So, I did. Turns out, Quitter’s Day is a thing. It’s this coming Friday, January 10th. Quitter’s Day is based upon a study by the New York-based national market research firm Drive Research, which says that 23% of all adults quit their New Year’s resolutions by this day. That number goes up to 42% of adults by the end of January. The study also found that 92% of all adults will ultimately not follow through on a resolution. The top five New Year’s Resolutions that we’ve now learned that most people don’t keep are the following:
- Improve fitness 48%
- Improve finances 38%
- Improve mental health (happier, more joyful, less anxious) 36%
- Lose weight 34%
- Improve diet 32%
- More time for loved ones 25%
So, with everyone quitting, why bother to make a resolution? Why commit to any kind of habit change, for that matter?
Only this: I was finishing out the New Morning Mercies devotional at the end of the year, and this hit me: your habits, what you do in the little moments of life, have just about everything to do with who you are or will become.
Few smokers have given up because they looked at the pack in their hands, made the decision, and quit. Few people in debt changed their financial lifestyles because they decided to be better money managers just because it was January 1. Few obese people ate a whole carton of Blue Bell and decided to become slim and healthy for the rest of their lives.
Change is critical–we are people of change. Commitment is essential. But, growth, whether in the gospel of Jesus or anything else, is not made in big dramatic moments in life.
Most of us will only make three or four momentous decisions in our lives, including following Jesus, maybe getting married and to whom, and possibly choosing the job or career that will become our life’s work. And that’s about it. Everything else, personal heart and life change, is always a pretty mundane process. God has worked it so that much of this mundane process is determined by our daily habits and disciplines.
There’s a great book called Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s not a “Christian book,” but it’s full of common grace insight. Clear discusses habits, and I think this book is helpful with spiritual change and any other change we make. As we start a new year, it’s a good time to talk about change.
Most of the time, Clear notes, we don’t make change work in our lives, like New Year’s resolutions, because we’re trying to change the wrong thing. In all of those examples I gave you where people made resolutions that didn’t stick, they were trying to change the wrong thing. They were trying to change their actions or behaviors. “I’m going to get more fit.” “I’m going to improve my diet.” “I’m going to improve my finances.” Or, “I’m going to read my Bible more, or pray more.” Starting with results, behaviors, or actions is the wrong way to go about change.
Starting with behaviors or actions is backward because when those actions don’t match up with our self-perception, with what Clear calls the identity, they won’t last. In this instance, I’m using “identity” in the sense of “little i” identity: not your permanent, unchanging identity in Christ, firmly rooted, but in your self-perception.
If you want to manage your finances better, but your self-perception is as a big spender, you’ll continue to be drawn towards spending. If you want better health, but you prioritize comfort more than accomplishment, you’ll stay on the couch instead of running (like the Apple girl). You may want a stronger spiritual life, but if you continue to prioritize constant entertainment and distraction over the focus that life requires, you’ll be drawn to those things as well. You have to change who you are and who you perceive yourself to be.
True behavior change requires a “little i” identity change, a change in self-perception. You might be motivated to start a new habit, but the only way you’ll stick with it is that it becomes part of your identity. Behind every set of behaviors is a belief or set of beliefs, and the beliefs drive the behavior. Many people walk through life believing a lot of garbage about their identity:
- I get distracted all the time. I can’t focus.
- I’m bad at remembering people’s names
- I’m not a good student
- I’m always late
- I’m terrible at math.
- I can’t get up early. I’m not a morning person. (Incidentally, my teenage football players at Grace voluntarily chose to be morning people when given a choice between waking up at 4:30 or 5 a.m. and practicing when it was 104 degrees outside. You’re not a morning person or an evening person; you’re a person who gets up for what matters to you.)
When you tell yourselves this stuff over the years again and again, it creates mental ruts that lead you to resist contrary action because “that’s just not who I am.” As Clear says, the biggest barrier to change at any level is identity conflict. You fail to develop good, new habits because your identity gets in the way.
