Habit Formation...

I think the greatest lesson I've come to realize over these past several years is the need to be intentional. It doesn't matter if it's in my physical life or spitritual life, the need to be intentional is paramount for growth to occur. We have become a lazy people, often disguising our laziness with our busyness, or our activities, but they are merely excuses to hide behind. The truth is we are all given the same amount of time each day, and how we choose to use our time (or allow our time to use us) determines how productive or lazy we are. I used to be a list-maker, and still do mentally, and physically on occassion, to prioritize my activity in an attempt to be more productive. Yet often a list doesn't help me to actually do what is necessary; it just reminds me of tasks awaiting completion.

I've had to learn to set aside specific time to do specific things that I need to be intentional about doing, then I have to be intentional about honoring that time with that activity. I've found that it doesn't take long for that process to become a habit. It made me realize how I've been unconsciously doing this very thing for years and forming negative habits. Eating junk food late at night, watching sitcoms at dinner(the same reruns for the 14th time), hitting the snooze alarm for another 10 minutes of sleep(like it'll help refresh me any more), or the many other "bad" habits I have slid into over the years. So I began to think, "Why are bad habits so easy to form and good habits much harder?". The answer is simple: We gravitate toward lazy, toward the easy way of doing something. Not the right way, or the best way, but the easy way. Our bent is away from intentional. So how does being intentional benefit us?

I beleive that learning to be intentional with life gives us several advantages. First, we begin to experience control in our life, for we dictate our time, rather than feeling like we're being dicatated to. We control our choices, our activities, rather than being controled, for we make the choice as to what we do. Our world returns to order, which is how God originally created it and us, so we find greater harmony in our life. The second thing, (and most amazing thing that I've found) is that we become much more efficient with our time, and we begin to experience blocks of free time, (sometimes large blocks!) to begin to do other things that we've never had time or energy to do before. In essence, we've begun the process of unlearning bad habits and replacing them with good ones. (Often people try unsuccessfully to break a bad habit and end up right back in it because to break a bad habit, or any habit, you must replace it with another action or activity, or the void left bt the departed habit will drift back into what is "known").

These two results are enough reason to strive for intentionality in our lives, but there's more. As we do those things we know we should do, as we experience success in areas we recognize as important we begin to feel a sense of accomplishment, of satisfaction with our labors, and we begin to find ourselves happier, with a higher sense of self-esteem, for we are doing what we know is right, and that feels good. And life becomes richer... So I want to become more intentional in all aspects of my life...