Habits

I was reading my 1,000 Gifts book by Ann Voskamp last night and she quoted a really smart person. I could go get the book and find out exactly what the quote said and who said it, but that would entail me getting out of bed and I'm pretty sure my backside glued itself to the mattress. The quote said that it takes a nail to drive out a nail, a habit to replace a habit. Nothing profound, but so profound to me. My daily life is so much busier than it has ever been in my ENTIRE life now that I'm schooling a 4th grader, a second grader, and a preschooler. If things are gonna run like a well oiled Tahoe, I need to replace some old habits with new ones. Note that I didn't call them "bad" habits, because truthfully I wouldn't constitute sleeping until 9am as a bad habit. Some are bad habits, but most just don't fit in with my new lifestyle.

Here are my top habit swapping projects: going to bed earlier, waking up earlier, planning meals more than 2 minutes ahead of time, exercising even just a little, scheduling time to do the things I love, scheduling period.

The biggest and most important habit swapping is my attitude. I took Ann's idea of naming all of God's gifts (much like Adam named the animals God created) everyday until it becomes a habit of gratitude. We start with the seemingly trivial gifts, ones we don't often recognize daily. Things like golden sunlight hitting strands of cocoa colored hair and the soft hum of a dishwasher. The idea is that by giving His gifts names we'll become more aware of and grateful for them.  This idea is also reiterated by Dr. Amit Sood in his Book, which is gruelingly painful to read, but good to have on your bookshelf nonetheless. Dr. Sood is the director of complimentary and integrative medicine at Mayo Rochester. His theory is that when we focus our attention and learn to positively interpret life we are capable of training our brain to naturally recognize good, all of which decreases stress and gives more peace and joy. His work brings me back to these words every time:

"Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect." Romans 12:2 

and also this:

"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5

It's insanely hard to focus in this sort of way when you've got 3 people talking at you and dinner to get on the table while folding clothes and knitting dolly hats and lesson planning and trying to keep a 3 year old's play dough filled hands out of the science experiment, but today was a little better than yesterday and hopefully tomorrow will be better than today. The triumphs seem like tiny little anthills, but collectively they are mountains. When I started this brain training years ago I usually used it for emergencies, like when I was at the end of my rope. I missed the whole point of it. Gratitude is a lifelong habit to develop, a habit that replaces discontentment, ungratefulness. Today I'm grateful for people who live courageously grateful for life and all God's glory. I know that even they have at some point struggled to maintain a grateful heart. 

Good night readers, its high time I replaced a late bedtime with an earlier one.