The Power to Change: Mastering the Habits That Matter Most

by Craig Groeschel

Winners don’t try. They train.

Trying doesn’t work. Training does. In the classic Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back, Master Yoda tells the young Jedi Luke during training, “You must unlearn what you have learned.” Luke replies, “All right, I’ll give it a try.” Yoda, frustrated, demands, “No! Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”17

To try is to attempt to do the right thing by exerting effort in the moment. To train is to commit to developing strategic habits that equip you to do the right thing in the moment.

training is doing today what you can do today so that you can do tomorrow what you can’t do today.

Trying tends to be a momentary reaction, while training is an ongoing action.

Discipline is choosing what you want most over what you want now.

There’s always something we want now. That now desire is seductive because it promises instant gratification. But those promises rarely deliver. There is also something we want most. That most desire rarely provides instant gratification. But it offers you something far more important—the life you want to live.

you win when you make doing your habit your win.

If you make doing the habit your win, you can win every day.

Private discipline paves the way to public success.

Make doing your habit your win. Obsess over the process instead of the outcome. You don’t get results by focusing on results. You get results by focusing on the actions that get results.

“Habits are behaviors that we repeat consistently. However, they are not behaviors that we repeat perfectly.

I am not losing. I am winning. Because I’m in training. This is a great place to stop and remind yourself, I’m in training. It will take some time to get where I want to go, but every day I am getting closer. And every day I do my habit, I win. That’s success to me.

If you want to change who you’re becoming, change your habits. If you want to change where you’re going, change your habits. If you want to change your life, change your habits.

people don’t ruin their lives by taking one big tragic step. No. It’s never one; more like 56,250.

Disasters are rarely the result of an isolated decision.

Far more earth is moved every day by erosion than landslides. But no one notices erosion, just landslides. Choices are no different.

Good habits are difficult to start because the pain comes now and the payoff is in the future. Bad habits are difficult to stop because the payoff comes now and the pain is in the future.

Let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. —Galatians 6:9 NLT

“fanatical consistency”37 leads to the success of the best of the best. These leaders are successful because of their dogged zealousness of doing the same (usually small) right things over and over.

Successful people do consistently what other people do occasionally.

“It’s a constant quest to try to be better today than you were yesterday.”

You will harvest what you plant. You will get out what you put in. Your outcomes will be determined by your inputs. The results of your life will be based on the decisions you make, the habits you stake, and the habits you break.

We reap what we sow. There’s a law at work. Not a law like “You must do this!” More like how gravity is a law of nature.

If you don’t like what you’re reaping, change what you’re sowing. If you don’t like the harvest, change the seed.

You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. —Galatians 6:7–8 NLT

The cumulative effect is the powerful outcome produced by an action that happens, even if it’s small, over and over across a long period of time.

“Decisions shape your destiny. . . . Little, everyday decisions will either take you to the life you desire or to disaster by default.”47

James Clear writes, “Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.”48

C. S. Lewis, a brilliant Christian thinker and author, wrote about this in his book Mere Christianity: “Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.”50

To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. —Matthew 25:29 NLT

“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want” (Gal. 5:16–17).

The Greek word translated “walk” is peripateo, a present-tense verb. That means you keep doing it;

When you’re winning, you’re winning. When you’re losing, you’re learning.

And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness. —Colossians 2:6–7 NLT