habits – Not Quite Ordinary

Ingrained

Posted on June 5, 2024 by Ann B. Hibbard

Every morning, I get on the treadmill. Well, that’s the plan, anyway. Some weeks are better than others, but I know it does help when I walk. So, even on the days when I know I have to get out the door early, even ten to fifteen minutes on the treadmill can make a difference.

Recently, on one of those short mornings, I didn’t really have enough time to listen to an audio book or lecture, so I turned on some music to help spur me on. Because it was going to be a short walk, I got warmed up, then pumped up the intensity for my quick walk. Which meant I had to focus really hard on my breathing. Guess what you can’t really do when you’re needing to focus on breathing during a high intensity workout? Yep, sing along to your favorite songs.

So, I decided to just mouth the words.

Um, guess what I do when I’m mouthing a song? I take a deep breath as if I’m actually singing, but then since I’m not really singing, I hold it instead of letting it out steadily.

Guess what isn’t a good idea when you’re doing a short, high intensity walk on the treadmill? Holding your breath for any length of time.

Oops!

I tried to stop holding my breath. I tried mouthing the words while still focusing on controlled breathing. It just wouldn’t work. I could not mouth the words to the song and breathe correctly at the same time. I’m not great at breath control under any circumstances, whether in exercising or singing. It’s something I’m trying to actively improve. But in this situation, I was downright horrible. I couldn’t do something as simple as move my lips while still managing my breathing.

That is the mark of a behavior that is very deeply ingrained, and we often have no idea how deeply it is ingrained — or even that we do it — until we try to do something that goes against the nature of the action.

A lot can be said about challenging poor behavior that is deeply ingrained, and there is a place for that. But the whole experience actually pushed my thoughts in the opposite direction. What good behaviors do I want to have that deeply ingrained?

I want to pray that way. I want prayer to be so much a part of my life that I can’t not pray. Sadly, that’s not true of me. I pray regularly. I pray throughout the day. I lift up breath prayers very often. But I still fall prey to distractions that redirect my mind away from prayer. Worry. Problem solving. Hashing over a conversation. Allowing random thoughts to distract. I pray, but…

The same is true of praise.

And speaking before I stop to think (or pray) over whether or not there are better things to say or if silence would be even better.

And so many other habits and behaviors that distract me from being the person I hunger to be.

We all know that habits can be formed through practice. Deeply ingrained behaviors go even further than habits, growing from behaviors persistently developed through practice, intentionality, and focus until they become so natural we don’t even think about them. Despite what the time management gurus might tell you, very few things in life progress to ingrained behaviors. Even breathing. Although the act of breathing might be natural to me (maybe because it’s a bit essential for life!), it’s still a bit overwhelming to think about how much I’ll have to intentionally practice if I want to breathe properly while singing and exercising — and do it without truly thinking about it.

This breathing challenge reminded me just how powerful ingrained behaviors are once they are established. And it reminded me that I have the ability to become a person of habitual prayer and praise — a person whose ingrained behaviors truly do point the world to Christ. If I’m willing to do the work.

If that’s the person I want to be, then the effort to create those behaviors is beyond worthwhile. It’s vital. And every single day of practice gets me that much closer to truly ingraining them into my innermost being.

So today, I’m consciously practicing. And tomorrow. And the next day. I’ll neglect it some days, I’m sure. I’ll get distracted at times. I’ll be downright discouraged other times. But I have determined to remind myself daily to practice again and again and again. And years from now, I’ll one day look up and discover that I can’t not pray. Or praise. Or point people to Christ.

That’s the person I want to be.

Thoughts from Life

The Goodness of Messy

Posted on April 10, 2024 by Ann B. Hibbard

If you’ve processed through any advice from time management gurus, you’ve probably heard about things like routines, rhythms, and habit stacking.

For the record, I love all of those. Good routines and rhythms, built around a reliable structure, breathe life into my ability to process each day. Without those, I feel more than a little lost. In times of life when I lack that solid structure and the ability to build my rhythms, it takes a lot of effort to avoid wasting my day. And usually I spend so much energy trying to figure out how to handle each day that I don’t have a whole lot of energy left for actually doing the things I determine need to be done.

So, yes, I’m a huge support of structure, habits, rhythms, and routines. But I also recognize how easily they can backfire!

Easter Sunday was the picture of backfiring habit-stacking and rhythms.

Frequently on Easter Sunday we have a sunrise service, which means that our rhythm is completely off anyway. This year, for a variety of reasons, we didn’t have that service. So, we had our normal rhythm with one exception: our traditional enjoyment of caramel pecan sticky buns on Easter morning.

The sticky buns are super easy to make in advance, which makes them easy to add into Easter morning prep. And I thought this year would be even easier without having to figure out timing around the sunrise service.

And I was right on one count. Getting the sticky buns ready was still easy. All I had to do was pull the prepared buns out of the fridge when I first got up and was prepping coffee and Choffy. My hubby turned on the oven as he headed to the treadmill, then I popped them into the oven when it was my turn to head to the treadmill. When I was done, I rotated them so they’d cook evenly, then he got them out of the oven while I was in the shower.

Easy, right?