What are the lies you tell yourself about you that lead to the bad habits you have now and the good habits you fail to develop? Think about that for a second. (Hint: It usually begins: “I can’t do that because I’m just…” or “I’m bad at….”) What are those things?
If you want to change what you do, you must change who you are. The key to behavior change is identity change, in how you perceive yourself. So:
The goal is not to balance my checking account more effectively, it’s to become a strong financial steward.
The goal is not to get up early every morning and run; it’s to become a runner.
The goal is not to learn an instrument, but to become a musician.
The goal is not to read my Bible or pray more, but to become a dedicated follower of Jesus.
Here’s the paradox, according to Clear: The key to changing your identity in this sense, the way you perceive yourself, is by changing your habits. When you think about it, most of us are already doing this in some area as I write. If you’re a person who mows your lawn every Saturday as soon as you wake up, you embody the identity of a “weekend warrior.” If you’re out of bed and at the office by 7 am, you embody the identity of a hard worker. When you train by running or working out every day, you embody the identity of an athlete, even if you’re just an amateur.
I’m a runner. I’ve been running since I was 21, and I’m 57 now. I’ve run marathons, half-marathons, triathlons, 10Ks, 5Ks, fun runs, all of it. There’s a saying among runners- “If you want to run faster, you have to run faster.” If you want to be a faster runner, you have to make yourself run faster than before. You have to develop and repeat the habit of running faster and faster. Then, over time, you will become a fast runner (or faster than you were before, until you get older and time catches up with you, that is!)
By repeating and reinforcing the behaviors, you reinforce the identity, the way of perceiving yourself associated with the behavior.
Your habits are not the only actions that influence your identity in this sense, but they’re a big part of it. And as you repeat these actions repeatedly, the evidence accumulates and your self-image emerges. You’ve become who you told yourself you were going to be.
Here’s the even more amazing thing about all this as it pertains to becoming a stronger follower of Jesus, if that’s who you want to be: unlike in other areas, being a better musician or athlete– when engaging with the habits that make you a stronger disciple of Jesus, the Holy Spirit meets you in your habits and works through those habits to transform you, to change you into a different person.
The people who have known me well over time will tell you that I’ve become a kinder person. I’ve always been an intense, type-A, and goal-driven person, but I was harsher about it in my youth, less sensitive to its impact on those I loved, the people around me. I have become more gentle, more patient than I was before, and less angry.
I didn’t decide to become these things and set about to do them. Instead, I decided I wanted to be a more dedicated disciple of Jesus, so I began doing the things people like that did. I started spending more time in prayer and reading my Bible, and in stillness and silence before the Lord, and as I did these things over time, the Holy Spirit used them, as well as other people and all my life circumstances, to change my heart. He transformed me into all these other things i never actually set out to be, but I’m really grateful I now am.
The way this begins, the way you develop these habits, is not by telling yourself, “I want to read the Bible more”, “I want to pray more,” or “I want to spend more time in stillness and solitude with the Lord.” Instead, you say, “I want to be a stronger follower of Jesus. That’s what I want my identity to be.”
Then, you begin doing the things a follower of Jesus would do. We get up in the morning and open our Bibles. We follow that with prayer. Maybe we stack habits, taking something that’s already a habit–like pouring ourselves a cup of coffee every morning–and open our Bible right after that, so our minds attach the new habit to the one we’ve already established. And we change bit by bit, daily, habit by habit. The Holy Spirit meets us there and begins speaking to us through His Word. We see things we never saw before. Things we needed to hear that day. We pray for people, and we see them change. Over time, as I said before, day by day in the little moments of life, God changes us- we become someone else, someone we really like more than the person we were before.
Clear says every action you take like that is like one vote for the type of person you want to become. One vote won’t change you, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. You don’t have to win every vote. You may make some mistakes and have some votes go the other way. You don’t need a unanimous vote. You just need a majority. Your goal is to win more than you lose.
New Year’s Resolutions- doing or giving up certain things– rarely succeed. But, in the power of the Holy Spirit, over time people become new people all the time. And so can you.
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