Bad Habits are a Curse; Good Habits are a Blessing
I love sports. Years ago, a man I respected told me the sports section of the newspaper is the best place to find some good news. Most headlines tout tragedies and problems. But the sports section will often relate a story with a happy ending. Like the athlete who has a dream of someday winning a gold medal. He decides to go for it. Now, what will this entail over the next year or the next five years? What kind of diet? What kind of training? In order to attain his goal of going to the Olympics and bringing home a gold medal, this athlete will endure blood, sweat, and tears. And if he reaches his goal, you will hear him declare in the interview: “It was all worth it. Every sacrifice I made, all the hard work I put in, helped me win this medal!”
In Sports Illustrated, Trevor Moawad, a consultant in sports physiology, described a conversation with former Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson:
“Early on, he identified what it took to be No. 1 in the world,” Moawad says. “We talk about the illusion of choice. You don’t really have a wide set of choices if you want to make it to the top. Michael Johnson used to always say distractions are the enemy of an elite athlete. Discipline is the willingness not to do certain things. If I have a bag of Doritos in my left hand and an apple in my right hand, you probably wouldn’t need a nutritionist to tell you which was better for you. So why would you choose the apple? Most of sports comes down to simple choices like that. I think we want to make it seem complicated, but the reality is, it’s doing the simple things savagely well. If I form a habit, that habit forms me, good or bad. Without sticking to the plan, there is little point in having one.”
My band teacher in junior high school used to say, “Perfect practice, makes perfect”. So, if I want to live a life worth living, I must develop good, healthy habits and practice living out those habits, one at a time, day in and day out. It is essential to keep rehearsing the right thing, the right way, time after time, after time. Then, slowly, the bad habits which kept me trapped in the old ruts will fly right out the window and my new, good habits will keep me on track, even when the going gets rough. This is now the new normal! It’s what I always do! Now it feels natural. It’s my new autopilot. My new habits move me toward my goal of pleasing God and living right.
Bad habits are a curse; good habits are a blessing. In order to live the life I wanted to live, I needed to unlearn my bad ways of acting and begin to develop good habits. This required time and effort on my part, but the benefits made it all worthwhile. Just like learning to ride a bike, the person who wants to learn a new sport or acquire a new habit will fail. Slips and falls are to be expected. All that’s needed is to get right back up and go back to doing what is good and true and healthy.
This is one area where I found my journal to be especially helpful. It was a place to go and write out what happened. When I made a mistake, I then had an excellent opportunity to analyze how it took place. What led up to acting out? What changes would I make to avoid “slipping up” next time?
I began to realize that so many of my behaviors happened subconsciously, without me really thinking about them. Lusting had become second nature for me. I had developed the habit of looking for something to stimulate me. While I may have said I was opposed to this kind of behavior, my actions showed I found it pleasurable. In order to get rid of these bad habits, I needed to replace them with good habits. This is essential for anyone who desires a new and better life and can only come about through intentional living. New behaviors don’t just happen automatically. I had to remain focused and maintain my mind in “battle mode” in order to make good choices quickly and easily. Recovery is basically the process of replacing old, unhealthy habits with positive habits so that the right thing becomes the “automatic” behavior.
As the saying goes, “failing to plan is planning to fail”. While I could quote this saying, I was not putting it into practice in my own life. My excuse was that pornography just snuck up on me and overpowered me. Now I see I simply allowed bad habits I had acquired over time to rule my life. I had been “practicing” doing the wrong things for years. Now I discovered that the key to changing these habits is intentional behavior. If I just let things happen, I would certainly fall back into the rut of doing what I had always done. To begin a new life, I had to consciously relearn how to act. I had to think first and then act, before allowing “auto-pilot” to take over. I needed to make a decision to do the right thing and then follow through with this strategy—to “plan my work, and work my plan”.
Most of the situations we face in life are not new. We have seen it all before. We need to go into the ball game knowing that the other team likes to blitz or that they have a really strong player. It is possible to prepare for temptations and be ready for them ahead of time.
The only way for change to take place in my life is for me to take responsibility. I have to recognize that I am not a victim. It is up to me to learn from past mistakes, ask for help, make a plan and move forward to carry out that plan. And do all of this of course, with prayer and help from above.
Learn more about breaking free from old habits and living a new life in the book: Jesus Is Better Than Porn
