The SEEK Podcast
Welcome to the SEEK Podcast – we're so glad you’re here. This podcast is a place of community, collaboration, and inspiration, created to invite and encourage you deeper into a relationship with Jesus. Join these podcasters and many others as we encounter Jesus at SEEK25, Jan 1st-5th. For more information and to register, visit seek.focus.org.
The SEEK Podcast
How To Create A Habit: This Whole Life x SEEK
Join Pat and Kenna Millea as they explore how Catholic faith intersects with everyday mental wellness and family life. In this episode, we dive into the transformative power of integrating Catholic tradition with habit formation and spiritual growth.
Discover how to align your daily habits with your spiritual journey through a practical discussion on the stages of habit formation: cue, craving, response, and reward. Learn strategies for maintaining these habits amid life’s changes, utilizing small technologies, and fostering accountability.
Embrace the call to deepen your spiritual life, enhance your capacity for divine grace, and find joy in the sanctity of daily living.
Register For SEEK: https://seek.focus.org/registration/
Welcome to the Seek Podcast, where we explore faith, inspire hope and build community. My name is John Michael Lucido and I'm excited to invite you to join us this season as we dive into topics about the faith with people from all over the Catholic world. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Know that we are praying for you.
Speaker 2:And for us as people of faith, the change in state we're talking about is conversion. And for us as people of faith, the change in state we're talking about is conversion.
Speaker 1:The change in state we're talking about is letting our lives our hearts, our habits more perfectly, more clearly reflect Jesus's heart, his life.
Speaker 3:Welcome to this Whole Life, a podcast for all of us seeking sanity and sanctity and a place to find joy and meaning through the integration of faith and mental health. I'm Pat Millay, a Catholic speaker, musician and leader, and I'm here with my bride, kenna, a licensed marriage and family therapist. This is the stuff she and I talk about all the time. Family therapist this is the stuff she and I talk about all the time doing dishes in the car on a date. We're excited to bring you this podcast for educational purposes. It's not therapy or a substitute for mental health care. So come on in, have a seat at our dining room table and join the conversation with us. We are so glad you're here. Hello and welcome to this Whole Life. We are so blessed to be with you. We're so blessed to be with one another. Well, I speak for myself I'm blessed to be with you.
Speaker 2:It is always good to be with you, my love.
Speaker 1:Almost always.
Speaker 3:Always, always Great. Okay, welcome Good.
Speaker 2:Welcome. Especially if you are new here, joining us from the SEEK conference. We are so grateful to have you.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Always happy to quote. See new faces around these parts.
Speaker 3:If we can't be at SEEK in person, the next best thing is to be virtually at SEEK through the SEEK podcast network. So to all the Focus missionaries, all the students involved with Focus, hello, greetings and blessings from this whole life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and maybe a word of who the heck we are and why on earth you'd ever want to listen to us, yes, please.
Speaker 2:So I am Kenna Millay and I am a marriage and family therapist in Minnesota and, in addition to co-founding the Martin Center for Integration, which produces this Whole Life podcast, we have a clinic of 10 clinicians here in the Twin Cities and Pat you and I also get the privilege of traveling around to speak and train on this integrated life of mental health and our beautiful Catholic faith and how they just they fit together like peas in a pod.
Speaker 3:They just go together, living daily mental health within the truth, the beauty, the tradition of our Catholic faith.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great gift. And what brings you here? Why do you find yourself across from me?
Speaker 3:Well, you bring me here first of all. So much begging. Well, my parents brought me here before all that. No, I was in parish ministry for many years. You and I kind of met at the University of Notre Dame years ago in college and I spent 15 years in parish youth ministry where I was very much face-to-face with the mental and spiritual health struggles that people get into just through the course of daily life in a fallen world. And now it's a blessing to be here with you so I get to speak and lead music and worship in different places around the country.
Speaker 3:And, most importantly, you and I have been married for 15 years and we have seven beautiful children, and we drive a 12 passenger van yes.
Speaker 2:Those are the bullet points Within the will of the Lord. All the things we drive 12 passenger van yes, those are the bullet points Within the will of the Lord. All the things we drive the big van yes. All the things that you need to know about us.
Speaker 3:Well, one of the things that we love to do with this whole life is to start off with a high and a hard. To give you a little background about what's going on with us recently Ladies, first my love, would you kick us off?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so, yeah, absolutely so. I would say a hard lately is just this recognition that the greatest gift I can give, right when I'm in a relationship with someone, is to honor their freedom, to let them be their authentic self. But what happens when their authentic self and their freedom does not align with my desires for things I don't know, say in a spouse, in a child, in a coworker, in an employee, in a friend? Life just keeps giving me these chances to recognize like, oh nope, there's some attachment, there's some unhealthy, disordered attachment there.
