I’ve been going to church since I was 5 years old. I still remember tip toeing down the aisle, walking between legs that loomed tall like trees. I loved feeling the wooden pew cuddling me while the organ thundered each hymn. The stained glass windows glittered with stories of Jesus. I felt safe and held.
I have a deeply ingrained habit of going to church. Things feel off if I’m unable to go for some reason. A Sunday without church feels like peanut butter without jelly! This weekend I’m missing my “jelly” as we wrap up a family Covid quarantine. Thankfully it’s mild cases for us, but it is odd anticipating a morning without my fundamental habit.
Habits are powerful little things. They are thoughts or actions we repeat regularly. We don’t think too much about doing our habits; rather they often happen on autopilot, like how you wash your hair or the route you take to the grocery store. Researchers at Duke University reveal that habits direct 40 percent of our behaviors each day. Wowzas, that’s a lot!
Read more: Big Goals, Little HabitsHabits like:
- Washing your hands after you go to the bathroom
- Eating a bowl of ice cream while you watch tv
- Chewing your nails when you feel anxious
- Shaking out a towel before you fold it
- Putting your right shoe on before your left
- Going to church on Sunday morning
Our lives are built on habits. We all have them, whether we’re aware of them or not. These habits shape and reflect who we are, what we believe, and what we accomplish in life.
As Christians we see the impact of habits when we consider spiritual disciplines. Acts such as daily prayer, bible reading, and fasting deepen ones relationship with God. Spiritual disciplines are habits. But habits aren’t isolated to these disciplines. They run our lives and they lead us to results. If we want intentional results, we will link our habits to our goals.
James Clear, in his best selling book Atomic Habits clarifies the relationship between our goals and habits:
“Goals are the results we want to achieve; a system (of habits) is the process that leads us to those results.”
This begs the question…are my habits helping me reach my goals?
To answer this, we must be aware of our goals and our habits. If you haven’t set any goals for yourself, consider what you want to do in life. Or dream your goals with the help of this post.
Once you have your goal in mind, take a look at your habits. This can be tricky to do considering many of our habits happen without much thought. If a habit stays hidden on auto-pilot, we have little hope to change it. We must become aware of our habits. Awareness happens by observing our life.
Become a detective during the day, noticing your habits. What do you do when you wake up in the morning? What do you do when you leave your house? How do you eat your food? Do your best to stay present in your day so you can see what is happening in real time. Write down the habits you notice – and keep adding to the list as your awareness builds.
Once you have your list of habits, decide if they are helping you become the person you want to be. Or put another way, if they are helping you reach your goal. James Clear describes this as creating a habits scorecard. Look at each behavior on your list, and ask yourself if it’s effectively helping you reach your goal (+), leading you astray from your goal (-), or neither effective nor ineffective (=).
I went through this process with my goal to go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. I first observed what I was doing at night. My routine (which is a collection of habits) was to say goodnight to the kids, come downstairs and eat some kind of sweet dessert while Jim and I watched Survivor or some other binge worthy show. Or I would scroll on my phone or work on my computer until 11 PM or later, then drag myself up to brush teeth, put on jammies, and go to bed.
Once I had identified my habits, I made my habit scorecard. It looked something like this:
Goodnight to kids (=)
Eat sweet dessert (-) because sugar leads to restless sleep
Watch TV (-) because stimulating shows gets my brain going making it more difficult to sleep
Scroll on phone/work on computer (-) because blue light from my devices negatively affects my circadian rhythm
Brush teeth (+) because I sleep better with clean teeth
Jammies on (+) because nice and cozy
Go to bed (+) because I love my bed 🙂
Clearly there were some habits I was doing that were not serving me. And others that were helpful. My routine needed some tweaking, including establishing new habits, and breaking ones that didn’t serve me.
Next week I’ll share how we can establish habits that serve our goals – and break those that don’t. For now, become an observer of your life. Make your own habit scorecard with your goal in mind. And celebrate that you’re taking helpful steps toward the transformation goals promise!
Bethel Wellness 