Faith and behavior topics are often avoided because they are viewed as separate subjects or somehow taboo. However, work on yourself is more complete when you work on both your mind and your heart. There are scientific practices that connect. I see this in my learning and practice of Eastern Orthodoxy and personal growth.

My goal for writing about Eastern Orthodoxy and Personal Growth

You could choose to navigate this blog and not read the articles on faith and behavior. However, I submit that if you skip these articles you will miss part of the story.

As I share more articles on the subject, I hope it will become clear why I have decided to include this focus on faith in my blog on personal development.

For now, let me sum it up. It’s about faith and behavior.

In my process of learning scientific practices that improve behavior, I often connect what I am hearing or reading to teachings of the Eastern Orthodox spiritual life. My goal, in this section of my website, is to share the connections I see in scientific practices to practices in the Eastern Orthodox spiritual life. To do this I have committed to writing monthly articles where I will share my learnings.

I emphasize learnings. I am not expert in either scientific or Orthodox practices. I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian and I am learning.  

I invite you to learn with me.

Why write about Eastern Orthodoxy and Personal Growth?

Is not it enough to write about the Christian Church and personal growth?

Why is this discussion needed at all?

Personal development is better accomplished when all areas of one’s life are addressed. To exclude the spiritual part of your life when you are growing in other areas leads to an imbalance.

I also find the depth of the teachings of the Eastern Orthodox Church assist me in understanding the larger issues of personal development. 

In future posts I want to discuss the scientific and faith connections in greater detail. Sometimes I will specifically refer to the Eastern Orthodox Church. Other times I will write about a broader faith in God.

For now, I want to share what I mean by heart and the importance of training your heart.

The meaning of train your heart

In my post on building confidence through science and faith I shared how it’s important to grow your faith and that we can affect our confidence by working on our inner being. I also shared that I train my heart through prayer and building community.

What do I mean when I say that I train my heart and how does this affect my behavior?

The following is an attempt at an introductory and foundational answer to this question. I will break the question into two parts. I will share my current understandings on this subject and I aim to share what I know to the best of my ability.

The heart is the center of our being

What does it mean to train your heart?

At the center of this question is a need to understand the Eastern Orthodox view of the human person.

When I speak about the heart, I am not talking of the heart as a muscle but as the center of our being.

I am currently working my way through the book Confronting and Controlling Thoughts by Anthony M. Coniaris and it helped me formulate what I will share in this section.

The heart can be compared to the unconscious.

The unconscious is: 1) the past 2) the passions that we inherited

Therefore, in our unconscious we have both memories and things we desire, the passions.

Fr. Stephen Freeman’s blog Glory to God for All Things has an introduction to the Orthodox understanding of the passions if you want to learn more.

How does this affect my behavior?

There can be good and bad in this unconscious heart.

The good: our conscience, knowledge of God, and a sense of right and wrong.

The bad: evil thoughts, evil actions.

Therefore, in the heart we can have self-awareness and an idea of God. However, we can also have distraction and evil.

Knowing this provides us with insight into how our heart functions in the human person and provides us with a greater understanding of where our behaviors fit into the picture. This is important when we are thinking about behavior and behavior change. It shows us how important it is to take our faith into consideration when we are making big behavior changes.

Want to dig deeper into this subject? If you’re interested in learning with me, look out for the monthly posts on faith and behavior.

Join the mailing list so you don’t miss a post on faith and behavior!

Read more posts on faith and behavior:

Faith and Behavior: Why do we keep faith and behavior quiet?

Confidence Through Science and Faith | Train your heart and mind

We all have bad habits. It’s incredibly difficult to only have good habits no matter how much we want them. Hopefully, though, there will be a time when the good habits are more motivating than the bad habits. Hopefully, one day we will find it easier to change a bad habit than maintain the disruption, disguise, and dictation of responses that a bad habit invokes.

Why Change Your Bad Habit?

We are aiming for the day when good habits are more motivating to maintain than the bad habits. To do this we need to understand why we would want to change a bad habit. What’s wrong with having a few bad habits? Should you change your bad habit?

A bad habit:

1. Disrupts

When you engage in a bad habit it takes you away from something. You are choosing one set of choices over something else. A habit of checking your phone every couple of minutes is disruptive. It keeps you focused on something that isn’t in the room with you. You end up missing moments with the people around you. A habit of staying up too late is disruptive. It throws off your sleep pattern and lowers your energy.

Can you think of a common bad habit and why it would be disruptive?

2. Disguises

Bad habits are probably easier to engage in than a good habit sometimes. Why? It might help us disguise the deeper issues we need to face. Maybe that bad habit was picked up to avoid dealing with something else. It could be an intentional or unintentional decision, but if we look closely at our behavior and get in touch with our emotions and do some reflection. We can start to understand what might be motivating our bad habits.

What do you think are some of the common emotions or situations that people disguise with a bad habit?

3. Dictates

When we engage in a bad habit for an extended amount of time we are training our brains to respond in that way. A bad habit dictates how we handle situations. We automatically pick up the phone as soon as we wake up. Before we even wake up, we’re on social media. We didn’t even think about it. It just happened. You could argue that a good habit also dictates how we handle situations, but the difference is that a bad habit is often not helping us accomplish our goals and a good habit can help us move forward.

