So—how many resolutions did you make in the flush of a brand
new year, just a week ago yesterday, January 1st, 2014? According to a study published in the University of Scranton’s Journal of Clinical Psychology, 45
percent of Americans resolved to change some thing or behavior or habit in the next
51 weeks. The most common resolution is
to lose weight, followed by (in no particular order), to quit drinking or
smoking, to save more and spend less, to be organized, to help others, to learn
a new skill, to fall in love and to spend more time with family.
All noble. All good. All well meaning and all…well, often pretty
much doomed to fail. The same study reports
that the long term success rate for major life changes like these is about eight
percent—oops! The good news is that people
who do explicitly make resolutions are ten times more likely to achieve success
than those who make no resolutions. But that high failure rate? In the book
“The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg, he writes that routines and habits are
reflected in up to 45 percent of all the choices we make daily, hence the
difficulty in changing them.
For we do have so many habits: the morning coffee, the first
cigarette, the glass of scotch after work, the section we always turn to in the
newspaper, the webpage we visit first thing on the computer, the food we munch
on as we watch TV, the time we get up, the time we go to sleep. All habits. All
hard wired behaviors which for better and worse give structure and
dependability and “normalcy” to life. In a way we humans are our habits,
habitual in how we live and move through each day.
Do a Google search and you can find plenty of strategies and
advice on how to break habits and to begin new, healthier habits. This is the time of year when so many are
well along on this task, so well intentioned. The gyms are full. Alcoholics
Anonymous rooms are packed. Weight
Watchers chapters are filled to overflowing.
Sales of journals to track all these hoped for habit breakers and makers
are through the roof and all begin with this simple phrase: Day 1….
But then our humanity kicks in and we stumble. We want to
run but it is really, really cold out, yes?
We want to quit smoking but how about just one more butt with my a.m.
java? Stir fry for dinner?
Tomorrow. I’d love to organize the
closet but Downton Abbey’s new season starts and who can miss that? And so we start and stop or we don’t start at
all and then fall back into our habits.
Or not. Because some
among us, the rare few, will succeed.
Will run that first marathon next spring, will stop smoking after 20
years of puffing away, will drop 20 pounds, will tame and defeat one habit and
create a new, better habit. If there’s a
secret to that success it may just go back to the first day we start anew. Just one day. Today.
The Psalmist writes in the Bible that “This is the day that
the Lord has made: let us rejoice and be glad in it.” The spiritual message here is simple and
clear. This day is all that matters.
This day is the only day we can make a change. In A.A. the truism is that folks
stay clean and sober not forever, but just one day at a time. The cliché quote reminds us that the longest
journey always begins with the first step.
What makes habits so hard to break? Perhaps just feeling like we have to do it
all at once. We have to get to the
finish almost before we even begin.
But ask a long distance runner how they can do it and
they’ll tell you they run just one race at a time, one jog, one journey, one
early morning commitment and that’s it.
They get to 26.2 miles second by second, minute by minute and day by
day. They endure. Endurance. Being in it for the long run, but just for
today, drilling down into right now and not worrying about tomorrow.
Ask a person of faith why their belief is so strong and
they’ll tell you it all starts with a prayer every single morning, and not just
in an emergency or at Christmas or Easter.
As a long distance bicyclist I can tell you the worst thing for me to
think before I set out on a long ride is how far I have to go. The best thing is to just get my backside on
the bike and pedal: one circle, one revolution, at a time.
Endurance isn’t flashy. Endurance offers no short cuts.
Endurance depends not on some wacky new diet or cutting corners. Endurance
instead recognizes that most humans can achieve almost anything that they set
their hearts and minds upon if they just start. If they begin with just one
step, one action, one movement away from an addiction or habit and towards a
new way of life and living.
Resolved: to change.
But just today. Just by doing one thing.
Endurance: that’s what I’m working for in 2014. Nine days down. 356 to go and all, just 24 hours at a time.
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