habits on Resilience

It’s human nature to resist change—particularly when it comes in the form of adversity or challenges. But change is inevitable, and developing the trait of resilience helps us not only survive change,...

On retreat we stop avoiding the pain of the disconnect between our deepest desires and the way we are actually living. We have time and space to reflect on our life rhythms to see if they are really w...

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit.”.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather have these because we have acted rightly; these virtues are formed in man by d...

We become what we repeatedly do.

Gratitude is a habit of awareness that reshapes our self-understanding and the moral choices we make in the world. In short, gratitude is an ethic, a coherent set of principles and practices related t...

To change one’s life: start immediately,  Do it flamboyantly,  No exceptions.

Our brains need to engage and make decisions again, instead of floating along the paths of least resistance.

I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels so much like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that have become habitual…I keep on through habit fitting an arrow to the ...

What Determines Happiness?  Imagine a movie theater full of a hundred people. These hundred individuals represent the full continuum of happiness: Some are exceptionally happy, others less so, and ...

Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.

The following illustration, taken from Ronald Rolheiser book, The Holy Longing, can be applied to the idea of bad habits, that they often have a way of returning, no matter how hard we try to kill t...

Living for what gives or maintains the greatest amount of personal comfort is our long-established habit. At the core, that’s what comfort is—it’s a habit, a way of life. Comfort has become the defaul...

As a writer, my great interest is human nature, and in particular, the subject of happiness. A few years ago, I noticed a pattern: when people told me about a “before and after” change they’d made tha...

The power of changing a habit is identifying the reward you are seeking and working backward.

Habits make change possible by freeing us from decision making and from using self-control.

Freedom is found when undesirable habits are identified and the cue-routine-reward structure is defined, pulled apart, and reframed. In the context of our discussion, the cue is a desire for comfort, ...

Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allo...

The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

For the past two weeks, the Strachan family has been living, working, and playing in Southern California, primarily at the beach, thanks to a close friend (yes, I know how ridiculously blessed we are)...

"Sow a thought, and you reap an act; Sow an act, and you reap a habit; Sow a habit, and you reap a character; Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.”

We often get into ruts, on treadmills, caught up in patterns and habits that aren't useful. We don't stop to ask, what can I learn from this week that will keep next week from essentially bein...

According to the groundbreaking book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, his research tells us that cravings drive our “habit loops.” Some of us crave escape or relaxation through the habit of a g...

We sow a thought and reap an act; We sow an act and reap a habit; We sow a habit and reap a character; We sow a character and reap a destiny.

Most people I know who establish new patterns of healthy living do so in community.

The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance.

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is...

Experience tells me that people's hearts are seldom changed if they are not changed when young. Seldom indeed are men converted when they are old. Habits have deep roots. Once sin is allowed to se...

Ancient lighting took  Work I remember watching a movie (I think it was The Mummy ) where the protagonists descended into an underground structure built by the ancients. The structure was completel...

To experience the richness of life in God's kingdom, we must reorder our lives. We need to see through the shallow promises of our culture, and we need rhythms, signposts, and practices that reori...