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In the last two posts, I shared what it is we DO that prevents what we want to BE. I wrote ten examples from my own life, many of which I'm sure you could relate to.
Today we begin the next phase of Reconstruction, but first a reminder. I've already shared the most vital foundational principle. It’s the principle that should carry us all the way through a Life Reconstruction: "The Goal is Always to BE."
Whether we’re changing or re-arranging, disposing or composing, re-using or refusing, deciding or abiding, our purpose in each life adjustment must lead to what we long to BE. Not to appear, not to do, not to seem, not to impress, not to surpass, but to BE.
While being inspired by a Japanese writer’s book on Minimalism, one of the things I decided to DO was get rid of unnecessary furniture. Not like a true minimalist, because it’s not my goal to BE one! But display tables for knick-knacks, extra bookcase of books I’ll never read again, and anything I kept to impress visitors…all needed to go. They no longer represent what I want to BE.
I disposed of a large desk, the kind that has a hutch on top with cubbyholes that were empty because I could never decide what to keep in them. It was impressive in size but more than I needed. My original plan was to find something smaller but nicer and in dark wood.
One corner of my bedroom is my “office” (see the photo), and it’s been downsized to exactly what I need and nothing more. A tiny table that's perfect for my laptop, a sofa table for easy access to what I use daily, and a printer cabinet with file and supply drawers. The computer table is blonde, the sofa table is tan, and the printer table is black. I’m perfectly content and realize I need nothing else; I want to BE someone who doesn’t need others to positively comment on anything I own, drive, wear, or do! Let me remind you; for me this is a serious change.
Along the path of this blog, I hope you are being challenged to distinguish what you want to BE from what you no longer want to BE. I hope in this stage you will begin to seriously separate vital from worthless reasons for your activities, lifestyle, priorities, and the habits that sustain them.
We usually use the word “habit” to define reflex actions that seem automatic due to constant repetition. My plan was to examine my habits, evalute them, and then use a method to establish new habits.
First, I need new habits to regulate former good actions that I didn’t do regularly enough.
Second, I need new habits to begin behaviors I wanted to do but didn’t.
Third, I need to undo old habits, not only ones that don’t serve my to BE goals, but most important, those that erupt from my sinful nature connected to temptations from the world, flesh, and demons.
I ended Blog 2 with the question, “How Desperate Are You?” We must answer that question again as we begin this part of our journey. Most people will say they want certain life changes but (there’s always a but) they can’t really say they’re desperate. If that’s true, then you have nowhere to start. You've got to be desperate for something. If you’re anywhere near my age, you might say “finally desperate.” Most of the reconstructions I'm currently building in my life are transpiring becuase I am "finally desperate." Read slowly and answer truthfully these two questions about being desperate:
Are you desperate enough to create new habits by a daily process that would enable you to be what you’ve previously given excuses for not being yet long to be?
Are you desperate enough to destroy old habits by a daily process that would enable you to not be what you never wanted to be but felt you could never change?
“But one thing I do: Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ” (Phil 3:13-14).
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Heb 12:1, 4).
As we seek to set goals to BEcome honorable, godly, fruitful, loving, strong men or women, we have to be careful to keep a balanced perspective and not think in extremes. On the totally negative side are those who never change because they believe:
“I’m only human.”
“This is the best I can do.”
“Everyone has issues.”
“This is earth not heaven.”
Then on the other extreme are those who smooth over the negative realities of their lives with trite positive statements. Often Christians use these phrases to sound “holy” while their lives do not demonstrate the statements' validity:
“I can change.”
“I can win.”
“I can conquer all sin.”
“I can do anything I believe by faith.”
There’s a balance here, since nobody is either hopeless or perfect! The ten negatives I shared about myself in the last two posts are no longer wreaking full-scale destruction in my life. Yet neither are they totally eradicated. Each one is in process of reconstruction, and part of making true changes means I have to rate my success or failure on each one daily. If I’m not truthful in that rating, my progress comes to a halt. My goal is that I could add behaviors that bring me closer to loving and serving God while loving and serving people. My goal with negative behaviors/sins is that some must be totally eradicated, others measurably recede. We know facing temptations will confront us till we die.
Example: I’m doing an online program to learn Spanish. It’s very difficult and can be discouraging to me because it seemed I had an amazing language gift when I was learning Haitian Creole…but not with Spanish! This program does a daily review of words I’ve supposedly learned. I’m shown a picture and have to say what it is. Or it displays a Spanish word and says “what does this mean?” Sometimes there are five words in a row that seem to be on the tip of my tongue but I just can’t get them out. When I click to see the answer, it would be easy to say, “Yes, of course, I remember that now, I know it” and then click the green arrow instead of the red X. It’s so tempting, and I’m doing this alone so who cares if I say I remembered a word that I really didn’t? Let’s just get on with it instead of being delayed because I said “nueve” instead of “nieve.”
This is an example of how something seemingly unrelated can have a direct connection to the kind of person we really want to BE. It’s easy to say, “Well GOD sees.” But that assumes my Heavenly Father wants to punish me for saying I knew a Spanish word when I didn’t. Like he’s got a lightning bolt in his hand ready to be hurled at me. No, that’s not the God of the Bible. Yet, I know if I’m totally honest when I’m the only one (on earth) who knows, it’s going to build what I want to build in my character, understand?
