Have you noticed how easy it is to slip into bad habits?
Look around the next time you go out to eat. Notice how many people mindlessly scroll through the phone while waiting for their order to arrive. It’s so much easier to pull out the phone and swipe and swipe and swipe than to engage in a conversation.
And mark how many children are glued to a screen, watching a video or playing a game on their tablet. It’s so much easier for mom and dad to use the electronic babysitter than to endure the struggle of training a child how to behave in a restaurant! Of course, have you seen what happens if mom tries to take the device away before the child is tired of it? Asking for a major meltdown!
It’s also easier at the end of the day to plop down in the recliner, punch the remote “On” button, and flip through the TV’s guide list to “see what’s on” than it is to pick up a book and engage the mind in reading.
“Easier” affects grocery shopping, too, doesn’t it?
Several years ago, we were trying to help a newly married couple get on their feet—not only financially, but in simply developing some good practical life skills.
My wife took the young woman grocery shopping since they didn’t have a car yet, and we agreed to pick up the tab for a week’s worth of groceries. As they made their way through the store, the new bride chose only prepared, prepackaged stuff—mac and cheese…frozen pizzas…boxed mixes…canned stew…chips…. You get the idea.
My wife offered to help her develop a more nutritious diet, setting up a meal plan of simple-to-prepare-but-healthful meals. She even volunteered to teach her how to make some of the items.
Never happened. It’s so much easier to open a can or a box, add water, zap in the microwave, and voila! Dinner is served!
And oh, how easy it is to spend oneself into debt—deep debt! The merchant of choice for millions, Amazon, conveniently stores your credit card information and makes finding what you want so simple! Why, they’ll even show you a bunch of things you want (but didn’t know it!) when you launch the site. A couple of clicks, and your stuff is in process of shipping to arrive in two or three days…and you’ve added another $100 to your credit card balance.
Easy-peasey!
So much of this easy slide into bad habits, of course, is quite intentional on the part of merchants, builders of apps, and social media platforms. They WANT you to find it easy to make their site or buy their stuff a habit of life—even though it’s a terrible habit to develop…and oh, so difficult to break!
Surely, most of those behind the “easy slides” aren’t maliciously desiring to ruin your life. They’re merely trying to make a buck. In some cases, though, those naïve developers do not realize it, but they’re pawns in the hand of our arch-enemy who does want to ruin lives.
Peter speaks of our adversary as one who “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8) And Paul counsels to treat some people with gentleness because “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.” (2 Timothy 2:25-26)
Have you ever known this adversarial “lion” to make it hard to do the wrong thing? To be ensnared in a bad habit? To destroy oneself?
No, he’s pretty good at making it easy.
So, we need to turn the tables on him and make it easy to do the right thing and to develop good habits, and make it hard to do what we know is harmful.
For example, if the phone has become a master of distraction, make it hard to hear its siren call. Leave it in the car when going in a restaurant. Put it in a drawer in another room during dinner. Keep it out of sight, ringer off, at work.
I once counseled a young man who was battling the snare of the bottle. He was finding it difficult to avoid buying another six-pack because every day after work, he drove by the convenience store where he always purchased the goods. Among other strategies offered, I laid out an alternate route from work to home that completely bypassed the store. Didn’t make it impossible for him to stop, just harder.
Make it hard to do the wrong thing.
And make it easy to do the right thing, to build good habits.
In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear suggests that a powerful strategy for building good habits is just that—make it easy.
After all, he argues, we’re wired to look for the easiest way to do things—good or bad! “We are motivated to do what is easy,” he writes. The more effort it takes for something to become a habit, the less likely I’m going to succeed in making it one.
Take going to the gym, for example. I know I need to get exercise for my general well-being and effectiveness in my service. So, for several years, we had memberships at the local YMCA. But going to the Y never became a habit. We went—sometimes in spurts of relative consistency—but it was too out-of-the-way, requiring a good bit of effort to take the time to go.
Just prior to COVID craziness, we moved our gym membership to a closer, more convenient Planet Fitness. Should be easier to get there, right? But alas, we’re still struggling with overcoming all the obstacles to find a suitable time to be consistent in building a habit out of something we know would be beneficial!
Make it easy, Clear says.
“If you can make your good habits more convenient, you’ll be more likely to follow through on them.”
“If” is the operative word!
Now let me be clear. I’m not suggesting that it’s possible, with a little creative ingenuity, to make the Christian life easy. There’s an inherent difficulty in taking up one’s cross and following Christ on the narrow way that leads to life.
But I am suggesting we find ways to make doing the right thing, to developing good habits, as easy as possible.
I’m reminded of some rather radical-sounding counsel Jesus offered:
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
– Matthew 5:29-30
What was He getting at?
I believe He was telling us, through the use of hyperbole, to do whatever is necessary to make it easy to do the right thing and develop good habits.
Like “cut off the right hand” of the shortest route home by the convenience store, or “tear out the right eye” of unfettered access to social media or the web. The cutting and tearing itself is surely quite difficult, a radically different course of action. But it makes the good deed or habit easier to make a part of everyday life.
What are one or two good habits you’ve had a hard time developing in your life? What practical steps can you take to make them easier? On the other hand, what are one or two bad habits you know you need to break away from? What can you do to make it harder to practice them?
0
0
20
20