Speaker 2:There's some attachment like. There's some unhealthy, disordered attachment there. And so the hard lately has been like grappling with like after my temper tantrum of like why can't it be the way that I want it to be? Like then coming to this realization of like, oh, because God has another, different, maybe better plan, and this is going to require me surrendering again so I really can do what I say I want to do, what I mean to do, which is honor the other person's freedom and who they're called to be. So that has been hard, and when you have teenagers it's really extra hard.
Speaker 3:Not choosing an authentic self for them? Yeah, letting them develop it with God's help, giving them space.
Speaker 2:Also hard with four-year-olds. I'm going to go out on a limb and say Harder, I would say.
Speaker 2:Less confidence in their reason being developed. And then the high lately has been okay. Similarly, reflecting on relationships, just had some opportunities recently to connect. You know, when you have a friend from like this world over here and another friend from this world over there and you're like you should meet and hang out and we should be friends and I should be the glue that holds this party together, like having some opportunities lately to do that and it is just so beautiful, like when you get to introduce two people who mean so much to you but who you trust could like enrich one another's lives, like it's awesome. And so, yeah, just reflecting on some opportunities lately and just, yeah, how the Holy Spirit was really present because it went well.
Speaker 3:That's beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. Yeah, yeah, what's going on for you?
Speaker 3:I think a hard lately has been like I don't know if this is tied to your heart or not, but there have been just a couple moments that I remember that I am a sinner in a marriage and not just a perfect man in a marriage. There's no grand confession that I have for you right now. What I'm saying is there have just been a few occasions the past week or so where you and I, despite our best efforts, despite our genuine love for each other, have just crossed our swords a little bit. You know, in the middle of a what?
Speaker 2:a good image.
Speaker 3:GK Chesterton said that marriage is a battle to the death and both of us die along the way, and he meant it, I think, in a really encouraging way. Long story short, you and I have had some disagreements, and it does not make me have any questions about our marriage whatsoever or about you, but just the difficulty of a disagreement with someone that you love so much is just hard so mine are hard there um the high.
Speaker 3:Lately I have two little highs. I'm gonna squeeze them in because I'm worried that I'm not gonna get to them, okay, I know so one of them was uh, you had a big um like conference class thing that you had to go to for the course of like three days. So I had the crazy idea of asking my grandmother, who lives in Northwest Iowa, if I could bring all seven of our children overnight to her house.
Speaker 2:By the way, she is a devoted listener. So hello, she is a devoted listener.
Speaker 3:Hello grandma, how are you? So we brought all of our children down to Grettinger.
Speaker 1:Iowa. We didn't, you did, I did.
Speaker 3:Excuse me, I brought seven children to Grettinger, iowa, and it was just so great. I'm sure my grandma slept for three days after we left because of all the energy and action that was going on in her house. But we went to mass in Grettinger, we raked leaves for her and jumped in the piles and we went to the playground and watched football and it was just. It was really, really fun to spend time with her and usually when we get together with that side of the family there's like it's like a family reunion almost there's like 50 people around. So it was great to just have our kids being able to spend some time with their great-grandmother and it was really special.
Speaker 3:The second little high is that we are recording. Shortly after all Souls Day and All Saints Day, but also Halloween and taking our little kids out. Trick-or-treating was the funniest thing ever. This year Our youngest was four years old and she's not in the space yet where she has long-term memory to recall what trick-or-treating is like last year. So we get halfway down the street and people just giving her free candy. They keep giving her free candy. So she looks at me halfway through and she goes Daddy, do you know what I love? What do you love she?
Speaker 2:goes trick-or-treating, Like light bulb went off.
Speaker 3:They did the coming home, the dumping out the candy, the sorting, the trading, the eating. It was just so great. And, yes, there were meltdowns later on and the next day, but I don't want to hear it for you because it was beautiful and it was worth it for those glimpses of childhood glory someday they'll make a grinch like story about halloween and I'll write it for them.
Speaker 2:I'll let them know what the grinch feels like on halloween.
Speaker 3:The halloween grinch starring kenna malay oh gosh, well it Well. Thanks for sharing that, my dear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I love that. I did not know Halloween was that impressionable for you, so I'm grateful to hear that it was beautiful.
Speaker 3:I learn new things about you. It's by far not my favorite holiday, but they're just little glimpses of like the pure innocence of childhood, even in a thing like it's great. Okay, I don't know about that, but. I'm really excited to talk about what we are getting into today for the good of all of our friends at SEEK and all of our friends elsewhere in the world. We get to talk about habits today. Yes, Can you tell me how? Why are we doing this?
