Well Words Wednesday | November 2024
11 06 2024
New Season~New Habits
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13
Autumn is a time of change and transition. We notice these changes visually and in the air. We transition from the greens of summer to the vibrant colors of fall and from the oppressive heat and thunderstorms to cool brisk mornings and bright blue skies. This season is a suitable time to embrace the concept and energy of change. After all, aren’t you invigorated by the cooler mornings and crisp clean air?
The past few months the focus of my blog was on our thoughts and our emotions. This month I want to discuss our actions and behaviors. Specifically, I am going to focus on the action of creating new habits. This often includes eliminating an unhealthy behavior and replacing it with a more desirable one.
Think of some area of your life you would like to positively change. It could be your diet, losing weight, increasing your daily step count, adding a strength and/or aerobic exercise program to your weekly routine, making time for meditation and quiet reflection each day, having more intentional prayer time, spending more time reading scripture, being more intentional about reaching out to others, or helping those less fortunate. It could be anything you think would be beneficial to your wellbeing and your relationship with God and others.
My husband says I am particularly good at creating innovative ideas and plans, but I don’t always follow through (for which he is sometimes quite relieved). New Year’s Day is one of my favorite holidays. In addition to the football and traditional Hoppin John, collards, cornbread, and pork, I love to take time to reflect on the previous year and creatively devise plans for improvement in the upcoming year. This reflection and establishing new goals usually begin right after Christmas and culminate on New Year’s Day. The plan is made and fizzles out a few weeks later as life takes hold. What is it that makes change so difficult? We might start out with a good intention, followed by positive action, only to find ourselves reverting to old patterns of behavior in just a few weeks’ time.
To make a successful change and make it last, you need to focus more on the process, rather than the goal. Think about what happens to others who have set lofty New Year’s resolutions to improve their physical health. The first week or two the gyms are full. There is an increase in the sales of running shoes and exercise attire. In a month or two, the crowded gyms have resumed their previous status. There must be something more to establishing a new habit than making resolutions or setting goals.
Behavioral scientists have researched the many facets of change, setting goals, and the act of creating new habits. Let’s explore some processes of successful behavior change:
1) Take an honest assessment of your current situation. Acknowledging and accepting where you are at the present time is the first step towards making a change. This small step in and of itself can be freeing and motivating.
2) Change takes energy and motivation. Surprisingly, resistance to making a change takes more of your energy than the energy required to make a change. In the back of your mind, you hear your inner critic (negative thoughts) chastise you about not making the change you want to make. The inner critic can weigh you down and zap your energy. When your energy is depleted, your motivation also gets depleted.
3) In order to make changes, we need to identify our “why.” This is the first and most important step. What gets you up each morning? What gives your life its meaning? Is it your faith, your family, your health, a rewarding hobby, your work, or a volunteer position? It could be a combination of factors. Your intrinsic values are the ones that motivate you, not the extrinsic ones, like fitting into a once beloved dress or pair of your favorite old jeans. The “why” is what drives long term success.
4) How we see ourselves feeds our behavior. If we see ourselves as an unhealthy eater or as overweight, we are prone to keep repeating the same behaviors. We must change our identity to successfully change our behaviors. We must create a vision of our new identity. The late American psychologist, William James said “You’re not what you think you are, but what you think, you are!”
5) As we change our identity, it is easier to change our habits. Our positive thoughts related to the new identity feed the formation of our new habits. The two are related: new identity and new habits.
6) The repetition of a new behavior is what leads to the formation of a new habit. You don’t have to expect perfection, but if you slide one day, make sure to get back on track the next day. Remember, it is the consistent repetition of the new behavior that creates the new habit. The good news is that once the new behavior gets practiced repeatedly, you will have to spend less time intentionally thinking about the behavior. The new behavior will become a habit that is second nature to you. That is the beauty of habits, and how they are formed. If you are interested in learning more about habit formation, I would suggest James Clear, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits. He offers practical strategies that teach you how to become skilled with building small behaviors that result in amazing results.
New season, new habit? Any season is the right time to eliminate a bad habit or work on adding a good habit. The key is to turn the desired behavior into an automatic behavior that requires no thought or willful intention. This can only happen through prayer, visualizing the new identity, and repetition of the new behavior.
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new come. 2 Corinthians 5:17