Making Change Happen

Several days ago on our FB site Meaning Builders, we asked for your input about what makes change happen. The "change" business these days is huge! Take this pill, join this place, have this procedure, try this product, follow this plan, read this book...all of these promise to improve your life and lead to lasting change. Guess what? While some of these things may offer motivation, encouragement, and good strategy, they all lack the ONE necessary ingredient that will produce lasting change...discipline.

Yep, that word we all avoid. The word we skirt around. The process we ignore. The big elephant that sits in the room while we take the pills, follow new plans, have procedures, and read our books. It makes us whine, complain, create all kinds of excuses, and look desperately for another way.

Discipline is the process in which we make ourselves behave! The conditioning of our mind, will and choices to line up with our real desires. Without proper discipline all of our efforts at change eventually come to a screeching halt! We start out making better food choices. We do well for a week or a month...two months later, back to the same ole unhealthy junk. Once our initial motivation and desire leaves, we are left with a choice: to revert back to our old, familiar patterns, the ones that come natural and easy, OR the alternative...making ourselves do what comes unnatural. Doing some hard work, going against what it is easy. And the hardest part of all: fighting the pig in our brain that says mess like,

Go ahead and do this today. You can start again tomorrow.
Just one more time. It won't hurt.
Skip today. You are too tired.
Missing this one time, is not a big deal.
I will get back on track tomorrow.
I am just too tired.
This will be the last time.

All of these are lies we have to combat mentally. You see, it is so much easier to go ahead and give in. Making your body/mind do something it is resisting...well that is hard. And my friend, that is why change is hard. It is an all out battle/war. Arm yourselves with the proper equipment. For our household, that equipment comes from Ephesians 6:10-18.

So, my friends, I encourage you to go to war! Stand up and decide that today, the pig inside of you dies...and the discipline begins.

Live a Meaningful Life!