Speaker 2:Okay. So I had this idea because we have had a lot of requests lately from organizations and individuals who are asking for guidance on this, and I think, particularly because it is a topic that is addressed in the broader culture, like, let's say, in the secular culture. But this question of like, but does our faith have something to add to this? That I would miss, that I, you know, I'd be selling it short if I didn't hear it through that lens of faith, through that perspective of being Catholic. And so, yeah, the answer is yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And so just really really excited to talk about this, because there are so many ways in which our spiritual life can be enriched by an understanding of the psychology of habit formation that we can get so self-critical, we can despair, we can be confused about what is sinful and what is not when it comes to trying to create a habit, trying to stick to habits, all these things. So I love this. Lent is like my favorite time of year, and so if there's anything that I have thought a lot about, it's like in Lent we try to create some habits, we try to break some habits. So how can we bring all that wisdom to bear in daily life? Doesn't always have to be penitential. There can be lots of reasons to want to make and break habits, so that is what we're diving into.
Speaker 3:I am so excited and I'm coming at this more as an amateur number one because I am not a therapist like you are so so much of what happens in your office, I assume, I guess, has to do with building good, healthy habits mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and maybe breaking, getting away from unhealthy or destructive habits.
Speaker 2:So true, so so true. One of the first questions we'll ask in an intake is tell me about sleep, tell me about eating, tell me about body movement, tell me about your use of drugs and alcohol, tell me about you know, like all these things. Tell me about screen time, Like, yes, essentially, give me the laundry list of your habits and I will be able to make some pretty quick. I don't want to say assumptions, but maybe paint a picture of where you might be struggling based on what your habits are.
Speaker 2:So I think where we could start is maybe just by defining, like, what are we talking about when we talk about habits? So, turning to my friend Britannica, we're just going to keep it real simple, but it's the idea of a usual way of behaving, something that a person does in a repeated way, and we hear the phrase like oh, it was habitual, I don't even have to think about it. And there are so many areas in life where we'd like to be using less energy, we'd like it to be taking less consternation and stress and forethought in order to do something like get to bed on time or refrain from food, drink, things that we know doesn't make us feel better in the morning. So thinking about habits in this way of behavioral in which you're right, pat, therefore, so much of psychotherapy, cognitive, cognitive, behavioral therapy especially has to bear on this idea of habit formation. Um, and in creating a habit is hard work. Like I just want to normalize that.
Speaker 2:This is, um, this is not easy, as you mentioned, pat, like you're coming in as the amateur, the student and as the sanguine, I was going to say yes and if you don't know that we have a recent episode, episode 59 of our podcast with the authors of the Temperament God Gave you, and so much light can be shed for my clients when they understand their temperament to know that. You know, generally speaking, cholerics and melancholics have an easier time with creating a habit and those who are of the sanguine, phlegmatic flavor they struggle. It's a natural inclination or difficulty. So just to name that like it's understandable that we struggle with this and to kind of I don't know put any shame that we feel aside around this idea of like I'm just not good at creating new habits, I just I always find myself falling off the wagon like, okay, good self-knowledge, like understanding your temperament, might be a key insight for you to increase a little bit of self-compassion.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what I'm hearing you say, I guess, is the ability to create habits, or I should say the ease at which someone creates habits is not necessarily a moral or spiritual issue. That may just be a temperament issue. It doesn't mean that sin is okay and it doesn't mean that not having a habit of prayer is okay. What it means is those habits may come more easily to some people than to others, and all of us are responsible for what we do in the course of our own call to holiness. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and I think that's a really good point to put it in the context of the call to holiness right, because this is where, as people of faith, it sets this question of habit formation apart a little bit. Because I could create a lot of habits, right, I could create habits to make myself more beautiful, to make myself more.
Speaker 3:Impossible.
Speaker 2:More buff, smarter, who knows whatever? But what we're saying is, yeah, what habits might God be asking me to develop so that I can live a more Christ-focused, Christ-reflective life, one that really brings him into the lives of those that I encounter daily?
Speaker 3:Which is what kind of strikes me as the point of having a conversation about habits as a Catholic, which is, you know. So, if our ultimate destination, if our goal is heaven which is just another way of saying Jesus if our goal is to be with God forever, then everything about this life is about that goal, for myself and, god willing, for as many people around me as I can introduce to Jesus as possible. So, then, the point of developing habits would seem to be to make easier, or to make more habitual the things that will direct me toward heaven and to break the habits that will lead me further away or get me off track from heaven. That if I'm fighting against these habits, if my habit of hitting the snooze button in the morning is interfering with my habit of daily prayer, then I have to work to destroy one habit and build up another to smooth my path of holiness right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. And so I think that you know we often quote this line from Thomas Aquinas that grace perfects nature or grace builds upon nature. And what we love about this so so much is, it's a both, and it's both this acknowledgement of God's desire to meet us where we're at, by supplementing with grace, and also the initiative, the agency that we have to show up with in our nature. So to go okay, how do I better prepare, how do I better train? How do I better discipline that nature? Well, through habits. Right, like my spiritual director was saying the other day, that the greater the human capacity, the greater the capacity to receive the grace.
