Your Habits Are Your Future

Here we are again, and I’m out here on my deck. You can see the panels we built up behind me. A quick shout-out to Greg, who came over last weekend and helped me finish installing them. It actually went pretty quickly, considering the amount of work we put into it. Greg did a great job coming up with ideas with me. We landed on one that seems to be working well, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate his help.

Today, I wanted to talk to you about a quote I read by a man named F.M. Alexander: “People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits, and their habits decide their futures.” I think that’s an important thing when you think about it. We all decide what we have a habit of doing. We make decisions, and we can fall into bad habits relatively easily.

You’re not feeling so well, so you sit down to watch a TV show, then another one, and another, and before you know it, you’re binge-watching nine seasons of whatever. You can get in the habit of having a little bit of ice cream every night, and pretty soon, it becomes something you just do every night. Before long, you’re packing on the pounds.

In the same way, you can make a habit of forming good habits. Part of this might be because I recently read Atomic Habits by James Clear—a great book. If you haven’t read it, you should think about doing so. I’m actually going to go back through it again because there’s so much in it about forming good habits.

This is what Alexander was talking about: we decide our habits, and our future is shaped by the habits we’ve formed. The beautiful thing about life is that you can change your habits. You can switch from bad habits to good ones—all you have to do is make that effort. It’s not always about big changes. It’s usually small, incremental changes along the way that will improve things for you.

For example, if you want to get smarter about a particular subject, read 10 pages of a book every day. My boys and I spend every morning reading a little bit of the Bible. Over time, we’ve read many chapters in the Bible by just reading a few paragraphs each day. We’re intentional about it, and over the months, we’ve covered multiple books. Not only has it enhanced our knowledge and understanding, but we’ve also spent valuable time together. That’s habit-forming.

If you make a habit of having pizza every Friday night with friends, you’re not only forming a habit of eating pizza, but you’re also building relationships with others. Karen and I have had different groups of people come over to our house over the years. Just this past Sunday, we had a group of friends over. Even though we hadn’t met in a while, we clicked back together after just a short time. Meeting regularly breeds strong relationships, and that’s another example of how habits can be a good thing.

So, you need to decide what you want your future to look like and then set the habits in motion. What habits do you have right now that need to be broken and replaced with better ones? What are you spending your time doing, and what little incremental changes can you make to create the future you want? It doesn’t happen by chance.

David and I went to BottleDrop this past weekend, and he added another $30 or $40 to his bank account. It’s a habit-forming thing—doing this on a recurring basis. We spend a little time collecting, and instead of spending it right away, he saves it. His bank account continues to grow because of the habit I’m teaching him: to save.

What habits do you need to replace? What habits are you currently doing that need to be enhanced and focused on? Think about that as you go through the rest of this week. And remember, let’s be valuable because nothing less will do. That’s a great habit to have.

God bless you guys. Have a wonderful week. I’ll see you next week.