In many of the leadership seminars I’ve led, I discussed setting goals. Leaders and budding leaders associate goals and their accomplishment as an inherent component of sound leadership. And indeed it is. Leaders are normally those individuals with a litany of accomplishments under their belts. Quite often these accomplishments are tied to goals. As such, leaders “know the way,” as it were, to achieve success. Many believe setting goals is the key. While setting goals is certainly an important and vital part of achieving a given measure of success, their accomplishment is what makes leaders standout. Having studied various methods of goal setting with the intention of achieving success, I can tell you more is required than simply following a formula. What I’ve learned is that goals ring hollow if they are not directly connected to behavior. That is, action. And not just action - consistent action. That’s where habits come into play. Habits are behavior practiced over time that become so ingrained in us they are second nature. They are performed instinctively without conscious effort. This is all well and good and true; however, if goals are to be achieved, that can only happen if there is supporting behavior.
Okay, good enough, but how does one develop supporting behavior, i.e., habits? Have you ever tried to develop a habit? Or better yet, quit a habit? There is a variety of information available regarding the length of time it takes to create a new habit. Whether seven days, several weeks, or months, one cannot create a new habit (behavior) if it does not align with one’s priorities. When asked, many folks are quick to state they know their priorities. How could they not, right? I mean, we all have clearly articulated priorities that we can quickly identify, don’t we? Well, as quick as some people are to rattle off their priorities, I have found many often have an idea of what they want their priorities to be versus what they actually are. So why the disparity? Good question. After all, we are creatures of habit, so identifying our priorities should simply be a matter of examining our behaviors and backtracking, right? Not necessarily.
Priorities come out in the wash, so to speak. What I mean by that is priorities manifest themselves indirectly through our daily actions and routines. For example, someone might say that physical fitness and health is a priority. If so, one would expect to witness commensurate behavior - exercise and a healthy diet. Now imagine this individual regularly skips morning exercise, trading it for an extra hour of sleep. And that healthy diet is replaced with fast food and sugary snacks. So much for that priority! It has become the fodder of wishful thinking. There’s a phrase “a goal without a plan is a fantasy.” I concur. However, I take it a step further. A priority without direct, related behavior will never lead to goal accomplishment let alone success. When my one daughter was young, we used to attend Handel’s Messiah every holiday season. On one particular occasion, we had balcony seats. As we looked down on the stage, I indicated the first chair violinist, a gentleman we had seen many times over the years. I remarked, “He never played outside as a child.” What I meant by that is his priority was playing the violin so much so that his behavior was clearly indicative of that due to the level of success he had achieved. (Yes, I know, there are prodigies and gifted folks out there, and I accept that. Having a passion for something can also be a factor. In this case, I am taking the situation at face value and applying creative liberty as a writer to make a point.)
Priorities are the bedrock of success no matter the field of endeavor. It could be sports, music, art, academics, etc. Our behavior emanates from our priorities, our real priorities, not simply what we like to identify as a priority. The real debate is whether or not we choose our priorities directly or indirectly. By that I mean do we one day say to ourselves, “Exercise is my top priority,” and with that declaration adopt the requisite behavior to support it. Or do we like the idea of exercising and getting in shape but not to the extent of actually changing our behavior? Our desire is replaced by other behavior, behavior that doesn’t support our stated priority. I think it’s a little bit of both. As much as priorities directly feed into our behavior, our behavior is representative of our priorities. The two have a reciprocal relationship. One cannot exist without the other. And they must exist homogeneously if they are going to lead to goal accomplishment. Yes, you can choose a priority. However, the only way it will ever lead to goal accomplishment is through action - behavior in the form of habits.
