Make a Habit; Break a Habit, on Amazon.

I’d like to come to your church and teach your people to develop life-changing habits. Whether you want lose weight (I lost nearly 40 pounds) or develop the habit of having a quiet time, the principles in this book can change your life.

I’d like to do these seminars on a different basis than previous seminars. I’d recommend the following schedule:

• Sunday morning — preach and/or teach all adults in Sunday School.
• Sunday night — two hour session.

I’d like to do these seminars with a different cost structure. I’d ask you pay my expenses and, instead of an honorarium, buy (or ask your people to purchase) one copy of the book for each adult in attendance on Sunday morning. If each of your people will buy a book, no other honorarium is required.

Contact me at josh@joshhhunt.com or 575.650.4564 for details.

Habits: does it matter where I start?

Suppose you want to develop the habits of. . .

·         Reading your Bible every day, and

·         Practicing the piano every day, and

·         Exercising every day.

Suppose you want to break the habits of. . .

·         Smoking, and

·         Watching so much TV, and

·         Eating so much junk food.

In the first chapter, we talked about the idea that you do well to work on one thing at a time. We fail to achieve New Year’s resolutions because of the letter “s.” We work on multiple resolutions and fail at all of them. Developing the habit is hard work— so hard that you do well to work on one habit at a time.

Here’s the question I want to address in this chapter: does it matter in which order we work on the habits? Does it matter if you start with practicing piano or exercising?

In one sense, it does not. Scientists have learned an amazing thing about willpower. It is like a muscle. Willpower is one central muscle that affects all of our habits. If you strengthen the willpower muscle, it will help you to read your Bible, play the piano, and do anything else you set your mind to do. Charles Duhigg reports:

Take, for instance, studies from the past decade examining the impacts of exercise on daily routines.4.10 When people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly. Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. It’s not completely clear why. But for many people, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change. “Exercise spills over,” said James Prochaska, a University of Rhode Island researcher. “There’s something about it that makes other good habits easier.”[1]