Habits are Built:  Seek God, Start Simple, Go Slow

This post is by Patty Lewis.

Hello Mornings has been very instrumental in helping me build habits and maintain them.  God – Plan – Move.  It took a long time to build the habits that have become routine for me.  Sometimes I have had to rebuild them when I have gotten off track or experienced life events that interrupted my regular routine.  It has been wonderful to have the website, the blog, The Academy, the Bible studies and the support of online community groups that Hello Mornings provides and steadily maintains (even when I am not able to utilize them for a time.)

Habits can be very healthy for us!  We are capable of building and maintaining them!  I am living proof that even those of us who struggle most of our lives and find ourselves in challenging situations can actually set goals that we can work towards through habit building.  Knowing what we hope to achieve helps us to set up smaller steps to work toward it. 

A favorite place in Scripture for me is Philippians 4:6-9:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

These verses remind me that God cares about what we care about and He wants us to come to Him, praying about all things.  Let’s study up, work on figuring out the best ways to build our habits.  That is good and essential.  Let’s also be sure to prioritize regularly bringing our desires before The Lord and asking Him to direct us and give us wisdom about the habits we wish to build into our daily lives. His plan is always best.  Actively inviting Him in to be a part of our habits and habit building will result in the best for us.  

In hello mornings, Kat Lee has written an entire chapter on How to Build Habits chock full of excellent tips and tools for the process.  I wanted to focus on one of the tools she offers in this chapter.  It is Tool 3:  Tiny Habits.  This part talks about knowing the goal of a habit you want to build and starting with one small, very tiny step that builds on the foundation and doesn’t require anything too challenging that we won’t want to do.  Just one small super easy thing.  Once you are consistent with that for a week, add another step, another tiny step for a week.  Just keep doing this until you have built the foundation to your habit and reached your goal.  It sounds simple, it is simple.  As we add to the steps it may become challenging, but it is simple and we can do it!  

This blog post won’t change your life and isn’t full of anything super profound.  It is just, hopefully, encouraging.  Put The Lord first, invite Him into your situation.  Don’t be anxious, but seek Him and ask Him to help you to reach your goal(s.)  Think on the things that are true and right.  Then, find your tools that help you.  If you don’t have tools in your toolbelt already or just need a fresh restart, start simply by knowing your end goal and choose one small building block to start with.  Do it for a week before adding anything else.  See where it takes you! 

For more tools to add to your toolbelt and encouragement, I recommend the book I mentioned above, hello mornings by Kat Lee.  See chapter 8 for some excellent direction on habits and how to build them. 

May The Lord lift you up and be your foundation, blessing your habit building as you go.

Patty Lewis lives on the Space Coast of Florida with her Husband, Son, Mother-in-Law and two cats.  She is a homeschool Momma, loves serving other Moms and Youth in her Church and community through encouragement in practical ways and enjoys reading, gardening, Disney, anything with her family and laughing really loud.

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash