S3E14
· 01:01:53
Thank you all for coming. Really appreciate it. This topic is something that's really, special to me. I think it's really, really important that we talk about, these things, especially at a retreat like YouthQuake. And, yeah, habit formation is crucial, and I hope, that my hope and my prayer is that today we can, dive into some of the really practical, things in your day to day that will affect how you live and who you become.
Noah Mancuso:Because what you do every day is what determines in the long run who you become. It's not what you do occasionally. It is what you do consistently. So habits are super super important. So I'm gonna pray, and then we will get started.
Noah Mancuso:Father, I thank you for all the people in this room. And Lord, I just ask that your spirit would descend on this place. Open open our hearts. Lord, teach us what you want to teach us and I ask that in your goodness and in your mercy that you would speak, today. And, Lord, that anything that I say that's out of, selfish ambition or or something that you wouldn't wanna say or that you would you would take it away.
Noah Mancuso:So I ask this for for the sake of, your people get getting to know you better and loving you and serving you better. So we ask for that reason. Amen. K. Sweet.
Noah Mancuso:So, these little sheets you have in front of you are kind of meant to be, like, following along, and it's also something that by the end, you will have, like, a little sort of cheat sheet slash template that you can take with you that will help you remember, what you, what you heard here today. So follow along. So because there's some, there's some fill in the blanks in there, so listen carefully. Yeah. So over the last 2 years, I have been on what I like to call a a quest.
Noah Mancuso:I did the Kaleo program last year, and they plugged it during main session. If any of you are thinking about it, you should do it. The Lord transformed my life, and I would say that last, you know, about 2 years ago, I started really considering what following Jesus actually meant in my life because I feel like that's a question that often isn't asked enough. We focus on these big conversion type experiences, these mountaintop experiences, experiences, but rarely stop to consider, okay, now what does this mean, you know, on a random Tuesday in the middle of the school year? It's not like I'm not just waiting for the next youth quake to feel like I'm close to God.
Noah Mancuso:Right? Because I believe that this is actually possible to have that intimacy with God in your daily life. You know? So that's really really important. And I've gotten a bit sick of a lot of these kind of very oversimplified versions of what the Christian life is supposed to look like.
Noah Mancuso:And I was raised by Christian parents, and, Lord, bless them, but I felt like nobody ever told me what it meant. Like, what does it mean? How does following Jesus change how I spend my time? How does it change what I think about? And this is really, really important.
Noah Mancuso:See, I wanted to be transformed. I wanted to live life to the fullest. You know, Jesus talks about, you know, I've come that they may have life and have it to the full. But what, you know, what does that mean? My method was scattered.
Noah Mancuso:It was all over the place. It was lost. And I think my my guess, is that some of you in this room feel the same way. And I think events like YouthQuake are incredible to find connection, to have those big mountain top experiences, which I'm gonna be talking about today. For me, a lot of those things were, working at camp.
Noah Mancuso:So working at camp you know, how many of you have been to to summer camp before? Yeah. So you guys know what I'm talking about. It's kind of that similar, like, wow, I'm on fire. I'm on fire for Jesus right now.
Noah Mancuso:At the end of, you know, your week of camp, or at the end of youth quake. And, you know, maybe some of you are starting to feel like that right now, and that is incredible. I'm really, you know, excited at the fact that God is stirring stuff in in each of your hearts. But the thing is, with things like camp, things like youthquake, they're like kind of an event that happens to you, an event that shapes you. You are kind of like a, not like a victim, but the event does something to you.
Noah Mancuso:It's not something that you do. So and when it's over, if you don't put structure in place, it'll just you'll just have to wait for the next thing. You're just gonna have to wait for that next Camp High experience, or that next youth quake experience. There's a time for it, but I think, well, a lot of, you know, there's gonna have to be some work that's put in in your daily life, in order to, find that transformation consistently. So, my quest over the last 2 years has led me to the discovery that, in the words of John Mark Comer, who is a Christian author and, thinker, he says, transformation is possible if we are willing to arrange our lives around the practices, rhythms, and truths that Jesus himself did, which will open up our lives to God's power to change.
Noah Mancuso:This statement is very rich. There's a lot to think about here. But transformation we're talking about this transformation. Right? It's possible, if we're willing to arrange our lives around the practices, rhythms, and truth that Jesus himself did.
