Grind Archives - Leonard McElveen

Can Habits Change?

Have you ever wondered why you keep doing the same thing over and over. It feels like you’re in this place where it seems as if life has you in this continuous loop. Something good will happen and then something from your past keeps coming back into the picture. Or the time that you decide that you’re going to start a new diet is when a co-worker decides to bring in sweets into work. Then it seems like we have to restart our diet all over again.

So can we change our habits? Are we stuck they way we are? The simple answer is that yes we can change our habits! No, we’re not stuck being the same person forever. We can grow and change, but it’s up to us on how to do it.

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Here are a couple of ways that we can develop the habits we desire and move in a different direction.
Habits are like paved roads in our minds and actions. We do things a certain way because at some point we paved a way in our mind of how it should be accomplished. That paved road became easier and easier the more we traveled it. Developing a new habit isn’t tearing up the old road, but it is laying a road that we need to travel instead of the old road. This is why sometimes we can fall back into old habits and ways of thinking.

1. Identify the Cues

There is usually something that triggers a habit. When it comes to bad habits it can be stress, or an environment that will bring certain feelings and then the habit. Your alarm going off in the morning may be triggering you to hit the snooze button.

2. Disrupt the Cue

Once we are able to identify the Cue, then we can change the triggers. With our example of the snooze button. If we’re hitting the snooze when the alarm goes off, then to disrupt the cue, we would move the alarm clack to the other side of the room. Actually having to get up out of the bed and walk across the floor disrupts the cue.

3. Replace the Cue

Ripping up the old road is a lot harder than paving a new one. Basically it is easier to replace a bad habit than it is to completely stop a bad a habit. The new habit will interfere with the old habit and stop us from going into autopilot.

4. Forgive Yourself

The whole process of starting a new habit takes time. We can be our hardest critics, so forgive yourself when there is a slip up. The entire process of changing a bad habit is not an easy one. Know that there will be hiccups along the way. Just don’t allow the hiccups to stop you.

Discussion Question:

What habits do you want to change?

The Morning Routine You Need

I like to get the most out of my day. I feel like it is a good day when at night I can look back and feel like I accomplished something. It’s a good feeling to have days where you feel productive. Productivity has a way of making you feel better in every area of your life.

Netflix & What Would’ve Been

I despise the feeling of having a day off of work or being on vacation and wanting to get so many things done, and yet somehow nothing gets done. If you’re like me, you have this day marked on your calendar and you expect having a “free day” to do whatever you need or want. However, the great plans that you had disappeared when you sat down to catch up on your Netflix queue. Before you know it, you’ve watched an entire season of House of Cards, it’s 6 o’ clock and you still haven’t showered!

Start the Right Way

One of the most important things that I’ve learned over the last couple of years is how important your morning routine is to the start of a great day. You can pretty much Google “How to have a great morning,” and get plenty of advice on how to get the most out of your day. What I see from these tips and morning routines are the biblical principles that God has laid out for us. So what does God say about how we are to start our day.

1. Plan the night before

The start to a great day actually begins the night before. Proverbs 21:5 Says that “the plans of the diligent leads to abundance”. A successful day actually begins the day before. Too many times we just let the day happen to us. We need to plan how we want our days to look in advance.

2. Praise & Worship

I like to start my day with some Praise & Worship. This helps me so that I’m not tempted to go back to sleep. Offering up praise and worship to God is a way get our blood pumping and our bodies moving. Having this time of praise and worship has a way of opening our hearts and helps us focus on God’s goodness at the start of the day.

3. Devotional

Having a good devotional is a benefit. Most devotionals give a daily scripture, some reflection and a prayer at the end. I really like devotionals because they offer a focus for the day. It provides context and gives me a reference for what I can refer to throughout the day. Joshua 1:8 says it best. We are to “meditate on God’s word day and night.” Devotionals are great for this.

4. Pray

By this point in the morning routine, there you should flow from one thing to the next. It can be easy to flow from the devotional prayer to a time of personal prayer. For me, I like to begin my personal time with expressing to God how thankful I am. Our prayer time should focus on God rather than ourselves. While there are times we do need to express issues of our lives to God, there should also be times where we are praying for our families, friends and communities.

5. Journal

I am a big fan of writing in a journal. For me, it’s a great way to reflect on the previous day, and a way to transfer the thoughts in my head out on paper. Sitting down to journal after a time of prayer is a great way of getting in the habit of writing the things down that God tells us. Making using a journal a part of your morning routine helps to value God’s voice and His word.

6. Confessions/Affirmations

Ending the morning routine with confessions or affirmations is an awesome way to build up our confidence and self-esteem before we step into the world. God’s word is most powerful when we speak it out of our mouths. We don’t just become the things we see and hear, we become what we say. Confessing God’s word over lives builds us up for so many things that we attack during the day.

Have you developed a morning routine? If not, what is holding you back? Let’s start today with getting the most out of our days.

Celebrate the Victories

Victories and Setbacks

Throughout life we all experience victories and setbacks. Sometimes in life it can seem like we go from one disappointment to the next. It can feel like our lives are just full of tragedies, disappointments, and setbacks. This can color our view of life and push us into depression or anger. To combat these emotions, we must learn to celebrate the victories.

Remember the Past

In the Old Testament, the children of Israel are a great example of this very principle. They would start by following God, then they would stop following God, get into trouble, complain about the trouble, and God would deliver them. This pattern was consistent with them and can be with us also. A pattern where we go from one troubling situation to another asking God to help us through each one. One of the reasons that I think they didn’t break this pattern was because they would always focus on the bad situation. They had a hard time celebrating the victories that God had done for them.

They were in slavery in Egypt for 400 years. God delivered them through the 10 plagues that came on Egypt, and then crossed the Red Sea by another miracle of God. Yet, after these great things that God had done for them, when they got hungry they complained and whined about how they would die in the desert. They threatened to go back to slavery because to them, that was better than not having any food. Very quickly they forgot about God bringing them out of slavery, and their focus was entirely on not having any food to eat.

Break the Cycle

To break this type of cycle and change our view, we must learn to celebrate the victories. Celebrate the big and small victories. A victory is a victory. What this does for us is helps us to put our focus on good things rather than being focused on the bad. Being able to see the good things will change our attitude and give us something to look forward to, rather than expecting the bad to always happen to us.

The Light House

How we celebrate the victories is important. Not just that we celebrate them, but that we do something memorable. What we do should be meaningful because it will help us to remember each victory. Celebrating plants that victory in our hearts so in a tough time, we can pull that memory out of hearts to help us through. It is like creating a light house in our heart. When victory seems far away and it’s hard to see through the storm, that light shines to remind us that we will come through the storm.

Begin today to celebrate the victories in your life. We all have victories, big and small, it is up to us to celebrate them.