Name Your Resistance

Naming our resistance brings great change.
So you might take a few moments to allow your go-to excuses to come to the

surface. Think of the situations in which you are most apt to use them—perhaps at work or with someone who knows you well. Look for those situations in which you most feel defensive—for instance, when you feel criticized. Look at areas of your life where you wish you were different but never change and ask how you rationalize not changing to yourself.

You might also allow the discomfort to come so that you can move past it to awareness—as someone once said, “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” You might remember, for example, the pain of cheating on that test, lying to that friend, bragging to that group, disappointing your child. Allow the full hurt to be felt, not as a way of beating yourself up, but so that you can fully see the person you want to become.

Habit Stacking

As you practice the habits of your life—when you get dressed, when you brush your teeth, when you drive a car, when you eat a meal—pause for a moment, think about what you’re doing, and offer your habits to God. You might want to try what James Clear calls “habit stacking”: identify one habit you already do each day and stack another habit on top of it.

“Habit stacking” was a central practice of the early church (though they didn’t call it that) when they daily “devoted themselves” to the apostles’ teaching and prayer and fellowship and meeting in homes. Meeting together became a cue to encourage one another, and they were urged not to neglect this “as some are in the habit of doing.”

One other thought to make it sustainable: add a habit that brings you joy. In a classic text centuries ago, William Law advised people not simply to read the psalms but to sing them. He profoundly noted that just as our thoughts and emotions affect our bodies, so we can use our bodies to change our thoughts and emotions. “As anger produces angry words, so angry words increase anger.”

Entirely Ready

There is a world of difference between being almost ready and being entirely ready for God to remove our defects of character. We often live with conflicting desires, illustrated by Augustine’s prayer: “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.”

Two exercises to help us reach the point of being “entirely ready”:

1. Honestly look at our excuses

2. Sitting with our character defects until we are tired enough to want real change.

The next part of this steps is to leverage the power of habit.

Habitual character defects get removed not by willpower but by replacing them with newer and better habits.

See Yourself as God’s Beloved

We become entirely ready to have our character defects removed by God when we experience ourselves as his beloved daughter or son so that we no longer have to make ourselves “special.” We are to not simply affirm that we are God’s beloved in our minds; we are to feel it in our hearts. Of course, we can’t make ourselves feel something just by willing it. But it’s often easier to think our way into a feeling than to feel our way into some thinking.

Address “The Three Lies” that often impede us from seeing ourselves as God’s beloved.