Speaker 2:right Like that makes sense, the bigger my bowl to receive it, the more God can pour in, and we trust, we know we he desires to give us what we need, um, and so habits are one of those ways that we can enlarge that receptivity, um, to the grace, so that it can be effective in us.
Speaker 2:Um, and I think you know something else too, pat, like in talking with clients, in, in talking with, you know, members of these organizations that we get to speak and train with, um, sometimes people, will you know, members of these organizations that we get to speak and train with, sometimes people, will you know, have this, just this discouragement and this sense of being really down and hard on themselves of like I guess I just don't have the willpower, like I guess I just don't care enough, I must not like love God enough to try to break the habit of hit and snooze and get up and pray daily.
Speaker 2:But there is science in this too, like there is a neurological reality to what's going on in habit formation. And so I want to discuss that today because I think, if we can understand that, we can let it be to our benefit to go, oh, okay, and to be more thoughtful about it, instead of just seeing this pile of broken attempts and just thrown in the towel. So to look at what actually goes on, what is the process in our brains and how can we break that down, how can we slow it down and be more intentional to hopefully experience greater success, greater outcome.
Speaker 3:To get away from shame, I presume, and to not just look at all of my failures like oh well, I am a terrible Catholic again, but to look at our habits, failures and successes in the context of the reality of our brains, the reality of our souls, and just to keep moving forward in the direction of virtue and holiness. Yeah, definitely, Definitely. So how do we start? Well, yeah, Tell me about my brain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tell me about your brain. So first of all, I want to say there is an awesome book by James Clear called the Atomic Habit and we'll link it up to the show notes today. The show notes are such a rich place where we'll capture some great quotes, and I'm going to ask you to put up this quadrant, this image that will help illustrate the neurological process. So all that will be in the show notes. So we'll link up to to clear his book as well there. But he talks about the fact that there are four stages of a habit cue, craving, response, reward.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's break down these, these four steps in what creates a habit cycle, so okay. So in a cue, we are triggering the brain to initiate the behavior. So we're giving that signal, we're giving that sign of like, hey, we're going to start doing that thing again. In a craving, we're talking about the motivating force or the urge. So cue, for example, pavlov's dog, the bell ringing. Craving is like they start salivating and they're like already thinking about what they want, right, the treat that they want or whatever's coming out of the machine.
Speaker 3:So the craving is like the interior desire, the feeling, the urge it gets me to act with my third step, which is the response.
Speaker 2:So the response is the thing that's going to achieve the desired reward. So I got to get the urge satisfied, right? So the craving presents the urge to me and the response is that movement, that action that's going to get that satiated. And then, finally, there's that fourth step of the reward itself. So in the reward, it's the reason for all of this. It's like what it's like, that satisfaction of like. Okay, I got the thing that I came for.
Speaker 2:So let's talk this through in some like very real life scenarios, some things that I myself have experienced in terms of making a habit and breaking a habit.
Speaker 2:And we can just talk it out this way. So there was a time a few years ago when I really really really wanted to create the habit of exercising in the morning, getting my body moving in the morning, and so the cue for me at that time was enlisting a friend to do it with me. Hi, hillary, thank you so much, um. And in the morning we would text each other like an encouraging like hey, are you up? I'm up, um, are you ready? I'm ready. Like are you ready to kickbox? I'm ready to kickbox. Like whatever it was that we decided to do that day, like in the morning, that cue, that reminder like lest I forget why my alarm is going off at five, 30 in the morning, like you know, checking my phone oh, that's right. Like if I had forgotten. That cue was there like let's get energized, let's do this. So in making that habit, that cue was really helpful for me. Attach it to a person, and a cue is very powerful.
Speaker 3:I was going to say a cue plus accountability. Yes, hey, oh very very powerful.
Speaker 2:So then there's the, the craving, um and so again, this is that, that motivating urge.
Speaker 2:So for me this may sound so ridiculous, but like I had researched a pair of shoes of like I haven't worked out in a long time, I'd been having a lot of babies and hadn't been doing a ton of working out which is work to be fair but it's not this kind of work, and so I had picked, I'd spent time researching, like I picked a great pair of cross training shoes that I could like go running in, go hit whatever strength training, and so, like having wanting to use those shoes, um, it sounds so silly, but, like the urge, this motivating force of like yeah, I want to make good on that and also I don't want to let down my friend who, like also dragged herself out of bed in the dark at five 30 in the morning. Um, so that that urge like okay, propelling me forward to that third step, which is the response. Um, so absolutely helpful for me in making this habit having my clothes, having my shoes right by the bedside, like couldn't even get two steps out before I like stumbled upon them and was like, okay, yes, I'm going to put these on, I'm going to get myself moving. Well, now I'm dressed Like I might as well go, might as well go to the gym.
