Okay, but how do I start good daily habits?
How do we make good habits? There’s not a one-size equation for making and breaking habits, but the most important variables are humility, honesty, and and asking for help. You’ll need humility to admit you can’t solve things on your own. You’ll need the honesty to tell God and others the depths of what you’re up against. Finally, you’re going to need to accept help from God, from others, and from guides like this. You can’t keep doing what you’re doing and expect good habits to magically form themselves. You’re going to have to accept and act on outside help. Speaking of help, there’s a lot of really helpful information and ideas in the books above, but here’s a simple acronym to help you get rid of bad habits and start good daily habits.
There’s not a one-size equation for making and breaking habits, but the most consistent variables are humility, honesty, and and asking for help.
Healthy Identity
Many bad habits are there to cover or cope with something unhealthy in your identity. Porn addiction is not just about sexual need. Alcoholism, comfort eating, and even bingeing on entertainment is often a way to cope with something deeper. Constantly checking your phone is not just because there’s always super interesting information on your phone. As you begin to break a bad habit and replace it with a good one, it’s time also to open up about pain, confusion, or anger with people you trust. Let’s dig deep enough not only to replace the old habitual behavior, but also to address whatever identity issues the old habit was trying to solve or soothe. Pastor Craig Groeschel often says, “When you know who you are, you’ll know what to do.” It’s time to heal up open wounds by acknowledging them, forgiving, and believing what God says about us. But, you may not be able to see these wounds alone. Which leads us to the next step.
Ask for Help
You’ll have no problem keeping your bad habit on your own; breaking it is going to require others. Actually, trying to do stuff on your own is a habit worth breaking in and of itself! You might be able to knock out two habits in one. Ask some close friends, family, or even coworkers you trust to check in with you and ask you how you’re doing. Maybe you need to join a specific recovery support group, a Community Group, or get into a good church. A good rule of thumb is: The more personally destructive the habit, the more people you’ll need help from.
Be Kind to Yourself
Making good daily habits is not a perfection zone. On the day that you slip up, be kind to yourself. Don’t give into negative self-talk and self-hatred. Take this as an opportunity to dig a little deeper into whatever the bigger issue is. Spend some more time healing up and asking for help. Think of it as an opportunity for growth, deeper healing, and another chance to reinforce a good daily habit that stands up to all sorts of difficulty. Just like when you get a cold and your immune system gets stronger, this is an opportunity for the self-control that God gave you to grow and get stronger.
Investigate and Make Changes
This step is part of finding healing for your identity, but it takes it to another level. You may have thought you got to the bottom of your eating, spending, procrastinating, bingeing, or whatever. You identified the bad habits. You dug deeper to find some pain, started forgiving, began healing, and you developed a new habit to replace the old one. But maybe something still seems off. Maybe you feel like a joyless robot, just trying to get through life. Maybe you feel like you’ve only solved problems at the surface. Maybe the drinking stopped but you’ve gone to something else negative to cope. Maybe the old habit just won’t give and the new one just won’t set in. It’s time to investigate and make changes. Remember to keep being kind to yourself and asking for help through this process.
As you investigate, you might not have any changes to make just yet. Don’t change what’s working. Do keep repeating what is! Only make changes to your new habits that propel you toward health, growth, and a meaningful life connected to God and others.
Trust the God-Process
Habits tend to get a bad rap, but they’re actually a process God created. Let’s call them a God-process. You should trust that God is in the process of working something new and beautiful in your life as you discover healthy identity, ask for help, be kind to yourself, investigate, and trust His process. Processes like developing good daily habits are not something we make up to avoid needing God’s help—they exist because of His help. When we trust and obey God with our good daily habits they become God-processes. Without God’s help, all of our best efforts can become a self-salvation project—the worst kind of habit there is.
