 A couple years ago I found this amazing recipe for chocolate cake. It is rich and moist and involves actually coffee baked into the batter. It hits all my requirements for a perfect dessert. I love it so much that I even wrote it down on a recipe card and stuck it in my quick-access recipes. The crazy thing is, every time I see that recipe card, the world slows down. I picture it, visualize it, imagine myself mixing the batter and pulling the cake out of the oven, dusting it with powdered sugar, and devouring it. My mouth waters and I feel like one of those cartoon characters whose eyes are reflecting huge images of chocolate cake while my tongue hangs out of my mouth.
Ridiculous, right? But it is a behavior that is common to things that our lower brain firmly believes in important. We reinforce that belief by spending all that time thinking about it and reliving the experience and planning another moment. In fact, every moment you spend indulging in the fantasy of living out that moment, you will find it even harder to resist it later. Louie Giglio, in his book, Don’t Give the Enemy a Seat at Your Table, he says, “once we let a harmful thought pitch a tent in our mind, eventually the temptation is acted on.” Essentially, we have closed the door on a behavior that does not serve us. We know that this six week break will help us make permanent changes to the way we live, but the longer we stare at that closed door, the more likely we are to walk up to it and open it up. In Romans 12:2, NLT, gives us the warning, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” Let’s stop telling our mind that this behavior or habit is so important that we need to revisit it and stare at that closed door. We’re moving on, right?. Journal Prompt: What are you revisiting often in your mind in relation to the habit you are taking a break from? How do you feel when you are thinking about it? Anxious? Frustrated? When you catch yourself doing this, what action are you going to take to move on to healthier thinking?
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by Lora Armendariz
You Can Do It!Do you want to fall out of love with a destructive habit? The first 42 episodes of this podcast are a resource for anyone who wants encouragement and information as they take a six week break from a habit in order to fall out of love with it. Archives
March 2023
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