This morning, I failed at keeping one of my goals for the new year. As a matter of fact, I failed last night too. I wrote down on my goal sheet for the year that on weeknights I wanted to be in bed by 11:00 PM, and I wanted to be up before work by 6:30 AM. Last night I was in bed around 11:30, and this morning I was out of the bed at about 6:45. So, I failed.
Kind of.
The honest truth is that I was really happy with this shortcoming, because it was still a step in the right direction for me. I have never been great with early mornings, but I’ve wanted to create a better morning routine for quite a while. I’ve wanted to create space for consistent prayer and quiet time, and morning seems the best time for that. This goal would allow me time before my kids get up and we get in the “get everybody ready for school and work” rush. The bed time just allows me to actually be functional at the wake time. And even though I missed the exact minute, which is something I intend to get closer and closer on, I still succeeded in getting up at the alarm, not snoozing until 7:45, and I spent some time in prayer and did my Bible reading.
Tonight I will have the opportunity to intentionally go to bed early again, and tomorrow I’ll have the opportunity to wake up early again and create that space. It’s up to me whether or not I take that opportunity. It’s up to me to work towards creating and keeping those habits, or it’s up to me to let myself stay up late watching Netflix or playing games online with friends and then sleep in because I need sleep to function the next day.
This is a time of year when many of us are trying to do things to change something in our lives or better ourselves somehow. And many of us fail at living up to the standard we’ve set for ourselves. What I’ve learned, and what I want to share, is that we have to keep at it. I don’t mean this just in a feel-good, “You can do it! Just keep trying!” sort of way. I mean there is something fundamental about the role of repetition in building new habits. If we stop a new action because it didn’t catch on right away, we are actually short-circuiting the habit-building process. When we stop a new action because it didn’t catch on, we are actually ensuring that it never will.
As we perform a behavior or an action, we are actually building neural pathways in our brains. The more we perform the behavior, the more engrained that pathway becomes, and the faster and easier and more automatic that behavior becomes. That’s why breaking habits is hard. We are actually working against engrained neural pathways that have become automatic for us.
However, building new pathways is possible. This Forbes article on changing your brain talks about neuroplasticity and mentions that a key to changing your brain is “sustained practice of a new behavior.” And this Health Transformer article talks about how doctors can use this idea of building new neural pathways to help their patients (specifically, diabetes patients) have hope for developing new lifestyles that will enable them to live healthy. Notice in the section “The importance of repetition,” it says that it takes an estimated 3-6 months for a new behavior to become a habit. What does that mean for us? It means that failing one time, or five times, or twenty times isn’t as meaningful to our success as continuing to try again and again and again despite the shortcomings.
The idea of repeated actions forming habits that can change your life isn’t really new. The science may be new, but the idea isn’t. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle tells us that virtue is gained by habitual, deliberate action in specific situations. When we look at all the possible actions we could take, and we deliberately take the one(s) that leads to the achievement of the end goal, and we do that regularly and habitually, we will become better people (I am paraphrasing a lot here!). And in the Bible, what is the instruction from Paul in the Epistles if not an attempt to help people change their habitual actions in order to come closer to God?
“Don’t you know that the runners in a stadium all race, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way to win the prize. Now everyone who competes exercises self-control in everything. However, they do it to receive a crown that will fade away, but we a crown that will never fade away. Therefore I do not run like one who runs aimlessly or box like one beating the air. Instead, I discipline my body and bring it under strict control, so that after preaching to others, I myself will not be disqualified.”
Paul is urging us to train ourselves in order to achieve what God has for us. It’s interesting that in Galatians 5:22-23 it lists self-control among the fruit our lives will show if we are filled with the Spirit. It is also interesting, with neuroplasticity in mind, that in Romans 12:2 it says that we should be transformed by the renewing of our minds. To bring all this together, I believe that training ourselves looks like building habits and intentionally, maybe even painstakingly, sticking to them.
As you step into this new year with all your goals in mind, with all the changes you hope to make, look at it as Paul looks at it. We are all runners in a race. We all go at our own pace. We all have our own trips and stumbles. But what’s important is that we all train ourselves—we all bring our bodies under discipline. We learn and practice self-control and deliberately and intentionally build the habits we know will change our lives for the better.
If you failed today, be diligent and intentional to try again tomorrow!
The Endeavor 
Great word and of course very timely! I learned in 7th grade that “repetition is the mother of all learning.” And remember it to this day. As a musician, I can’t forget it haha! The 10,000 hour rule is pretty neat too.
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