Developing a System of Good Habits
By: Sara Payne, Magnify Missions Coach
Email: sara@magnifymissions.com
Years ago when I was just out of college, I lived and worked overseas as a part of ministry to high school students. I had a discipler who told me every decision I made was either taking me towards Christ or away from Christ. While my experience overseas was a challenging one and I actually didn’t connect well with my discipler, that particular lesson has stuck with me in life. I’ve witnessed and experienced the reality that little decisions add up and ultimately build up into bigger choices and life habits. I’ve seen friends and family members lose sight of or simply walk away from their faith because they stopped doing the little things that pointed them to Jesus and kept him as a priority in their lives. I meet with a high school senior every other week. We’ve been meeting together for 3 years now and have been going through the Bible and discussing her faith habits over the course of those years. Just this week I was talking to her about reading her Bible, and she said, “I don’t read my Bible, Sara. Meeting with you is about the only thing I do.” While I love meeting with her, I reiterated what she already knows - meeting with me does not suffice or replace her own relationship with Jesus. I left her with the challenge to just read one Psalm a day. I said if it’s a long one you can skip it, just go to the next one and try keeping up the habit of reading one each day for a month. I’ve been on a habit-kick recently, which prompted my challenge to her. I just finished up Habits of the Household, by Justin Whitmel Earley. Check out my blogs on that if you’re interested in developing habits of faith and family. My own work habits and rhythms have really had to shift in the past few years as I am now a full time stay at home mama and a part time (10 hours a week) employee with Magnify Missions. I am regularly thinking about how habits help people be more efficient and better accomplish their goals in life. I was looking for a book that could speak to habits in relation to work and ministry so I picked up Atomic Habits by James Clear. His insight on the topic of habits was not only inspiring but also felt achievable.
Staying on Top of the Weeds
Since becoming a homeowner, I’ve developed a love of gardening and digging around in the dirt. We have a decent sized yard, with at least 6-7 garden beds. When we first moved into our house 8 years ago the weeds were definitely winning. I traveled full time with my husband and his band, so we would be gone for long stretches of time, always just enough time it seemed for the weeds to get the upper hand. I fondly called our yard the jungle for the first two years we lived there. Each year for the past five years I’ve dedicated a significant amount of time to clearing out the weeds, laying down weed barriers, and planting perennials. I would tackle a new garden bed each summer and reclaim it from the weeds. I can say that now in my eighth year of living in our home, with a free afternoon of 3-4 hours, I can easily weed and keep on top of all of my garden beds. It definitely wasn’t instantaneous and it has taken painstaking dedication, but I now get to reap the rewards of my efforts. It’s spring and I’ve been back in the garden. The process of weeding and planting points me to the idea of building “atomic habits” as James Clear calls them. He writes, “All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger. Roots entrench themselves and branches grow. The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. And the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.” Staying on top of my weeding each week is much easier than letting a month go by before I tackle it. Habits are the same way. If we make tiny, intentional decisions towards the kind of people we want to be and the types of choice we want to make we are building up a bank of wins for ourselves. Clear notes in Atomic Habits, “Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them.”
Habits of Work
What does this compound interest look like when translated to our work? For me it has resulted in more productivity and clearer outcomes. When I first started working with Magnify Missions we discussed the idea of having me write blogs. I was excited but also a little intimidated. How would I keep coming up with content or have enough to write? I made a goal to write every Thursday and keep that time as sacred for only writing. To my own encouragement I’ve found that this habit has resulted in me consistently writing blogs every month and developing a growing comfortability with the writing process. What at first felt like an obstacle has become one of my favorite parts of my job! Before I had this time blocked and built a system for regularly writing, my blogs were few and far in between. Some other task would always come up and keep me from completing them. In our work with missionaries and entrepreneurs, we notice the same trend. We have a lot of conversations around fundraising and creating revenue. Frequently the need to focus on building support and income is overlooked or overcomplicated. Our missionaries will often neglect fundraising - sending out emails, doing follow-up calls, or staying connected to their donors and instead get caught up in what they think is the true ministry work. Our entrepreneurs will get distracted by lots of different business strategies - social media, marketing, big financial goals - instead of honing in on one simple strategy that will bring in consistent revenue. Clear writes in Atomic Habits, “But when we repeat 1 percent errors, day after day, by replicating poor decisions, duplicating tiny mistakes, and rationalizing little excuses, our small choices compound into toxic results.” For our people, the toxic results lead to burning out because they are underfunded, overstressed, and not working in their Desire Zone. See my blog, What is Your Time Worth to learn more about the concept of a desire zone. God is a provider and again His desire is for us to live and work from a place of plenty not famine. Isaiah 58:11 states, “The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.” So how do we become that well-watered garden instead of that sun-scorched land? I would argue that our habits help us get there.