Speaker 2:Um, so, um, other things that were super helpful, um, in the response we're thinking about, like, how do we make it easy to respond? How do we, how do we do this? Um, by removing any obstacles, um, obstacles that could get in the way. So for me, it was pulling up the workout the night before or pulling up the playlist that I was going to listen to, charging my AirPods, like all those things that I could use as an excuse, like eliminating those and making it so easy to go. You know what it's like? Plug and play. I just got to slide into these clothes and shoes and I'm on my way Like that's easy enough.
Speaker 3:I like the channeling your inner John the Baptist of like filling in the valleys, lowering the mountains, making straight the way for the early morning workout, right. Yes, like eliminating as many barriers as possible so you can make the response that you want to make.
Speaker 2:Yes, no, absolutely so. So again, if we're, if we're thinking this through like we want to, um to ease this whole process, we want to make the cues obvious. We want to um make the craving attractive right, my shiny new shoes. We want to make the response, um, easy to access, and then, finally, we want to make the reward satisfying. So, um, one of the things that my girlfriend and I would do is the same this really really challenging and, pat, you've done this workout a couple of times, so you can attest this really challenging workout.
Speaker 3:It is not rewarding, at least on an emotional level.
Speaker 2:This cardio hit thing, and so we would do it periodically and measure our success and progress. And really it was measured by how crummy do we feel at the end of this workout? How much are we sucking?
Speaker 3:in. I only passed out at minute 21 this time. That's really good Legitimately.
Speaker 2:There were times in the beginning where, like, we didn't make it through the whole workout. It was so intense, um, but but like, however, you want to measure that success and go like, yes, that's, that's getting satisfied. So this is the way we want to think about being able to develop a habit.
Speaker 2:Okay, so then, on the flip side, breaking a habit- and like you pointed out, pat, earlier, a lot of times the two come together and it can be helpful, especially when the focus is on breaking, maybe a bad habit, a sinful habit, a habit that we know isn't good for our health psychologically or physically. It can be helpful to pair the two because something can take the place of the bad habit. So when we're trying to break a habit, again going back to the top with that cue, we want to make the cue as invisible as possible. So a bad habit that I've been trying to break is scrolling my phone at night, and just the interminable scroll that Instagram and social media is willing to offer me, doom scrolling is my preferred description.
Speaker 3:It so is.
Speaker 2:How does like 20 minutes pass so fast? Anyways, so we want to make that bad cue invisible. So, for example, maybe the decision to dock your phone in the kitchen at nine o'clock at night, and maybe even setting an alarm on your phone that just goes off every day at 9 PM and, you know, blurts this message of like take me to the kitchen, like plug me into the kitchen, whatever this reminder, and it's like okay, that's my shutoff time, like I'm done and docking it there. So I want to make the phone right, which is that cue. Otherwise, I'm like I should check that out. I haven't, I haven't been on social in like 20 minutes. Like I should see what's going on over there. Making that as invisible as possible. Um, then there's the craving. So we want to make the bad craving as unattractive as possible. Like, make it ugly, make it real ugly.
Speaker 2:So, for example, back to that accountability you were talking about, which is such a powerful force. If you have a spouse, if you have a housemate, if you have a parent or sibling, tell them what you are trying to break and let them know, like, hey, I give you permission after 9 PM. If you see me, you know mousing around in the kitchen with my phone attached to the charger like, ask me, like, hey, is that going to help you get to where you want to be going right now, gently, charitably, but like remind me that you're my accountability buddy on this. So making that bad craving, unattractive, sorry. And then the third is to really make it hard to respond when we're thinking about that response. So that may be something like actually powering down the phone, which I know is like such a foreign concept to us in this day and age. It really wasn't long ago Like we used to power our phones down every night.
Speaker 3:We were crazy not to but nowadays everyone is just perpetual on. It's one of my favorite questions to ask, like high school college students when is the last time your phone was off yes, powered off. And they'll have to think and be like uh, I mean, I got it in 2022. So probably then when it came in the mail.
Speaker 2:I am not going to lie. Until recently, I didn't know how to power my phone off. My phone would like power down because it was out of battery or like got overheated, but it was never of my own volition. Like I never actually chose to power down my phone until recently, when I was like I've got to get a handle on my own self-control, like around my phone. So you taught me how to power down my phone, which is great. Thank you for that.
