My ideas and my words, edited with AI.
Mark Rogers was a huge proponent of habits. Cold showers. Intermittent fasting. And every year he challenged his memory by memorizing a different trivia: Heisman winners, every major sports champion, U.S. Presidents, capital cities, learning Spanish.
Mark was so focused on habits that Talan and I adopted the mindset just being around him every day.
I am nowhere near as disciplined as Mark was. But I do agree that habits can be changed.
After Mark died, all six of our kids, mine and Mark's, needed to get to school every day. This was not an option. So every day, just like we'd done for years, Talan and I were coordinating with Jenn and her parents to get those six kids to school, because each pair had to go at a different time. My kids also needed to eat (who would have thunk it?), so we had to keep going.
Our kids were, in some ways, our accountability partner. They made sure we woke up in the morning, kept something decent on the table, and stepped out of the house every day.
From my blog in 2022:
The best habit I have created in 2022 is that of rest. I fully understand Sabbath now and I am protecting my rest. I am creating daily space to sit and listen to silence, to breathe and focus, and to pray.
The big idea
The big idea is that doing something small consistently compounds. It's the concept of boring investments.
The hardest part of investing isn't picking the right fund. It's staying in your seat when everything around you says to get up.
Portfolios may dip and climb along the way, but over time they rise for those who stay patient and keep investing.
I love modern writers, but the ultimate source already stated it so well.
"Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it." (Proverbs 13:11)
There are so many books written on habits. If you've been around me at all, you've heard me reference The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and Atomic Habits by James Clear. Duhigg argues that willpower is like a muscle that can be exercised and strengthened over time.
Again, not to belabor the point, but the Bible has so many lessons on habits.
Daily bread
How much of Jesus' ministry was rooted in daily bread, rest, seek and ye shall find, and so much more about "boring," small consistency that compounds?
"Give us this day our daily bread." (Matthew 6:11)
Daily bread, not weekly bread.
A few verses later: "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." (Matthew 6:34)
This verse isn't giving you a pass on planning for the future. It's trying to remind you to be present today. Do the thing today that compounds tomorrow. That's the point.
"The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." (Mark 2:27)
"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." (Matthew 7:7)
This one may seem out of place, but the point here is to keep going. Keep asking, seeking and knocking. Do the thing today, don't stop.
And obviously there's manna from heaven. God literally gave them their daily bread and told the people to "gather a day's portion every day." When they collected more, it "bred worms and stank." So "morning by morning they gathered it." (Exodus 16)
I don't want to go on a long diatribe about money compounding. You've heard it enough to know it. The challenge is leaving it alone. And the additional challenge is adding just a little bit more today.
The daily bread wasn't about doing too much. To me, the key was doing enough. In biblical terms, that means staying plugged into the source of power, which in itself requires effort.
As Dallas Willard put it, "Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action."
This is freedom
This is essentially tapping into God, the life-giving Spirit. "Apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:5) This is freedom.
Richard Foster wrote, "Discipline is not meant to tie us down but to set us free."
I was just talking to a group of athletes this weekend about practice. I will always believe that what made me successful on gamedays was the fact that I loved the daily practices. I loved competing. I loved "the grind," but to me it wasn't a grind. The “grind”, essentially the hard part, became the thing I loved the most. And today it's the thing I miss the most.
We can fall in love with the process, the daily activities that become your habits.
Bring heaven to earth by connecting to it here.
"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." (Lamentations 3:22-23)
So I wake up every day and make the best of today, because it's all I have. Time is a precious gift, and I get to choose to spend it wisely and be intentional with it.