Goals vs. Systems
I’ve always been a very goal-oriented person. I make “To Do” lists and love the feeling of accomplishment when I cross things off. Sometimes if I accomplish something that wasn’t on my list, I’ll add it just so I can cross it off. I know - I’m a nerd. I’m finding though that the goals seem to matter less than the actions it takes to reach them. My husband trained for a marathon last year, and I joined him in training for a half marathon. We participated in the Detroit Free Press Marathon & Half Marathon back in October, which meant we got to cross the bridge from the United States into Canada and come back again. It was the only run where I’ve ever had to wear my passport on my arm and pass by border control. It was pretty amazing! It felt awesome to complete it, but you know what I didn’t do in the weeks that followed - run. In fact, since that race I’ve run a handful of times. So I reached the goal, but I didn’t develop a habit of running that really stuck. In Atomic Habits Clear writes, “...if successful and unsuccessful people share the same goals, then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers.” This point really struck me. What really makes people successful? My goal had made me temporarily successful, but after I hit it, I didn’t really have a system in place to keep up with my running. He addresses this idea noting, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” He argues that developing habits is not about your goals but is really about the kind of process you have in place in the day to day. Clear asks, “If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still succeed?” I started thinking about this in regards to ministry and business. If there was a shift from setting goals and instead to developing better systems for our work what would that mean for our people? Here are a few examples I came up with for what this could look like broken down into Goals vs. Systems.
The reality is that the goals are often easier to identify than putting into play the habits to reach them. We get stressed, overwhelmed, tired, and we go back to our default mode. Clear writes, “Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change.” The needs seem too great and we don’t think we have the time to do this kind of work or build the habits that will give us a better, more abundant life. The apostle Paul shared in our struggle and faced this same dilemma. He writes in Romans 7: 19-25 “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”. The benefit and advantage for us as believers is that we DO have Jesus and the Holy Spirit to help us and guide us in this process. Jesus is the best model and source for building habits that bring life and help our work be sustainable.
Mistaken Identity
Like so many people who survived high school, I walked away from it thinking I was bad at Math. I struggled with Geometry and had to go in for tutoring regularly. I struggled with Pre-Cal and despite my best efforts barely made it through with a C+. To be fair my math teacher was a brute and made me cry, but I still tried my best and for a person who was trying to be in the Top 30 it was an embarrassing grade. When I entered college, I took Astronomy to try to avoid any math related classes. Little did I know it would be very math heavy and because I disliked it so much, I remember going bowling the night before the final instead of studying like I should have. Maybe not the best choice, but it’s a great memory. I’ve had this lingering thought throughout my life that I’m bad at math, but that’s not really true. I run all of the finances and keep track of all of the accounts in our marriage. My husband totally trusts me with the record keeping, and I’ve had very few issues with numbers since graduating. So if I’m honest with myself, I’m actually good at Math and thankfully I’ve come to believe that’s what is true about me when it comes to numbers. I hadn’t really thought about all of my habits as being connected to my identity, but I can totally see how it applies. In Atomic Habits, Clear unpacks this idea, writing, “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” In the past when I would go to workout I would joke and say, “I’m just fighting my genetics.” It was me basically saying I’m making a decision to be a different kind of person than what my family tree tells me I could become. I was casting the vote to be healthy, fit, and maintain my weight. When I think about this in regards to work and my personal life, I see the benefit in shifting our mindsets to think about habits as becoming who we want to be. Here’s some examples of what this looks like for me
Every time I write a blog = I am a blogger
Every time I run a coaching session = I am a coach
Every time I design a new resource = I am creative
Every time I work out = I am fit and active
Every time I choose fruit over a pastry = I am a healthy eater
Every time I read a book = I am a reader
There’s something meaningful and affirming in seeing myself as having these different aspects of my identity. Clear writes, “Ask yourself, ‘Who is the type of person that gets the outcome I want?” If you want the outcome of being fully funded, what kind of person would achieve that? If you want the outcome of doubling your business revenue, what kind of person would accomplish that? If you want to grow your client base, what kind of person would be able to build it? How would he/she spend their time? What habits would he/she have? Again as believers we have the advantage of our identity first being rooted in Christ. This life we are living and these habits we are building have their foundation in Him. We have his power and His Holy Spirit working in us and through us. Galatians 2:19-20 says, “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Whatever it is you are wanting to tackle or become isn’t too big and it’s not unachievable, but it does take time and investment. At Magnify Missions our focus is on supporting our people in their development of habits and systems that enable them to be fully funded, have a healthy personal life, and build a sustainable ministry/business. Our work is all about helping people recognize and believe that they can do the work they want to do and are called to do from a place of provision and rest. As Clear notes, “We all deal with setbacks but in the long run, the quality of our lives often depends on the quality of habits. With the same habits, you’ll end up with the same results. But with better habits, anything is possible.” If this sounds like the kind of work you want to do, check out our next Magnify Missions Workshop and schedule an interview. If you’re not quite ready to hop into a workshop, then download our free tool, Developing Good Habits, to take your first steps into developing healthier habits.
Sara Payne is first and foremost a beloved child of God. She likes to surround herself with people who love Jesus, be out in nature, work out, cook, and drink delicious cups of coffee. She is married to Ryan, an amazing man who loves Jesus, and also is (in her opinion) a rock star with a band called Attaboy. They have one beautiful little girl named Isabella, who is a joy and delight! Sara’s first job after college was as a missionary serving overseas in Budapest, Hungary. She then transitioned into being a full time English teacher in a PBL school on the south side of Indianapolis, IN. There her mission field was high school students. After getting married, she worked for Magnify Learning as a Branding Manager and PBL facilitator. Since becoming a mama, she now works for Magnify Missions where she is able to combine her love of missions and teaching to serve and coach missionaries around the world.
