Stacking Habits

When my wife came home and said she had a new client — an online nutrition coaching company — I was surprised. An online nutrition company appeared quite suspicious. I envisioned shady hucksters pushing fad programs. I felt skeptical. I wasn't expecting a respectable approach to building healthy habits.

I soon found out that the company was legitimate. Many of the staff had advanced degrees in nutrition science. They'd coached thousands of clients, and consulted with professional sports teams. They'd delivered results. I began to see the change that their approach had on my wife's life as her health improved.

Simple Habits

The approach of this company succeeded for a couple of reasons:

• They translated theory into simple habits that anyone could follow.
• They helped people implement those habits with an effective approach to coaching.

Every week, they would give you a simple habit to practice. It was simple and not very overwhelming. For two weeks, they would send lessons about that habit. For two weeks, the only thing you were supposed to do is to practice that habit and to understand why.

That's it. They had done the hard work of figuring out what behaviors would lead to growth based on all of their research. Our job was simple: to practice that habit for two weeks until it became part of our lives.

The Power of Stacked Habits

Over the course of the year, we stacked 26 habits. Together, these habits made a significant difference in our lives. We learned that if we practiced these habits for the rest of our lives, they would positively impact our health.

Of course, we never practice these habits perfectly. And we often needed coaching support to help us implement these habits. But even done imperfectly, our lives changed for the better.

Stacking Gospel Habits

Throughout the centuries, Christians have discovered certain practices that help to form and shape us as we follow Jesus. These practices include reading and listening to the Bible, praying, going to a local church, resting on Sabbath, and more.

Books like Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life have helped us to understand these habits and how to apply them in our lives.

The problem: many of us feel overwhelmed with all the things we know we should be doing. When we feel overwhelmed, we're likely to quit.

The solution is easy: take the deep teachings from the gospel, turn them into important actions that can change our lives, and make them very simple so we can start doing them.

Avoid overwhelm. Pick one key practice — like reading and listening to the Bible — and turn it into a habit. Shrink the challenge so that you're 80 percent sure you can pull it off regularly. And then focus on that habit until it's embedded in your life.

When you're done, stack another habit. You'll be amazed how much of a change you'll experience over the course of a year in your life.

We Want to Help

We'd love to help you do this.

If you want to learn how to build habits and which ones are the most important, get our book How to Grow: Applying the Gospel to ALL of Life. It will help you take simple, achievable steps that lead to lasting growth.

Don't give in to overwhelm. Take the key practices that help you pursue God, build them one at a time, and then stack them. It will make a big difference in every part of your life.