Speaker 3:You're welcome.
Speaker 2:So making a hard response. So it could be turning off the phone entirely so that you're not hearing it buzz even from the other room. Again, that's a cue right. So that could heighten our system and make it harder to resist following through on this bad habit. And then, finally, when it comes to the reward, we want to make it unsatisfying. We want to make it as unsatisfying as possible.
Speaker 2:So things that I think about that work really well for me is that my charger well, we both do this now, pat, but like my charger is in the kitchen now and, if I like, last night I accidentally had my phone in my bag and my bag came upstairs with me and this morning my phone was like on low battery, which is super annoying because I want it juiced and ready to go for like a full day of work. So like making it unsatisfying to not follow through, like I'm for sure as heck going to remember tonight, like to put my phone downstairs and to charge it. So, following that cycle, whether we're trying to make or break, looking at these four quadrants which again we've posted on the show notes, can be so key in going.
Speaker 2:What's my downfall? What element of this might I not be thinking through? Really? Yeah, clearly, thoughtfully, that could increase the chance that I could make or break this habit.
Speaker 3:I love how simply you laid that out, how kind of logical that is these four steps, one side for creating and solidifying a good habit, one side for destroying and eliminating a bad habit.
Speaker 3:And I think it is helpful for us too, as people of faith, to clarify that some of these habits that we want to create or destroy are genuinely moral, good or evil habits. Right, like you and I have a couple episodes on my journey our journey through pornography and the way that that became habitual for a long time, and and having to get out of that habit in a very specific, very targeted so, some of these things do involve actual sins. That it's our moral duty, it's our invitation and our obligation to break as Catholics and to create virtuous, holy habits as well, really good, morally holy habits. So creating habits of prayer and worship, creating habits of great, authentic and loving friendship. There are all kinds of good habits that we need to create as we destroy the evil ones. It's not just about eliminating sin and kind of coasting. It's about destroying the bad, evil, sinful habits to create good, virtuous ones. Right, but there are some habits out there that the habits themselves are not sinful, but they will lead us in the direction of Jesus or away from him, right.
Speaker 3:So I'm thinking through and some I mean I think of habits even that stack upon each other, Right, I can't tell you how many folks when, when we were in college, college students that I've worked with over the years who have, who have talked about the bad habit of staying up too late, of not going to bed when I know I should leads to the bad habit of drinking more than I should or smoking more than I should at odd hours of the night, and that inevitably will lead to the bad habit of texting that one ex that I know I should not be in communication with anymore, and who knows what kind of bad situations might come from that.
Speaker 3:Right, that these are all bad habits. That kind of stack upon each other at a certain point, and giving into the first bad habit might create cues for the other ones down the road that follow. So it can be a really helpful thing to just look at that kind of analytically almost. And you know, if you're an engineer type, God bless you. Good for you. I am not, but maybe it's a matter of looking at the past month or so and saying like, okay, whenever I did this one particular thing this bad habit that I don't want to do?
Speaker 3:what happened in the day leading up to that? What were the triggers? What were the cues? What were the even just seemingly unrelated coincidences that happened leading up to that? And is it possible that some of those are cues? Actually, is it possible that whenever I listen to this song, it makes me think of this kind of poor boundary to relationship I have and it gets me in a place of anger or resentment or unforgiveness, right? So how can I really look at my life Analytically, analytically, ask for the grace of God to see with the eyes of wisdom and understanding, and how can I approach my life in a way that helps me to again live on the good side of the habits and eliminate the bad ones?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. And the good side of the habits and eliminate the bad ones? Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. And I think too to to be able, um, to consider, like, is there a um linchpin habit that could set good habits off in motion? So, for example, for me it's about going to bed on time. Um, and Pat, you know, I turn into a pumpkin, a crabby pumpkin, if I do not go to bed on time, because it's not only about that moment of like. Oh, I'm not living into this habit that I want of being in bed at 10.
Speaker 2:But it's the domino effect of how much harder it is to get up in the morning which makes it harder to pray, harder to work out, harder to be not in such a rush, therefore crabby with my children, like just there's so much that can be linked and so considering, like what might be that initial habit that could help actually make a lot of other great habits easier to attain and easier to sustain. So, yeah, I think those are really good things to consider, that's great.
Speaker 2:I also think that it's important to say you know, with my clients it's it's so common, right, like, especially when a new client is coming in, they are just on fire. Right, the iron is hot, they are striking. I'm excited for them. Like they've made the call. They, they want to make a move and they have all these ideas of all these things they want to change. They want to do you know, they want to get their bodies moving. They want to be speaking to their children in a different way. They want to be dating their spouse again and really living into their marriage. They want to be showing up as a better colleague and coworker at work, like all these beautiful things. And so they want to try eight things at once.
