We can change
Yet there are ways in which we can begin to chip away at our harmful patterns, buoyed by our relationship with God and our relationships with other people:

1. Set reasonable goals. When I was a little girl, every January, I would promise to eat all of my vegetables, go to bed on time, and never fight with my sisters. With deliberate attention to my resolutions, I would proudly persist in my good behavior for perhaps a week or two. But then the cauliflower would be slightly overcooked, or my little sister would play with my toys, or I wouldn’t feel sleepy at bedtime. With a single slip, my entire reconstruction of myself as a new person would come crashing down and the whole list of resolutions would be relegated to the messy pile of papers under my bed! Sound familiar?

So start small. Don’t try to change everything at once. If you first accomplish one reasonably easy goal, it will be easier to think about tackling a more difficult one.

2. Persist. Conventional wisdom is that it takes 28 days to form a habit. Think of a good habit to replace the bad one. Write it into your calendar for the next 28 days and try to act on it each day. For instance, if your bad habit is to forage for a sweet treat when you first get home from work or school, try taking a short walk instead.

3. Expect to backslide. Since bad habits are often more immediately gratifying than good habits, it may take 28 times to develop a good habit and then only one time to slide back into the harmful pattern. Expect that this will happen. When it does, take a moment to lament the difficulty of living with fallen human nature. Then take a deep breath and move on.

4. Forgive yourself and start again. God is full of mercy. We can be confident in the depth of God’s forgiveness that will always welcome us. We, too, are called to forgive ourselves. When your struggle to break a bad habit fails, forgive yourself and start over. One down; 27 to go!

5. Find an accountability partner. The extent to which you share the details of your bad habits with another person is up to you, but God gives us community in order that we might strengthen and uplift one another. Find someone you trust and agree to be accountability partners as you work on breaking your bad habits. Check in on one another and encourage one another.

Augustine wasn’t alone in the garden the day that he discovered Romans 13:13–14. He was with a friend, Alypius. As the words of Scripture spoke to Augustine’s heart and he resolved to put on Christ, he shared his newly discovered Bible verses with his friend. It was Alypius who pointed out with excitement that the following verse exhorts us, “Welcome those who are weak in faith” (Romans 14:1). Alypius took this exhortation seriously and from that point forward he became Augustine’s partner in the struggle against his sinful habits.

6. Pray. Augustine’s moment with Alypius under the fig tree was the culmination of years of struggle, and all along the way Augustine was carried by the prayers of his mother Monica. Monica prayed for Augustine long before his conversion, and after his conversion she continued to pray for him until the moment of her own death. These constant prayers accomplished more than Augustine could put into words.

As you struggle with your bad habit — persisting, backsliding, forgiving yourself, and persevering along the way — pray without ceasing. Pray for yourself and pray for others whose struggles you have glimpsed. Ask others to pray for you.

Finally, don’t be discouraged. We’re saved by a God who became human for the sake of a broken world, and who surely understands our brokenness. Remember that the Holy Spirit is our advocate. Remember that we are strengthened by the stories of those who have gone before us, and that we are called to strengthen each other too. Remember that even the saints struggled. Remember that change requires persistent, hard work. Remember community. Remember forgiveness.

The Rev. Elizabeth Musselman serves as associate pastor for campus ministry at Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park in Chicago. She is also a doctoral student at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
 

Banish bad habits for good
by Nadia Silver

What bad habit will you resolve to break this year? When we hear the word “habit,” what comes to mind for many of us is addiction. When people name their bad habits, alcohol, tobacco, and food come up again and again.

But just about anything can become a bad habit, if it’s a pattern of behavior that makes us unhappy, affects our relationships with others, or affects our ability to function effectively.

So how can a bad habit be broken? Is a New Year’s resolution enough? If we think it through, it can be.

Most of us think about simply stopping the behavior that’s our bad habit: “I resolve to quit interrupting people this year.” The problem is, we don’t often think about what we’re going to do instead. It’s much easier to do something than to not do something, which just leaves us with blank space, idle hands, to fill — and you know what they say about idle hands.

It’s a lot more effective to deliberately plan to do something specific in place of our bad habit. For example, instead of writing down a resolution to “lose 20 pounds,” try substituting a resolution to “go to the gym three times a week.” Or, if you’re planning to break a bad conversational habit, resolve to ask two follow-up questions about someone else’s experience before you start to talk about your own.

Meeting our goals is easier when they are specific and measurable. With this approach, we can work to change our bad habits by tying the change to a well-defined positive action that we can track. We know what to do, and we can count how many times we’ve done it. This makes it much easier to create positive change in our own lives.

Nadia Silver is a psychology instructor and researcher at a university in Chicago.
 

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