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February 22 - March 1, 2023
Hope doesn’t change your life. Habits do.
to convince myself that I am a person who chooses what’s right over what’s convenient.
Hoping would not grow my relationship with God. Habits would.
Principle 14 Never underestimate how God can start something big through one small habit. The small things no one sees can lead to the big results everyone wants. Success happens not by accident but by habits. If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. —Luke 16:10 NLT
How Are Habits Born? Most experts say we establish habits through a three-step loop: Cue Response Reward Personally, I like the fourth one that James Clear adds: Cue Craving Response Reward27
Here are some examples of bad habit loops:
1. PLACE
2. TIME
3. MOOD
Experts say we need to HALT when we see a mood coming that makes us vulnerable. HALT is an acronym for hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. If you survey your life and find self-destructive habits, you’ll see they often occur when you’re hangry (hungry + angry), all by yourself, or exhausted.
4. MOMENTS
5. PEOPLE
The people we hang with shape our habits. God told us that long before studies confirmed it. Proverbs 13:20 says, “Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm,” and 1 Corinthians 15:33 says, “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’”
Principle 15 A habit is basically behavioral autopilot born of the process of cue, craving, response, and reward. Walk with the wise and become wise; associate with fools and get in trouble. —Proverbs 13:20 NLT
First, Make Your Habit Obvious
In their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, Chip Heath and Dan Heath share research on how important it is to “tweak the environment.” They write, “Many people have discovered that, when it comes to changing their own behavior, environmental tweaks beat self-control every time.” Environmental tweaks? They suggest using a smaller plate if you want to eat less, putting out your sneakers and exercise clothes the night before if you want to jog the next morning, and setting the coffeepot to auto brew at wake-up time so the aroma helps you fight the urge to hit snooze.30
In Atomic Habits, James Clear writes, “You don’t have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it.”31
Behavioral scientists in Great Britain did another study of a couple hundred people who wanted to start exercising. They divided the people into three groups. The first group committed to exercising. The second group committed to exercising and reading lots of material on the benefits of exercise. The third group committed to exercising and chose the day, time, and place when they would do it. Only 36 percent of the those in the first two groups kept their commitment. But 91 percent of the people in the third group kept their commitment.32 Did you catch that? Barely a third of the people in
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One of the ways I’ve established new disciplines over the years is to stack one on top of another. For instance, this is my morning routine: My alarm goes off, waking me up. I go to the bathroom. (Not a chosen habit, but you gotta do what you gotta do.) After going to the bathroom, I do my Bible plan. After doing my Bible plan, I pray. After praying, I read my daily declarations. After reading my daily declarations, I make my oatmeal and put twelve berries in it. (Some days I go crazy and do up to fifteen!) After eating my oatmeal (and berries), I take my supplements. After the supplements, I
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Second, Make Your Habit Attractive
You are more likely to do your habit if you don’t hate doing your habit.
Third, Make Your Habit Easy
experts tell us that when you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.
Starting out, make your habits take less than two minutes to do. You’ll discover that once you start doing the right thing, it’s much easier to continue doing the right thing. But if you make your habit hard to start, you probably won’t.
Better to do less than you were hoping than to do nothing at all. And that small start could take you somewhere really big. I love Zechariah 4:10: “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin” (NLT). How do you start and maintain a new habit? Make it obvious, attractive, and easy.
Fourth, Make Your Habit Communal
Living the right life is almost impossible if you have the wrong friends.
Fifth, Make Your Habit Repetitious
That’s why when you first start something, it feels awkward, difficult, and no fun. But if you keep doing it, it will eventually feel comfortable, natural, and easy. Even fun, maybe?
Obvious Attractive Easy Communal Repetitious
With repetition, that new habit will go from being hard to start to hard to stop.
Principle 16 Make your habit: Obvious Attractive Easy Communal Repetitious Do not despise these small beginnings, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin. —Zechariah 4:10 NLT
You cannot defeat what you cannot define.
So why would I resist a temptation tomorrow if I have the power to eliminate it today?
Principle 17 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
“The small things no one sees can lead to the big results everyone wants.” The big result we want is to be more like Jesus. We’ve said, “Success happens not by accident but by habits.” More than anything else, success is becoming more like Jesus.
Principle 18 Success is becoming more like Jesus. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. —Philippians 3:8 NLT
Successful people are not lucky. They’re consistent.
Successful people do consistently what other people do occasionally.
Some people occasionally put a little money into savings. Others consistently put a little money into savings. Then one day, the occasional people assume the consistent people are lucky that they have so much money set aside. No. It was not luck. It was consistency.
Remember what we saw with Daniel? God granted him favor and used him in all kinds of extraordinary ways. Lucky? No! We were given a key insight into his life: Daniel prayed to God three times every day.
For his 2008 book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell studied successful people. What common thread did he find to explain their success? The answer: ten thousand hours. He discovered that, across the board, people who became great at something put in ten thousand hours of practice.38
It’s not luck. It’s consistency.
“Why do you think I’m the best player in the world? Because I never, ever get bored with the basics.”41
Remember, training is doing today what you can do today so you can do tomorrow what you can’t do today.
Today, through small and consistent decisions, you’re getting somewhere a little at a time. Where are you going? Where will you be in ten years? Who will you
Principle 19 Successful people do consistently what other people do occasionally. Wealth from get-rich-quick schemes quickly disappears; wealth from hard work grows over time. —Proverbs 13:11 NLT
The life you are living right now is shaping the life you will live tomorrow. We all have the best intentions, but intentions don’t determine direction. Actions do.
Hope doesn’t change your life. Habits do.
if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting. The life you’re living today is shaping the life you’ll live tomorrow.
