Forgetting my habits

I have read that it takes 60 days to form a habit. In other words, if you consistently do something for that length of time your internal systems sort of log it as a regular activity and encourage you to do it.


Unfortunately sometimes I forget to do my habits. That may sound odd but it is true. It seems that habits fade at a much more rapid rate than they are created. Losing a habit takes a week or two. Then you are back to disciplined rebuilding.


This all applies to positive habits. Good things you wish to develop are hard to create and difficult to maintain. Negative habits, or unhabits as I like to call them, are easy to create and nearly impossible to dislodge once they are imbedded. It seems to me that perhaps a bad habit is nothing except the lack of a good habit.


Thus, the problem is not that you smoke, but that you have not developed or have lost the habit of not smoking. Stop smoking for 60 days and you will have created a not smoking habit. Smoke for a week or two at some point after that and you will have to start over.


Over-eating is easy. It is an easy unhabit to start. It is a difficult unhabit to break. To break it usually requires disciplines like calorie counting, food quality, and portion awareness be diligently observed for the prerequisite 60 days. After that you have developed the habit of eating reasonably.


The other fun about habits and unhabits are the side effects. Unhabits carry numerous nasty life impacts. Overeating leads to obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and a difficulty climbing the stairs. Smoking leads to numerous lung complications, high blood pressure, and a difficulty climbing the stairs. Drinking too much leads to liver disease, relational problems, work performance issues, and at times, difficulty climbing the stairs. Watching too much TV seems to drain you emotionally, encourages many other unhabits, and… well it doesn’t seem to affect your ability to climb stairs.


Good habits have positive effects. Exercise makes you a lean, mean, stair climbing machine. Prayer clears your mind, gives you insights, and prepares you to meet the day. Then there are good things like bathing and brushing your teeth that not only help your health but tend to have direct impacts on your luck in love.


It is unfortunate that creating good habits is such work and creating unhabits is so easy. Why is this? To understand it, I think, requires the realization that our hearts we are basically broken. Inside all of us is a black hole that unceasingly howls to be filled. Like the musical character Pippin or like Solomon in Lamentations, we charge for meaningless pursuit after meaningless pursuit and find ourselves sicker, lonelier, and emptier than when we began. There are only 2 ways I know to forestall this chaotic internal collapse.


The first is an external focus, the more uplifting the better. Love, career, profession, family, and personal credo are great examples. We grab a hold of them and let them lift us away from the darkness within. They make us more than we are. They take us farther than we alone could go.


The problem with external focuses is they never really last. Love alone fades. Careers fail. Professions are proven to be less noble than we first thought. Family drifts away or disappoints us. Ultimately even the strongest man will bend his personal beliefs if they stand alone. All must fall before the internal vortex that swirls at our center. The yawning pit of our spiritual emptiness gapes and devours our life and at the end of our life, our soul.


Sin is not a single failing. It is a bottomless ocean of emptiness. What can be done then? How can we fill the void? There is only one answer and that answer is God. One of my favorite songs is Chris Tomlin’s “I Will Rise.” It’s a beautiful song but one phrase captivates me. “And the grave is overwhelmed.” The grave is sin. That empty, bottomless void at the center of my heart is what is overwhelmed. Imagine a mighty pit, more massive than Niagara Falls that is sucking down everything good and graceful around and in me. Then there is this rush of water like Niagara itself except intensifying each second. After a few moments the water is pouring so heavily into the pit that even bottomless it cannot absorb it all. The limits of its diameter, though in some ways measureless cannot absorb it all. So it begins to overflow. It flows out in all directions.


Now try combing that inward pressure with Love and it cannot fade because even when we tire the internal force keeps us moving forward. Careers collapse only to be buoyed up by old faithful geysers into unexpected windfall circumstances. Professions which sag under the reality of the world find their centers held up by the knowledge that you are working for Him regardless. Family forgives and forgets wherever God’s hand is felt. Slowly we are knit tighter even though we may be miles apart. Finally our personal credo is shored up by the concrete bedrock which is not our personal belief. No matter how we question or search a written code clarifies truth. We may fail, but there is no question that the code is real.


I find that whenever I begin to lose sight of God, the wind howls. My focus is lost. Unhabits become irresistible flotsam pulling me towards the now draining pit. Habits, great dams built to redirect me into stronger directions shatter. I am pulled inexorably towards collapse.


Ultimately there is one goal, keep my focus on God. Then the downpour begins again in earnest. Refreshing water hammers down and pushes outward with unmatched force. When that pressing energy is at my back, what cannot be achieved?