If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’re going to keep getting what you’ve been getting. But behavior change is hard. If it were easy, we’d all be living happier, joy-filled lives. In this episode of By Your Life, I offer practical steps to positive behavior change and if you change your behavior, you’ll get positive results.

Mass Readings Audio
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/2019/19_12_01.mp3

The First Sunday of Advent – December 1, 2019

Welcome to the eighty-eighth episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life.

My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.

In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the First Sunday of Advent. Advent is a time of preparation for the coming of Christ at Christmas. The secular world certainly has gotten into this time of preparation. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that all the decorating and Christmas carols start earlier and earlier every year. What happened to the day after Thanksgiving being the demarcation point? It makes me crazy!

But the truth is, in every season, winter, spring, summer, and fall, we should be preparing for the coming of Christ, “for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” (Mt 24:44) If only we invested as much in preparing our hearts, as we do in decking the halls, we would realize the peace foretold by the Prophet Isaiah, that “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.” (Is 2:4)

So, we have a choice, as St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” (Rm 13:12) Unfortunately, it is a lot easier to put up the Christmas lights than it is to turn our behavioral darkness into light. Otherwise, we’d all just make that choice, wouldn’t we?

It has been said that it takes about 21 days to create a new habit. The truth is, that claim is really more of a myth. Although it may be true that the minimum time it takes to make or break a habit is about 3 weeks, according to research published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, it actually takes a lot longer, more like an average of 66 days, or anywhere from 18 days to 254 days, depending on the behavior, the person, and the circumstances.

Why is it so hard to change a habit? Well, according to a group of researchers led by associate professor of psychology Ezequiel Morsella of San Francisco State University, we are pretty much unconscious all the time. It doesn’t mean that we are asleep, rather it means that “nearly all of your brain’s work is conducted in different lobes and regions at the unconscious level, completely without your knowledge. When the processing is done and there is a decision to make or a physical act to perform, that very small job is served up to the conscious mind, which executes the work and then flatters itself that it was in charge all the time.” (Jeffrey Kluger, Time Magazine) Changing a habit takes conscious energy and our brains are not wired that way.

So how do we overcome? If our natural human tendency is to operate at the unconscious level, how do we choose to walk in the light and then actually execute on that decision? According to BJ Fogg, Director of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University, there are three ways to change your behavior. 1) Have an epiphany, 2) change your environment, or 3) take baby steps. Because the first is not as controllable as the second and third, he created a program to tap into the power of environment and baby steps. (BJ Fogg’s book, Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything, is available for preorder.)

A basic element of his process is to break the behavior you’d like to change into tiny bite-sized pieces and then take baby steps. For example, I wanted to change my habit of always having a messy desk. I recognized that my habit was to just drop things on my desk instead of putting them away. So, before I could keep a neat desk, I had to clean it, but I never seemed to have the time. So, I created a tiny step to put away or throw away just one thing from the top of my desk.

The second element of BJ Fogg’s tiny habit process is to anchor the new behavior to an already existing habit or behavior. In my example, I knew that I would sit down at my desk multiple times a day, so I anchored the new behavior of putting or throwing away one thing each time I sat down at my desk. Within two days, my desk was clean.

Want to create the habit of flossing your teeth every day? Start by flossing just one tooth every time you brush. Want to create a habit of praying the rosary? Change your environment by having a rosary handy in your car and pray just one Hail Mary when you stop at a stoplight. Once you create the tiny habit, you naturally find it easy to add a little more—floss two teeth or say two Hail Marys. Fitbit picks up on this concept by buzzing me 10 minutes before the hour and reminding me to take 250 steps—baby steps.

What does all this have to do with “throw[ing] off the works of darkness and put[ting] on the armor of light”? (Rm 13:12) Most of us don’t want to choose works of darkness, yet we do them anyway, out of habit, or stimulus and response. St. Paul said, “What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.” (Rom 7:15) We all have that one thing that we wish we could change about ourselves and how we deal with others. We all have that sin that we find ourselves repeating time after time in the confessional.  Recognizing it is the first step. Deciding to do something about it is the second. And then, break it down into small, baby steps.

What BJ Fogg doesn’t incorporate into his positive behavior change formula is prayer. Praying for God’s grace is the key. Again, break it down into baby steps. When you get that stimulus that triggers a negative response, be prepared to say a little mental prayer instead. When your kids’ behavior triggers an angry response, pray “Jesus, Mary and Joseph help me.” When you’re trying to eat healthier and are tempted to eat a cookie, pray “Hail Mary full of grace.” When you are losing your patience with a coworker, pray “God bless you child of God.” Small steps plus small prayers will get you going on the path to new and positive habits.

And then, you’ll fail. I’ll fail. We all will fail. You know that “keep a clean desk” habit I mentioned earlier? I’ve failed at that over and over. But don’t let failure destroy your conviction. A setback doesn’t make it impossible unless you allow it. So, don’t allow it. Pick up and get back on track. Keep making progress. Jesus knew we would fail, and he knew that most of our failures would be a lot more serious than a messy desk. Most of our failures harm our relationships with others and with God. That is why he instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The grace of this sacrament not only offers us a fresh start, it provides us with the help we need to pick ourselves up, move forward, and keep making progress.

Which brings me to the last point—asking for help.

If changing behavior was easy, we’d all be living happier, joy-filled lives. But it isn’t easy, so don’t try to go it alone. Ask for help. Ask your family, ask your friends, and ask your co-workers for help. I guarantee that they are on the receiving end of your “works of darkness” so they’d be more than happy to support you to make a change. Most importantly, ask God to help you. St. Paul wrote, “Put on the armor of light.” (Rm 13:12) “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Rom 13:14)

At the beginning of the new liturgical year, let’s make a “new year’s” resolution to change ourselves. Take some time to take inventory of your life, your relationships, and the behaviors that get in the way of those relationships. Resolve to change the one that is in most need of a renovation. Pray about it and uncover the underlying trigger or environmental circumstances that cause you to act the way you do, but don’t want to. Visualize what you want instead and then break it into a tiny, little step that you can anchor to an existing behavior. Pick a prayer for support during the trials and call on the Lord to help you. Reflect at the end of each day and resolve to do better the next day. God wants nothing more than to help us be the best version of ourselves, we just need to ask. Let’s start right now.

Lord Jesus Christ, as we begin a new liturgical year and prepare our hearts for your coming this Christmas, we invite you to shed your light onto every corner of our lives. We choose to hold nothing back. Enter into our darkness and help us transform. Take what you want to take, give what you want to give, and help us to take the first, baby steps. Pick us up when we fall and lead us forward, so that in everything we do, we may glorify you by our lives.

If you liked this episode, spread the word. You know what to do, forward, share, or click to post. Also, check out the Resources page where you can find a link to the books and other resources mentioned in other episodes of By Your Life. I’m always interested in what you think, so give me some feedback by leaving a comment.