Also, if I say I know a word when I don’t, the app won’t put it into my review again, and I’ll never learn it. But if I check the red X, the app will put it back in the review queue until I really do learn it! So saying I failed and checking the red X puts me ahead in the end. That might be important in the above mistake, since “nueve” means “nine” and “nieve” means “snow.”
In every area of our lives where we really want to change or improve, we have to ask, “What’s the greatest reward I can achieve?” We may actually need to choose between two rewards:
––The rewarding pleasure of eating large amounts of food we love vs. the rewarding pleasure of losing weight.
––The rewarding pleasure of sinful behaviors vs. the rewarding pleasure of being clean and pure inside and out.
Sometimes it’s the timing between two rewards…one now, one later…that makes choosing difficult, because we don’t want to wait for the better reward:
––You can have $50 today or $100 next year.
––You can eat two cookies now or three cookies tomorrow.
What do you choose? There are contradictions between the rewards we see in front of us and those we can obtain in the future. We tend to be “grab what we can now” people, which makes it tough to acquire habits that can turn us into the people we really want to BE.
It's all based on rewards and punishments, which are indispensable themes for acquiring habits. The choices are complicated, though, because taking the reward now (eating the sweets in front of you) might turn to punishment later (weight gain or health problem). If we keep choosing the rewards in front of us, we’ll not only be unable to obtain rewards in the future, but will also end up facing punishments.
Simply put, rewards are things that make you feel good:
––Eating good food.
––Getting plenty of sleep.
––Earning money.
––Interacting with your favorite people.
––Getting 100 “likes” on social media.
We all know what we “ought” to do:
––Lose weight by controlling what we eat.
––Exercise instead of lying around.
––Get up early instead of staying up late watching movies or scrolling.
––Do our work or studies instead of playing games or using our smartphone.
It’s not easy, though. We want the reward of getting up early but we’re enticed by the reward of hitting the snooze button. We want to be sober and alert but we’re enticed by the immediate reward (buzz) of another glass of wine or shot of whiskey. We want to concentrate on our work but the smartphone keeps vibrating in our pocket.
Why can’t we wait for future rewards? It’s because we overestimate the rewards in front of us and underestimate the rewards or punishments in the future. When a reward is quite a distance in the future, we can’t generate the energy to say no to what’s in front of us. If exercising today or not eating another piece of pizza means I’ll lose two pounds tomorrow, I’ll do it. But it could take a month or longer of daily habits to lose those two pounds. The cultural rules for success and the longings of our hearts are to seek the full future rewards, but the longings of our flesh and our human nature have not caught up with that more noble and desirable path.
Willpower is controlled by our emotions. Our bodies will recover if we eat or drink too much, but the emotions of regret, shame, and discouragement make us falsely believe we are hopeless failures who could never stick to new habits. Reduced willpower leads to the inability to tackle the next project or to persevere in the habit we’re currently working on.
The good thing is, it doesn’t take much to give our emotions a boost. A high-five during a race, hearing someone shouting your name, a thumbs-up, can give us all the boost we need to keep on going no matter how we just failed. We can also keep our emotions up by seeing how many days in a row we’ve checked off a completed habit-in-the-making on a “tally app,” which has been a life-changer for me, and about which I’ll share more later.
When we fail, we only need something or someone that encourages us to block out the past, even the immediate past, and launch forward to succeed tomorrow where we failed today (see the Philippians 3 reference above). If our emotions turn positive, our willpower and successful performance will follow.
I’ve also discovered that to create habits I’ll be able to follow with success, I need to set smaller goals and have the reward of achieving them, instead of goals the evil voice of judgment tells me. “What, you’re only going to set a goal of ten pushups? Any teenager can do that. Be a man; you should do fifty!” The goal of that spirit is to make me fail so I’ll give up on life in general. He wants to insure I won't achieve anything honoring what God created me to be. So I set not too lofty goals so I can experience the joy of achieving them!
My Spanish app asked at the beginning how much time per day I wanted to spend. The evil voice whispered, “You won’t learn anything if don’t spend at least an hour a day.” I said, “Get away, demon,” and I set my lessons at half an hour a day. I have no anxiety about increasing to an hour, but rather feel a rewarding sense of accomplishment as I complete my half hour each day.
Fifteen flights of stairs, up and down, twice a day (besides morning exercises). At first I couldn’t breathe after twelve flights. Now I’m doing fine at fifteen, panting a bit but with the joy of accomplishment. I laugh at the voice that says, “Come on old man, can’t you do twenty-five?” I’ve never succeeded at anything like this before, so no voice can convince me it’s not “good enough.” I had enough years listening to that voice discouraging me to the point of giving up. No longer; this reconstruction is real, permanent, and I believe will last.
When firmly in place, habits are actions we take with barely a thought. So how can we turn things we conciously want to do into habits? Next week I’ll start to answer that question.
Be blessed today, and don’t listen to any voice that discourages, judges, or confirms your worst evaluations of yourself. That is NEVER the voice of God.
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