This is a continuation of a previous blog. If you haven’t read part 1, please go back and read part 1 so this makes more sense. My last blog was about key differences in my showering habits back home and my showering habits here. This blog picks up right where I left off and ties in some of the things I have learned about habits and how they are formed by being on the race, a radically different environment than back home.
Another key difference I noticed between habits in the states and habits on the world race is my clothing usage. Back home I would wear a shirt once and consider it “dirty” and throw it in a hamper to be washed. Here on the race I have worn the same shirt for several days in a row and the same pants or shorts for a week at a time. I have never had a habit of washing my clothes by hand, so when that became the only possible way to wash clothes I decreased the frequency I washed clothes with, only washing it if it got “unbearably dirty”, whatever that means. Washing clothes by machine is not only easier, it also yields better results in my experience. Washing clothes by hand stretches it out and it comes out way more wrinkled, and it still doesn’t smell clean. It doesn’t smell dirty either, however, there is just something about clothes that comes out freshly from the washing machine and is dried quickly in drying machine that is just pleasant to the smell. With all these factors gone and the utter inconvenience it is to not only wash but also dry clothes after it is washed (with rainy humid conditions in some places), washing clothes every week changed into washing clothes possibly once a month.
During the month of June, I spent a lot of time thinking about habits, and I realized that although I lost some pretty good and important habits, I also picked up very important, if not even more important habits than the ones that I lost. Probably the best habit I developed and made really strong is the habit of waking up early to spend time with the Lord. In the same way that my environment made it harder to do daily tasks like brushing my teeth, taking a shower and washing clothes, my environment made it easier to pursue good habits like spending daily time God. Being in an environment where everyone is pursuing the Lord, just encourages you to also pursue a relationship with him. For me, it wasn’t so much a dependence I found in my community to push me to read my bible, instead it was more like an inspiration to spend time with God by seeing the way my community loved one another and the one commonality I saw was people spending time God and trying to grow. Another big part of the reason I was able to make this habit stick was because I was constantly doing new things that were well beyond my comfort zone. Doing things that are uncomfortable for the sake of the gospel have a way of pushing you to depend more on Jesus by praying and spending more time with him. For example, in Ecuador, we spent the month evangelizing and preaching in home visits and church services. I was so uncomfortable with all of this that I would wake up hours before ministry started to spend time in prayer and reading the bible. I felt like I was charged with completing an impossible task that wasn’t possible in my strength and I needed God to come through or it would have been a wasted month. Many times we wonder why we can’t seem to develop a habit of depending on God in prayer and reading his word, but we aren’t taking the leaps of faith required, stepping out of our comfort zone far enough to be driven to the point of dependence on him. We are comfortable on the boat, so why would we ever even need to spend time with the Lord. Another thing that has helped me stick with my habit of alone time with the Lord is making my bible and journal super accesible to me first thing in the morning. Instead of sleeping with my phone near my head, I would go to sleep with my bible and journal near my head. This made it easier to go straight into my bible reading after waking up in the morning. Sometimes we make our “bad habits” more accesible and easier to do than “good habits” and we wonder why we can’t break bad habits and why its so hard to start good ones.
During the month of June, I read a book about habits called “Atomic Habits” by James Clear and he said that there are are four laws of behaviour change that we can use to build better habits: Make it obvious, Make it attractive, Make it easy, Make it satisfying. This book gave me so much insight as to why so many of my habits seemed to have disappeared and why it was easier to form some of the habits I have been trying to form for a while.
Going back to the habit of showering, showering may have been obvious at times, but it was not attractive or easy and so it was not internalized. In contrast, the way my environment was structered, spending time with God in prayer and reading the word was obvious because I left it right at my bedside to pick up every morning. It was attractive because I saw so many of my squadmates doing it and having results and qualities I wanted to possess. It was easy because I started my habit with very minimal reading and it never felt burdensome and overtime I was able to add more. And It was satisfying because God spoke to me every morning, often things he wanted me to share or use throughout the day, and I got to see tremednous fruit from seeing what spending consistent time in God’s presence can do.
Overall, it has been a very interesting journey into the world of habits and I really hope God continues to teach me more about them so I can not only maintain the habits I have formed here on the race, but also start new cosntructive habits that can help me be successful in the future.