Speaker 2:And they look at me like I'm crazy or like they're not getting their money's worth when I say can we pick one thing? Can we start with one thing? Because the reality is the momentum that can build and grow from choosing one habit to focus on and really knocking it out of the park and having a sense of confidence, having a sense of like I can do this. I do have the virtue God is providing the grace Like I can do this, starting with one habit and letting that not only build and grow, but also reveal what might need to be the next thing that I make break in terms of habit formation.
Speaker 2:That's hard. It's hard to pump the brakes on someone who's on fire, who's excited. Maybe that's you listening right now. You're like let's go. And here I am, like Debbie Downer, like just wait a second, Just hold on.
Speaker 3:Don't change your whole life today. Hold on.
Speaker 2:Because it can be so defeating to be having many, many, many things going on right, like the Lent phenomenon is probably one that we are all familiar with. That describes this right. Like you have eight different prayer things that you want to do, seven different fasting things that you want to do, all these penances, and on day four you're like I am the worst Catholic ever because I cannot keep these things up and by the end week five of Lent, you're down to those two core things that you're like actually, this is really good, this is actually really meaningful.
Speaker 2:Which?
Speaker 3:are probably the only two things you should have started with at the beginning, right? Right, but we have such big high hopes right when we're on fire. We're like this is going to be a season of change and conversion Heroic holiness starts today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, right. So to to say here like I promise you you can always go up, right, you can always build, you can always increase. I remind clients like you're going to fall off, like you're going to miss. I know for me it's so hard to keep up my habits when I'm in a different setting, like when we go on a vacation or something. It's disorienting, and so there's kind of a recalibration when you come home. So just to normalize that stuff, especially coming out of you know, maybe Christmas break, if you're in a different, yeah, different setting, different schedule, you're kind of marching to the beat of someone else's drum. If you're being hosted in their home, um, in their rhythm of life, like that is normal, it's understandable. Um, I think just seeing yourself start with something small and then going like I do know this process, I do know how to, to think this through, how do I identify my cues, um, how do I identify my cravings, my responses and my rewards, like that process is really valuable.
Speaker 3:Yeah, self-knowledge for the sake of self-gift yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think too, like you mentioned, Pat, but I want to underscore it again these little technologies, quote technologies. Peter Kraff talks about technology, something that makes life easier, right, I am a huge fan of these small technologies Post-it notes. I believe in the three post-it note rule. Write it down on three post-it notes and put it in three prominent places, Usually your bathroom mirror, your computer and your car. So whatever it is that you're working on, whatever that reward maybe is that you're looking for to be satisfied, write that down. So post-it notes are one type of technology. Another one is phone alarms. I will rag on technology all day long, but you know, Pat, my phone bing bongs all day long.
Speaker 3:You use your phone for nothing more than alarms. If my phone only existed for alarms, and maybe my WhatsApp, it's about 17 a day, but they're so helpful.
Speaker 2:They're so helpful and in time I don't need them as much. But in the beginning, heck, yeah, like I need that reminder, I need that external cue to help me know what I'm supposed to be up to right now. So I'd say post-it notes, and then the third post-it notes and alarms on your phone, and then the third is an accountability buddy. And not that that person has to be trying to do this same thing with you, Um, but just someone that you can check in with. Someone who can celebrate the wins with you, someone who can encourage you when it feels discouraging or when you feel like you've had a setback Um, but just someone who's going to be in your corner and who sees how good this is for you um, to help keep you accountable.
Speaker 3:And and if I can be the resident sanguine for one moment before we wrap up here, maybe there is a really good opportunity to create a reward that makes a good habit really worth it. I'm thinking of a person that I knew years ago who was trying to get into the habit of going to Sunday Mass every single Sunday. That he wasn't in the habit, he knew that he should be. He'd been putting it off for long enough and he knew that, as dumb as it sounds, or maybe not dumb, maybe as silly as it sounds if he got a donut after mass every single Sunday, that that would be just one little extra bonus reward to getting out of bed, not watching NFL live first thing in the morning on Sunday, going to mass and then celebrating the glory of the Eucharist with a donut after mass as well.
Speaker 2:The Eucharist is the real me. Is that person you? No, that person is not me.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much. Although we may have a lot of things in common, that is not me, no. So, whatever it is like, if you're trying to develop a routine of prayer, if you're trying to develop a routine of spending really quality, like face-to-face time with friends and living on a deeper level with the people that you're close to, if you're trying to build a routine of being more active and going for walks or exercising or eating better, what are rewards that you can create to make that habit all the more attractive? Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3:And if you're looking for reward ideas, I'm your guy.
