of what it is you want to accomplish. It might be a picture of what you’ll look like when you’ve lost weight because of your nutritious diet or what your life will look like when you’re in that new relationship or job. Or it could be a written goal posted on your makeup mirror. You just need something that will trigger the mental image of you being successful. Changing your habits is work. If it’s too easy, you’re not moving forward. And if you’re not going forward, you will eventually forget what it is you’re trying to accomplish. It will be lost in the trivia of your daily routine. God wants you to have a future and a hope. We need to live lives that have purpose and direction. Always be working and looking toward your next achievement.
If you’re consistent in following through on your plans and not pushing yourself further than you’re ready to go, you’ll be a different person at the end of five years. And the actions you take today will determine the habits you have tomorrow and your character in five years. As I said on my purpose page, the time’s going to pass anyway. Why not use that time to pursue changes that will improve your life?
That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved. Ralph Waldo Emerson