So, what’s all of this got to do with God you ask? Great question! I thought you’d never ask. I watched a sermon on the Book of James, perhaps my favorite book in the Bible. It’s certainly the most marked up book in my Bible. Although it’s a short book, it’s replete with admonishments for living the Christian life effectively. The sermon in question discussed how we can either choose the carrot or the stick to get right with God. The carrot is repentance and asking forgiveness; the stick is punishment and eternal damnation. During the sermon, the pastor discussed how believers can stray from God by getting caught up in the world. He went on to say that if we simply turn to God, He’s there, waiting, having never left us. We leave Him. I thought about that and my own life and how easily I get pulled into the world. The pastor admonished one way to stay right with God is to read my Bible every day. I was on a roll there for a while, let me tell ya! I had slipped on praying every day, but I read my Bible. Then I woke up late one day and skipped reading it, telling myself the lie I would do it later. I missed the next day too. And the day after that. Before I knew it, I had developed a new habit, a new routine. Where once my morning routine had consisted of reading my Bible and praying before brushing the dog’s teeth and heading off to work, it had been replaced with brushing the dog’s teeth and checking my phone.
What I quickly realized as I listened to that pastor was that I had left God. He didn’t leave me. He was standing right where He had been. I stopped making God my priority and my behavior followed. The goal of reading the Word daily and praying was gone. As James wrote, “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?” (4:1, NKJV).The flesh wants what it wants, as the pastor said. Our sinful nature draws us to the world and all of its enticements. “Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4, NKJV). James goes on to say that we must submit to God and resist the devil and draw near to God, that He will draw near to us (4:7, NKNV). In other words, if we make God our priority through our behavior - reading the Bible daily and praying - we will draw near to Him. And we are always His priority.
Recently, I was installed as a member of my church’s Care Team, a team of folks that contacts members regularly and solicits needs and prayer requests. Funny, right, me on a team that’s supposed to pray for others and I can’t even pray for myself. I listened to the song Somebody Prayed by Crowder and realized I was no better than all the people who pack the gyms every January. Their good intentions provide enough motivation to last a week or two but that’s it. They quickly fade away because it’s not a priority. So, how do we make something a priority and ensure we develop the behavior necessary to be successful? That, as they say, is the $64,000 question. Well, I’m sorry to tell you there’s no secret formula. The answer is simple - in principle, anyway. We all have twenty-four hours in a day. How we use them is up to us. That violinist I mentioned earlier, yeah, he had the same twenty-four hours. He spent a good chunk of them practicing. Priorities might be the bedrock of habits and goal accomplishment, but time management is the key that unlocks their reality. How you manage your time, i.e., what you spend your time doing, will determine your priorities and define your life. The rest will follow from there - or not, depending on how well you manage it. Time management is not that different from money management. Track your expenses for a week or two. You might be surprised where your money is really going as opposed to where you think it’s going or want it to go. Do the same with your time. How much time do you spend ‘doom scrolling?’ BTW, there’s a an app to track that! How much time does your Bible spend sitting on your nightstand while you binge a series on Netflix? How much time do you spend avoiding prayer because social media demands your attention? You get the idea.
I’m not saying any of those things are inherently bad. There’s nothing wrong with relaxing with a movie or catching up with friends and family. Technology has afforded us the ability of instant communication and real-time updates. But we must be cognizant of the time spent doing those things. Time is the ultimate commodity. We’re all given 85,400 seconds a day. How we use them is up to us. We must be deliberate and intentional how we spend them. Unlike money, time cannot be borrowed. There’s no way to add more time to our lives, not even a single second. It would be nice if we could go to the bank and mortgage our homes or take out a loan to get more time. Such is not the case. Billy Graham said, "Give me five minutes with a person's checkbook, and I'll show you where their heart is" (Brainy Quote). In other words, we spend money on the things we value and deem important. Our priorities are directly related to our values. We prioritize what we value by alloting time, money, and engergy to those things. There's an old phrase "time is money." While this is tongue-in-cheek, it is nevertheless valid, especially when we get old enough to realize the true value of time versus money. Henry David Thoreau observed, "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."
Our time is limited. What we do with it is something we’ll have to explain to God one day. Imagine arriving in Heaven and God reviewing our lives, listing the countless hours spent frittering away our time on useless and trivial things rather than serving His Kingdom? Align your values, manage your time, manage your priorities, and manage your life. Your behavior will follow and the goals will take care of themselves.
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