I am going to a really exciting conference this week: Allume.  It will be a great spiritual refreshing.  It will be a time of amazing fellowship.  It might even inspire my writing (that might be good, huh?).

But leaving my family is hard.  Traveling alone is exciting, and a little nerve-racking.  But the hardest part about going to a conference is whenever one comes around, I tend to fall off the exercise and diet roller-coaster wagon .

Conferences.  Family vacations. Holidays…Big events knock me off balance.  So when I get back–starting Monday–I will be rebooting (again).  This year I have had more than a little trouble being consistent in the diet and exercise department.  This has me thinking about my goals.

And yesterday I talked about Goals.  The point is we should allow our goals to be informed by God’s ways, rather than our own.  So, what if you need to make a healthy change and you feel like it aligns with God’s goals, but you are not sure how to start?  Well, that is what I want to look at this whole week.

For sure, the Holy Spirit is the change agent:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Cor 3:17-18).

But there is also something to knowing about what makes people tick.  A few years ago, I was do research on the idea that it takes 21 days to form habit.  You’ve heard that, right? I heard that waayyyy back in college, and have many times since then.  Turns out, that isn’t true!  Click here to read about that myth being busted.

Whether you want to quit or start something,
what you need is a new habit.

So anyway, a few years ago, when I looked into how to people can change habits, I ran across this research by UCLA professor B.J. Fogg; it’s called Tiny Habits.  He says:

Only three things will change behavior in the long term.

Option A. Have an epiphany
Option B. Change your environment (what surrounds you)
Option C. Take baby steps

Dr. Fogg also says the two factors you can control are (1) changing your environment and (2) taking baby steps.  He has a support program to help you implement change, by way of adopting 3 tiny habits for a 5 day period.  He provides email support and shares tips to encourage success.  He also collects data about your progress toward developing the tiny habits.  He opens a new challenge every week.

You can sign up for the next challenge, or read more about it, here.  I am signing up for next week’s challenge (October 27-31).  Once I am back from my trip, I will out of excuses for a few weeks.  And that means I should jump right into some healthy (tiny) habits!

You must choose THREE very tiny changes.  Dr. Fogg says :

A “Tiny Habit” is a behavior —

• you do at least once a day
• that takes you less than 30 seconds
• that requires little effort

You are supposed to start by connecting the habit to one that you already do.  I am choosing the same ones I chose the first time I did this program, two years ago.  They were very easy and my *tiny* successes really encouraged me:

• After I get up I will dress in workout clothes
• After I get downstairs I will turn on the exercise DVD (on pause)
• After I start Scott’s breakfast, I will open my prayer book to today’s reading

One of the things I enjoyed the most were the daily emails.  They made me feel like I wasn’t making these changes all alone.  There is even an app for that.  If you sign up, please let me know in the comments and share your (tiny) goals there too.  That is even less alone-ness!

Tiny habits are do-able.  Tiny habits are #ASimplerJoy!