Small Wins Every Day
In his book Atomic Habits James Clear argues relentlessly for the power of small, daily wins. He challenges us to become one percent better each day. Pastor Craig says, “Small disciplines done consistently lead to big results over time.” If you want to run a marathon one day, create an identity goal to enjoy running and a small keystone habit of running at least one minute each day for the first week of your habit. Make your new habit easy and obvious. Allow yourself to grow in strength and discipline incrementally—one day at a time.
You mentioned Keystone habits—what are those?
The fastest way to comprehend keystone habits is to learn what a keystone is. If you’re in construction or architecture, you can fact-check our definition. A keystone is an architectural term for the wedge-shaped stone that would sit at the top and center of an arch of bricks or stones. Each stone in the arch pushes its weight toward the keystone. The triangular shape of the keystone’s wedge causes the entire arch to be supported. If you remove the keystone, the entire structure falls down. In biology, a keystone species is one that entire ecosystems depend on. Likewise, a keystone habit provides support for other habits. Here is a list of keystone habits to consider. What keystone habits do you already have in place? Which will you add? What keystone habits would you add to this list?
- Wake up with enough time to peacefully carry out your morning routine.
- Foster a morning routine that starts with prayer, meditation, and contemplating God’s Word.
- Sleep at least eight hours a night.
- Eliminate soda and follow the 8X8 water rule of drinking at least eight, eight-ounce glasses of water each day.
- Eat at least one meal together with your family or close friends each day.
- Attend a local church weekly, and participate by giving and serving there.
- Exercise at least three days a week for at least 20 minutes.
- Declare some truths about yourself every day.
- If you’re married, hold hands with your spouse every day.
- Verbally encourage at least one person every day.
How do I keep my new habits?
As we mentioned earlier, James Clear wrote Atomic Habits with an important premise. He suggests through research and example stories that habits, like the atoms that make up our world, are best when they’re small, incremental pieces that fit together into a healthy whole. So, instead of just deciding to stop drinking, or stop smoking, or whatever, James would suggest you create a series of very small but related habits that work together to reach your ultimate goal of quitting an addiction, losing weight, or using your phone less.
Okay, we get it. You can’t just stop old habits. You need new, incremental, meaningful habits to replace them. But how do I keep those new habits? Well, you’ve actually just read many of the answers to this question.
We need to realize what a habit actually is, and we need to decide which habits we want to change.
A habit is formed when you consistently meet an important need with a chosen behavior. Write your answers to these questions: What behaviors am I regularly choosing that I don’t want to choose anymore? What triggers those behaviors? What important needs am I trying to meet with those behaviors? What new habits do I want to replace those behaviors with?
We need to acknowledge unmet needs, and we need a healthy identity.
The more difficult the habit is to break, the more likely it’s tied to something deeper that needs healing. This is going to require humility, honesty, and hunger for change. Bring trusted people into your life. Talk to a counselor, a pastor, a healthy friend, and people you love about areas where you may need healing. Use tools like Words to Live By to invite God into these places so you can replace lies and negative self-talk with the truth of God’s Word.
Your new H.A.B.I.T.S will take time.
In addition to discovering healthy identity and asking for help, you need to be kind to yourself when you experience setbacks, investigate whether or not your new habits are getting to the root of things, and trust the processes and small wins that God is using to renew and reshape you over time.
Find a good companion Bible Plan and book as you get started.
Whether it’s one of the books we mentioned above, our new Habits Bible Plan, or something very specific to the habits you’re looking to make and break, you’re going to need some daily help and reminders. Bible Plans are awesome because they go everywhere your phone goes and keep you in the Bible. Books are helpful because they can take longer to finish and can become a long-term companion to your habit-making-and-breaking journey.
Identify which keystone habits you need to make or tweak.
You have habits that set you up either to succeed or to fail in your other habits. This is where good daily habits come in. Things like waking up with enough time for a healthy morning routine, reading the Bible daily, connecting with God through prayer, speaking the truth to yourself, exercising, and others.
We believe in you. There’s a God in heaven who loves you. And there are people around you who care about you.
This article was originally published on Life.Church, you can read it in its entirety here.