“Nothing is stronger than habit.”  Ovid

Think of one habit you have that you would consider bad.  How does it serve you?

You will always reap what you sow! (Gal. 6:7c; NLT)

Habits can be friend or foe.  We all have some good habits and unfortunately, we all have some bad habits.  Interestingly enough, what is a good habit for you may be a bad habit for me.  Go figure!

Good habits serve you.  Bad habits don’t.  It’s as simple as that.  In The Slight Edge, Jeff Olson writes, “Brushing your teeth is a habit that serves you; biting your nails is one that doesn’t.  Thinking things through for yourself serves you; blindly accepting everything you read on the Internet or hear on television doesn’t.  Looking for the best in people serves you; anticipating their worst doesn’t.”

Habits are done unconsciously, i.e., without thinking about them.  I’ve read that more than 90% of our daily behavior is unconscious.  Scary, isn’t it?  We truly are creatures of habit.  But again, that can be a good thing…if we’ve developed a preponderance of habits that serve us.  Unfortunately, most people don’t give it much thought.  They just go about their habit-driven lives blaming the circumstances around them.  Little do they understand that they are, in fact, creating their circumstances with their habits.

Olson again: “Getting up early can become a habit.  So can getting up late and staying up late.  Complaining can become a habit.  Spending more than you earn can become a habit; so can putting a piece of every paycheck into a retirement account.  Looking for the positive side of every challenge can become a habit, so can finding the cloud in every silver lining.”

One of the secrets to changing a habit is to become aware of it.  As long as it continues to operate on the unconscious level, you don’t have a chance to change it.  Once you are able to view the habit for what it is doing for (or to) you, then you have a fighting chance to change it if you determine that it is not serving you.  However,  it is not as simple as just focusing or becoming aware of it and purposing to change.  You can’t just say, “I’m not going to do that anymore!” because you see, there is another law at work here…what you focus on, grows. 

The only way to successfully replace a bad, non-serving habit is by displacing it with a good habit that does serve you.  Don’t focus on the bad habit–instead, focus on the good one that will displace the bad one.  Then, of course, you must simply repeat that good activity over and over and over again, until it becomes the new habit.  It’s not really as hard as it may sound, but it certainly does take commitment.  As Winston Churchill is famous for saying, “Never, never, never give up!

BTW, “trying” to do something, for example, I’m going to TRY to make this exciting new activity a habit, is NOT commitment!  Commitment is “doing,” e.g., I’m going to DO this new activity until it becomes a habit for me.  But, then again, that’s fodder for another Daily Gram.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Prayer Power
Lord, we thank You for true friends that are willing to risk the relationship to show us something that we’re doing that is not serving us well.  We thank You that You have given us the ability to rise above our circumstances and form new, good habits.  Forgive us for those times we choose to ignore our abilities and play the victim game.  We truly are incredibly blessed!

Link of the Day
18 Tricks to Make New Habits Stick

Blessings on you as you choose one habit that is not serving you and you purpose to replace it.