The Power of Habit

At the moment this post appears online I will be running my first 5K. For most people a 5K is not much of a run. For me it is one of the most amazing things. I have never had the least interest in running. I have never even been particularly fastidious about health. When people say they want to lose weight to feel better I could not agree. I have always wanted to lose weight to look better.  But something subtly changed in my life this year and suddenly the idea of taking a run sounded almost fun, enjoyable. Something, I am not even sure what, triggered a change in the way I viewed running. This trigger changed a lifetime pattern of thinking.

Charlotte Mason described the brain as running along a rail and creating ruts. Those ruts make up our habits-all those things we do automatically without wasting the energy of decision.  In turns out that Charlotte was right. Current brain research confirms the power of habit.

I recently borrowed the book The Power of Habit and found the research compelling. According to the book, habits are creating in this way:

"This is how new habits are created: by putting together a cue, a routine, and a reward, and then cultivating a craving that drives the loop."

I have a sneaky feeling the craving that found pleasure in running began when I put the Couch to 5K app on my phone and could check off the results each day. For some reason that motivated me more than if I had written up some sort of other schedule for running. I am pretty sure it was the technology that created the craving for me. (That is my 2nd twisted confession today.)

"Small wins are exactly what they sound like, and are part of how keystone habits create widespread changes. A huge body of research has shown that small wins have enormous power, an influence disproportionate to the accomplishments of the victories themselves. “Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage...”

The above quote could be the story of my life, the story of Morning Time and the story of how I deal with the stresses of a large family.  It is not about the big wins but the little victories. Even Weight Watchers recently changed their program to reflect the power of small changes such as getting enough sleep or eating another vegetable.

I have read some material that disputes the power found in these small steps which we take to change but I cannot believe it when I look at the positive things in my life. Size matters. Small is better.

I have also watched my mother recover from an brain injury.  She woke up from her injury and did not like chocolate anymore. She lost quite a bit of weight and only recently began to put it back on as her love of chocolate returned 5 years after her injury. It made me wonder if someday diets would include some sort of brain stimulation. Just zap the desire for chocolate out of me.  

One of the most amazing thing about my sons is that they all have grit. I have never really had grit unless you count stubbornly giving birth 8 times without drugs. I don't know where this grit comes from unless it morphs out of stubbornness. In that case they got it from my husband.  Apparently this sort of grit is important and perhaps the importance for mothers of sons is to remember that just because a son bangs his head against the wall for days on end doesn't mean he won't eventually succeed in life. 

"Cultures grow out of the keystone habits in every organization, whether leaders are aware of them or not. For instance, when researchers studied an incoming class of cadets at West Point, they measured their grade point averages, physical aptitude, military abilities, and self-discipline. When they correlated those factors with whether students dropped out or graduated, however, they found that all of them mattered less than a factor researchers referred to as “grit,” which they defined as the tendency to work “strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.”

 According to one study, “Self-discipline predicted academic performance more robustly than did IQ. Self-discipline also predicted which students would improve their grades over the course of the school year, whereas IQ did not.… Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent.”

The power of habit can help us decide what is important in raising our children. We might even find that it changes our priorities. Charlotte Mason had something very hard to say to parents. It is hard for me to hear today and I wish I could say that I followed her advise from the beginning.

"Perhaps it is not too much to say, that ninety-nine out of a hundred lost lives lie at the door of parents who took no pains to deliver them from sloth, from sensual appetites, from willfulness, no pains to fortify them with the habits of a good life." Charlotte Mason

Of course, I did instill some habits into the lives of my children. The most important one being the habit of daily Bible reading.

I have always said that if a mother is not enjoying her children it is her own fault. Charlotte tells us the key to that enjoyment is found in habit.

“The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days; while she who lets their habits take care of themselves has a weary life of endless friction with the children.” Charlotte Mason

This idea is one reason I assigned permanent jobs around the home and not chart-based rotating jobs. A routine job frees up the worker to pursue other things with his mind.

Habits are the door to that wonderful place of "letting alone" which we all should be striving for in our families.

"Let children alone... the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don’t ; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose.” Charlotte Mason

Habit is a powerful tool for self-change and parenting. This can seem daunting. It must not be!! The power to change is not found in overhauling your whole family but rather in choosing one thing to work on at a time.

Here are a few ideas to begin with:

Read one chapter of the Bible everyday.

Watching too much? Pick one show to quit watching this month. This is in contrast to the usual mother panic attack in which mom says they are never watching TV again. And by the generic "mother" I mean me.

Not reading enough?  Read one chapter of a light book before bed. Don't start with Augustine. Read Ellis Peters or Miss Read.

Throw out the charts and give your children permanent jobs.

Need more energy? Try adding in one extra cup of coffee a day. 

What is one habit you would like to develop?

Can you think of a positive trigger which might make the habit enjoyable?