Yes…but also no. Because suddenly all of my rhythms and habit stacking were off.

Had I been alert and awake, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But I was sleepy. Tired. And not feeling my best because of allergies. So, the brain just wasn’t firing quite right. And when that happens, I fall heavily back on that habit-stacking approach to the morning. I do this, then this, then that, almost mechanically.

But this particular morning, I added in some things. It was all fine until I went to rotate the sticky buns and had to do some quick problem-solving because the caramel was overflowing the pans. After that, I was thrown off. I got to my bedroom and forgot my post-treadmill stretches. Then I missed another step. And another. All because my habit-stacking was thrown off and my brain just wasn’t keeping up.

So, what’s my point here? To give up on the time management guru advice? No, not really. I still love having structure and habits. I still believe in rhythms and routines.

But, Easter Sunday was a reminder that I’m not a machine. Instead, I’m a living, breathing, flexible human being who was designed to respond and feel. Because of that, sometimes the best keep-me-on-track tricks fail. They are mechanics. I am alive.

Being alive makes life messy. It means that even when there seems to be a solution that perfectly fits our personalities, even that solution doesn’t always work. Sometimes things go wonky just because life is an experience.

And guess what? That is good! The mess is good. The wonkiness is good. The things that go a little haywire are good. They might not feel good in the moment, but they serve as a reminder of goodness. A reminder that we are not machines but are living, breathing human beings. That we are unique.

As a perfectionist, that can be hard for me to remember in the moment. Oddly enough, though, that was the biggest blessing on Easter Sunday. I recognized this reality right in the middle of everything going wonky. It made me feel alive, even in the moment. (Kind of appropriate for Easter, huh?)

Is life messy for you right now? Either in small moments or just in an all around immersion in mess? I know you need to get out of the mess. To deal with it. To get your structure back and recapture the benefits of the practices those time management gurus teach us.

In the meantime, though, remember that there is goodness in this mess. That you can be encouraged by it. That it serves to remind you that you are alive!

I Don’t Want To

Posted on August 17, 2020 by Ann B. Hibbard

One of my summer goals was to reinstate a habit of writing. Some weeks were good, others not so much. But, I’m seeing progress. I’m also seeing, though, that it’s not always about having time for a habit. Sometimes, it’s about pushing through a bad case of “I don’t want to.” We’ve probably all faced that, in one way or another, in this strange year we’re experiencing. Here are some thoughts that came from an “I don’t want to” day a couple of weeks ago…

Today I have a few minutes to write. Lunch is an easy prep since I’m just warming up soup that’s already in the fridge, celebrating an August day in the 80s (not at all a norm for an Arkansas summer). And I just completed another course to prepare for our official homeschool start in two weeks. Almost to that finish line! So, I have time to sit down and write a few hundred words.

The problem is, I don’t want to. It’s not the out-of-habit issue that leads to staring at a blank screen, although it has been a couple of weeks since I’ve written regularly. It’s just that, emotionally, I don’t want to hash through what’s in my head.

That’s the thing about healthy habits. (And yes, for me, writing is a healthy habit.) A healthy habit — and a healthy lifestyle — insists that we confront our thoughts, emotions, struggles, and successes head-on. We have to think about them. Deal with them. Not just every now and then, but day after day after day without fail.

Even the simplest healthy habit like brushing my teeth daily makes me aware of the health of my teeth. How are they doing? What do I need to do to keep them healthier? Improve their health? Maybe I don’t consciously run through these questions every time, but the evaluation is there.

But some of the healthy habits are more in-your-face than others. Like writing. With writing, I have to process my thoughts. I have no choice. And sometimes I just don’t want to.

A habit, by nature and definition, makes the decision for us. My habit every morning is to get up, put on exercise clothes, work through a weight routine, and then go walking. The decision is made. I don’t make the decision to do all of that every morning. The habit makes the decision for me. If I do not go through that routine, then I’m making the decision not to. And that takes more effort, because then I have to rethink the flow and routine of my morning. So, as much as I do not enjoy setting the alarm early enough to get up and exercise — nor do I like the exercise itself — it’s more of a hassle to have to decide what to do with my messed-up morning. So, I exercise.

As a result, I face the health realities connected to my need for exercise head-on. Day in and day out. My weight. My eating habits. My overall health. All tied to that habit.

The writing habit, in turn, decides for me that I will deal with the cacophony of thoughts in my head. And that’s a good thing. Because when I let them pile up, they wreak havoc. They cause stress and depression. They magnify uncertainty and strengthen confusion. It’s work enough to deal with them on a daily basis. But, when they pile up? It’s downright exhausting! So, I need a habit to decide that I’m going to write, whether I want to or not.

Of course, destructive habits are no different. We have good intentions, but if our habits are unhealthy, they make the decisions for us. And our “want to” struggles to stand against them. It’s not hopeless. We can break destructive habits and build healthy ones with will power. But, if we don’t apply that will power, our habits will win. They will make the decisions.

May we always be aware of our habits. Of our healthy ones and our destructive ones. Of the evaluations they force us to make. Of the power they hold over our lives. Because when it comes down to it, our habits — not our “want tos” — are what truly shape us. What shape do we want?