Habits
Making Healthy Sustainable Habits
This week is the last week of our Habits series! We hope you’ve learned some things along the way! As a quick recap, we’ve talked about how to take goal setting to the next level. We’ve talked about adding accountability into holding ourselves to our goals, about how to set professional, personal and spiritual goals and about ‘reverse engineering’ our big goals into small steps that make each goal more attainable. Today, our goal is to emphasize that once we’ve established good habits, these behaviors eventually become a part of our lifestyle. Eventually, the abnormal scenario would be to not partake in these newly established habits, that not that long ago was not a part of our routine at all.
The overall purpose of setting goals comes down to our fundamental human need to have purpose, to feel needed, and to make an impact in the world in which we live. We believe that God calls us to multiply our gifts. We only have one life on this earth, and we were created as individuals with a very specific set of skills to offer. Therefore, the goals we look to set and hold ourselves accountable to serve to enable us to live into this potential that our specific gifts are suited for.
Behavior
How small changes lead to big change
When a behavior derived from our goal becomes ingrained into our lifestyle, to then change that behavior becomes counterintuitive. For example, if our goal was to save up a specific amount of money, part of that goal may be to sit down and update the budget every week. At a certain point, you become accustomed to this behavior, to the point where to suddenly not do this would contradict our sense of normalcy – even once we’ve met our goal. The incremental changes, that at one point may have seemed to be an extreme, soon enough become a routine part of our reality, so much so that it would take intentional effort to no longer take part in this behavior.
That said, these adaptation improvements in our own lives, then present the opportunity to be able to share our experiences with other people in order to facilitate their success through similar circumstances. Within a leadership role, our own growth and development has the capacity to transcend to the people with whom our life overlaps. Throughout these phases of growth, one of the most rewarding experiences is to be able to utilize what you’ve learned along the way to elevate others. To bring them with you into a healthier, more fruitful and fulfilling state of being. This personal growth can therefore transcend the self to be able to bring others with you into an improved understanding of the world, of the self, and of what appears to be within reach.
This all ties back to the Biblical principle that it is better to give than to receive and better to serve than to be served. This is ultimately our hope for you! To not only accomplish big things and to make positive habits a part of your identity and lifestyle, but that you also then have the opportunity to speak into someone else’s life, enabling them to take steps toward becoming a better version of themselves as well. Again, we only have one life to live on this earth. We are called to live into the gifts we are given to establish positive change in ourselves, that can therefore positively impact the lives of others. Ultimately, there is no better source of satisfaction or display of gratitude than to seek growth and to utilize those lessons to make a difference for the people and community we are a part of.