How do you know if one of your habits is a good habit or a bad habit?

Summary of Reasons to Change Your Bad Habit

In Conclusion, if we let our bad habits reign we have developed a negative coping response. By that I mean, we’re ignoring our underlying needs and we’re giving into what might be easier solutions to the pain or sadness, anxiety, or whatever emotion or situation it is that we don’t want to deal with. A bad habit might hide the problem, but it doesn’t really give us the inspiration to move on or move forward.

How do we know if we are faced with a bad habit?

Ask yourself these three things 1) Is it disruptive? 2) Does it disguise a deep issue? 3) Is it dictating in a way that helps me move forward and accomplish big things or is it holding me back?

Behavior Challenge:  Reflect on one or two of your habits and consider it in light of the 3 D’s mentioned above. Is it a good habit or a bad habit?

Success often requires behavior change, but that isn’t always easy. Changing the way we think can impact how we behave. However, we might continue our behaviors even when we start thinking differently, because it’s become a habit. To get to our destination, better habits, we need to understand how habits are formed.

Give yourself time and find your why

In my journey of setting goals and focusing on the changes I need to make in my thinking, I’ve learned that good habits will help achieve goals and bad habits will derail a goal. If we want to succeed where we haven’t yet succeeded we probably need to make some changes to our behaviors.

In one of my earlier articles, I wrote about why behavior change is important for personal growth. In that article I highlighted 2 aspects of behavior change:  1) All the change shouldn’t happen at once and 2) give yourself time to understand the why.

As we take a look at how habits are formed, let’s keep the above aspects of behavior change in mind.

Building better habits starts small. I didn’t suddenly load half of my plate with vegetables. First, I started reading a book that explained food in a way that I understood. Then, I started adding a few more fruits and vegetables to my plate. The change took time and it was easier when I understood why it was so important and started small.

Yet, sometimes the habits we need to break are intimidating. Perhaps we haven’t yet figured out what is driving the bad habit. How can we change it? 

If we can learn how to change the habits that hold us back, we can begin to move forward.

For this article I share resources on how habits are formed. The resources include a couple posts from leadership mentor Michael Hyatt and a short video by the author of The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg.

Let’s dive in.

Bad habits have a trigger

How does a bad habit become a bad habit?

It needs a trigger.

A trigger is what kicks off the behavior so to speak. When we encounter the trigger we do the habit.

Ex: When I see Carla, I look down and walk past her. The trigger is seeing Carla. The bad habit is looking down as I walk past Carla. Why I look down is the reward that I get from looking down when I see Carla. We’ll get to that in a minute. The reward is the third section of what is called the habit loop.

The habit loop explained

There is a book on my reading list called The Power of Habit. While I haven’t read it yet, I have heard about the 3 sections of what is called a habit loop. The habit loop starts with a cue, is followed by a routine, and ends with a reward. The habits we have are based on cues from something in our environment. The cue causes the routine of practicing the habit when we encounter the cue. The reward we get from our engaging in the habit is what keeps us in the habit loop.

There is a great video that explains the habit loop and process of habit formation. It’s easy to follow and it goes into how you can figure out what your reward is for a behavior that has become a habit. It’s a short video from the author of The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg. Watch How to break habits (from The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg).

Michael Hyatt has also shared a written version of the process of breaking bad habits if you’d prefer to read it (or check out both for more emphasis). Actually, there is a pretty funny video that is linked to Michael Hyatt’s article if you need some comic relief on the subject of behavior change.

Review of the habit loop

To review, a habit is formed by the repeated routine of engaging in a particular behavior. The behavior starts by a cue. Something in our environment, such as the time of day, location, actions, and emotions, triggers a behavior. We do the behavior when we are cued. It becomes a habit. We keep it up because we are being rewarded in some way for our behavior. Maybe it’s socialization, maybe it’s a need to move around the office, or perhaps we get a certain feeling from the behavior-if I don’t talk in the meeting I can’t get my ideas shot down.  If I look down when I walk by Carla, she doesn’t stop me in the hallway to talk.

Looking down isn’t bad in and of itself. However, Carla now thinks I’m mad at her or uninterested in her company.

Why am I looking down? Let’s see if we can figure out the reward.

Why am I engaging in this particular habit?

Just like in the How to break habits (from The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg) video, the way to figure out why you are engaging in the habit is to find the reward.

I look down when I see Carla in the hall. There must be a need that looking down fills. That would be the reward that I get from looking down. Consider it from various angles.

Perhaps my schedule and Carla’s schedule only ever intersect right after I’ve had a tough department meeting.

What might I need following a tough meeting? Theory 1) Quiet time and space to process the meeting. If it’s this theory, perhaps I could stay in the meeting room for 5 minutes after everyone leaves and take time to review notes that I took or write down ideas. Theory 2) The meeting reminded me how much I need to do and I need boundaries on how long I will talk in the hallway before excusing myself. If it’s this theory I can allow myself to talk to Carla for a couple minutes and then politely excuse myself.