Speaker 2:So shoot us a message.
Speaker 3:I will create, I will come up with a reward structure for you, friend Give.
Speaker 2:Pat your hypotheticals and he will. Yeah absolutely so. I want to say one more thing before we get into our challenge by choice, which is how we wrap up our sessions, and it's a quote from Clear in the Atomic Habit, and he says what you? To not gossip, let's say, to speak differently, to not yell at others out of anger and rage. And then we actually start talking about what it would take to get there, and they're like well, that sounds terrible, that sounds gross.
Speaker 2:That doesn't sound fun Like you know they, they kind of get turned off by that and I'm like we got to keep our eyes focused on the change in state.
Speaker 2:And for us, as people of faith, the change in state we're talking about is conversion. The change in state we're talking about is letting our lives, our hearts, our habits more perfectly, more clearly, reflect Jesus's heart, his life and his orientation to the good and the true and the beautiful. So you know, really, when we're thinking that through and you start backpedaling like well, maybe I don't really want to, and it starts turning you off, focus again on what's that change in state, what's that ultimate reward for us? It's relationship with the Lord, it's intimacy with him, it's it's really at the end of a day, at the end of a life, knowing, believing that he will look upon us and say like well done, good and faithful servant, like that is what we're looking for. So keep our eyes on that prize. Like we, as people of faith, have that advantage. It's not just about this world, we're talking about things that have eternal ramifications, and that's good news.
Speaker 3:That's great news. Great news, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:So, so let's talk about this challenge by choice. So at the end of each episode, we we make this actionable. We say like, okay, this is good stuff, but what's a first, next step?
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And so in this one, I would ask listeners to consider how am I doing in my this station of life, right, my vocation in life, maybe as a student, um, maybe as an employee, um, maybe as a housemate, as a spouse, as a, as a daughter, a son, um, wherever you're at? Um, how am I doing? And what is one thing that's standing in the way of an even more generous self-gift of myself? What's something that's standing in the way of that? Looking at that and considering what would help me? What habit either making one or breaking one what habit would support me showing up even more generously, even more joyfully and freely in my vocation, in this season of life, and beginning there to identify your habit.
Speaker 3:Beautiful. That's a great starting place, man.
Speaker 2:I'm excited.
Speaker 3:Should we pray for all of our friends listening to this?
Speaker 2:so that we can build better habits.
Speaker 3:Absolutely let's do it In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, we praise you, we adore you and we thank you for the grace of this moment, for the grace of our lives and for the grace of your presence with us. Lord, we know that you created us out of love, that you call us to love and to live lives of love for you and for those around us. And we also know, lord, that we live in a fallen world, that we ourselves are marked by sin and weakness, and that there are all kinds of ways that our lives do not reflect your will and your call for us. So we pray, lord, for the courage, for the wisdom and for the grace to develop the kinds of habits that will help us to be an image of you in the world and to move away from the habits that keep us from you and from the path that you've laid out before us. Lord, please bless us, bless all those who are listening to these words. May they receive your grace and may they have the courage to move toward you with the kind of focus and dedication that you desire for us. We ask all this, jesus, in your name, amen, amen, in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Well, friends, if you're listening to this, you may be hearing it in the fall of 2024. And if that is the case and you are a college student, I can't encourage you enough to go to SEEK.
Speaker 3:There are kind of two different SEEK options this year. There's a conference in Salt Lake City January 1st through the 5th of 2025. There's a second conference, an identical conference, in Washington DC on the east side, january 2nd through the 5th. So you can go to SEEK. The theme this year is Follow Me Just an amazing opportunity to be together with other college students, other young adults, with great speakers, great worship, great prayer, great breakouts. It's been really life-changing from a lot of former high schoolers, young adults that I've known throughout my ministry years. So, if you're a college student, make the time, find a way to get to Salt Lake City or DC. If you have a college student in your life, if you have a sibling, a child, a grandchild, do what you can to help them get there. I promise you it'll help them make some really, really great habits.
Speaker 2:Sweet. I hope to make it to Sikh someday. I've heard amazing things, so yeah, well, until next time, my love. Thank you again for another wonderful conversation and, to all of you listening, thanks for being with us. If you are new to this Whole Life, we invite you to stay along for the ride. Subscribe to this Whole Life podcast on your player of choice. Join us, follow us on Instagram this Whole Life podcast and on Facebook, and feel free to drop us a line about what habits you are crushing these days. This whole life podcastcom. And until next time, god bless you. This whole life is a production of the Martin Center for Integration.
Speaker 1:Visit us online at thiswholelifepodcastcom. If you enjoy what we do, please subscribe and share this podcast with a friend. This helps us reach more people with and for Christ. Until next time, this is John Michael Peace.