To break the habit figure out what reinforces the behavior

Writing it out like this is a great exercise in figuring out the different steps in the habit loop and what possible rewards would be.

From a behavior analytic view, we are going to continue to do a behavior as long as that behavior is reinforced. The key to breaking the habit is to figure out what is reinforcing that behavior. Is it really avoiding a person like it might seem on the outside, or is a deeper need, like the need for reflection time or a need to respect your time? To change the behavior is to create a better habit.

Resources on how to form a good habit

I’ve compiled some resources for those that are interested in reading more on building better habits.

The Easiest Way to Overcome Bad Habits by Michael Hyatt – The easiest way might not focus on quitting the bad habit, but on what you can do to build a good habit.

How to Form a New Habit (in 8 Easy Steps) from developgoodhabits.com – Steps 3, 5, and 7 are especially important. Step 3 – Tie your new habit to an already established habit. Step 5 – Create a plan for when you hit a road block. Step 7 – This step is titled Reward Important Milestones, but it’s really about celebration. If we call it celebration it separates it from the section of the habit loop that is called Reward. Celebrating progress even when it’s small is important for forming good habits.

How to form a New Habit (in 5 Easy Steps) published on Inc. – Step 3 is very important. They call it resisting temptation. Make it easier to do the new habit rather than the old habit.

Summary of how habits are formed

In Conclusion, habit formation is summed up by the habit loop. Habits are triggered by something-that’s the cue. Habits become habits when we repeat the behavior. It becomes a routine. Finally, there is a reward that is received from the continuing of the habit.

To change the habit, get to the reward. Find out what you are getting out of your behavior.

To makes changes you might be more successful building a new healthy habit rather than tacking the bad habit directly. Pair your starting of a new habit with a habit that you already have and are strong in.

Create a plan for how you will go about changing your behavior, but also for what you will do when you encounter something difficult that would normally result in going back to the bad habit. In that plan, create ways to make the new habit easier than the one you are trying to replace. Lastly, remember to celebrate the steps you make to build better habits.

Have you read The Power of Habit? Are there key points from the book that you found helpful in understanding habit formation? Do you recommend any other books on habit formation?

Behavior Challenge:  Practice looking at a bad habit through the lens of trying to find what reward that behavior might be providing. You can choose one of your own habits or start by imagining a bad habit and its possible rewards.

No one wants vulnerability but we all want clarity. Can we gain clarity without being vulnerable? Clarity, vulnerability, and daring greatly all go together, as seen in the work of Brené Brown in her book, Daring Greatly.

The Connection between Vulnerability and Clarity

While the research discussed in Daring Greatly is compiled from interviews on shame and vulnerability, you don’t have to read very far into the book before Brown makes a connection between vulnerability and clarity.

“Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose.”

Brené Brown, Daring Greatly, page 2

From that one sentence we can learn a lot about clarity. Let’s first look at “the clarity of our purpose.” This means a clearness of what we are meant to accomplish and live in this life. Isn’t that what we all mean when we say we need clarity?

I know what it’s like to feel a lack of purpose due to a lack of clarity. You can read more about that here.

Brown states that the clearness of our purpose is affected by our willingness to “engage with our vulnerability.”

Uh-oh. This means that if we lack clarity perhaps we are avoiding vulnerability.

Vulnerability and Being Who We Are

If we are struggling to find clarity in a situation, perhaps it is a cue to spend some time targeting those areas where we are most afraid to be vulnerable. 

For example, if we are struggling to stand out in crowd and be ourselves, or to engage with people on a real level, we need to consider how our lack of vulnerability might be affecting us.

“When we pretend that we can avoid vulnerability we engage in behaviors that are often inconsistent with who we want to be.”

Brené Brown, Daring Greatly, page 45

Ouch. That one hurt.

Yet, think about it. If our energy is spent worrying about avoiding all that will bring shame and vulnerability, we have blocked ourselves. How have we blocked ourselves? We have blocked the energy that could bring us great inspiration or confidence in who we are.

If we are so weighed down with the weight of hiding from others, we are also blocking ourselves from expressing who we are.

I’m in This with You

It’s still soon after reading this book and I admit that I have a lot of processing, reflecting, and change ahead of me.

It took me 3 different tries to read the book past the chapter on shame. The chapter on shame is an eye opening chapter. It was challenging. It was hard. I needed to read it. Unpacking all that I learned in that single chapter, much less the whole book, will take time. Therefore, I don’t have a personal growth story to share like I typically do.

Although, there is one story that might illustrate that I’m in this with you.

I wrote and preached sermons in graduate school. In my experience of sermon writing I learned an important lesson: finding a great message to preach often meant finding and sharing a message that I truly needed to work on myself, as much as I felt called to preach it to others. This article feels the same way.

I too struggle with having the courage to dare to gain clarity through vulnerability. Reading Daring Greatly was my first step.

If you hope to gain the courage to be you, read Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. It’s worth it.

Behavior Challenge: Pick one area where you most fear vulnerability and try to act even when feeling vulnerable.

Maybe it’s leaving a comment…