Noah Mancuso:So, you know, I guess that's it, isn't it? Practices, rhythms, and truth that Jesus himself did. Boom. We've solved we've solved spiritual formation. Like, it seems simple enough.
Noah Mancuso:Right? Of course not. So many times throughout my life, I tried to re I tried to recommit my life to Jesus. And in essence, that was the pattern of my life for the better part of 5 years, plus throughout all my high school experience, I went to camp, experienced that camp high, you know, it's very similar to youth quake, and was really on fire for Jesus. And I said to myself, you know, this feeling, what I'm feeling now, will be enough to see my spiritual life through during the year.
Noah Mancuso:I was wrong. It's wrong to think that. The feelings don't always stay. They go away. Because I falter time and time again, at a commitment that I thought it felt unbreakable in the moment.
Noah Mancuso:I said, oh man. I'm never gonna I'm never gonna not feel this way again. This is so awesome. It went away. So my issue was not that I didn't have goals.
Noah Mancuso:My goals were fantastic. My goals were God honoring. The issue is that my life was not arranged in a way that allowed me to pursue those goals consistently. So this session is about, it's about formation. It's about your formation, because the question is not, am I becoming somebody?
Noah Mancuso:The question is, what kind of a person am I becoming? Because all of us are becoming something. And a cool kind of analogy I like to use for this is, I'm like I get a little bit, I forget a little bit more every time I say it, but basically, the gist is this. If you are in a, in a in a plane in LA airport, you wanna fly to New York, the farther you go, the more distance there is based on really small changes. Right?
Noah Mancuso:So if you go from LA to New York, if you switch the plane's direction by, I think, it's 5 degrees only, very, very small change, you'll end up in Washington DC, which is very quite far away from New York. You see, time magnifies the differences between people. You see, if you've ever met a kid, which I hope all of you have. I don't know why I said that. 5 year old kid.
Noah Mancuso:They're, you know, a little bit crazy. You know, they're a little bit mischievous. But overall, most 5 year olds are, you know, I would say relatively similar in a lot of ways, for the sake of the analogy. Now think about some, you know, old like, elderly people you know in your life. Elderly people, at the risk of offending someone maybe, can either be like, you imagine, oh, man.
Noah Mancuso:This is the best person. They are so sweet. They are so loving, so patient, so kind. They have, you know, become a person, in a sense. And some other elderly people are very, you know, grumpy and angry and bitter, and the time over the course of life has magnified the difference.
Noah Mancuso:So keep that in mind, but I will say the purpose of this talk is to give you some tools to become the person you would like to be, and the way that is done is through your habits, your daily habits. You see habits are fascinating, and we hardly realize the power that a small consistent action can have over the course of shaping your life and your character. And it's been said by some fancy business person that your system is perfectly designed to give you the results that you're getting. So in other words, the way you're living now is directly correlated with who you are becoming. So think about that.
Noah Mancuso:What kind of a system you know, ask yourself, what kind of a system am I using? How am I living? Who am I becoming? What do I need to change in order to become who I would like to be? Because thinking about it harder, or trying harder, having good intentions will not get you there.
Noah Mancuso:So throughout my high school years, I made very lofty goals at the end of every summer for my relationship with God only to fail time and time again. See, my system of arranging my life around the practices, rhythms, and truths that Jesus did wasn't only poorly designed, it was actually not even designed at all. I wasn't thinking about it. I was merely hoping that things would turn out well. Not a good strategy.
Noah Mancuso:See, I was trying to use the pool this pool of willpower that I had accumulated throughout the summer to magically become the person that I wanted to be. It's not a winning strategy. But to put it another way, I had a result based outcome. Be a godly person. Be more loving.
Noah Mancuso:Be like Jesus. And you see result based goals are not a strategy for transformation. You see, if my goal was to become like Jesus or become more loving, you see, I can never really achieve that goal in any one moment until I see God face to face one day. But what I can do is implement a habit, a daily habit into my life, that opens me up to the power of God to transform me into someone like Jesus. I can implement that habit today.
Noah Mancuso:James Clear, who's an author, wrote this book called Atomic Habits, which is not a Christian book, but it's a very, very useful tool when applied to, habit formation. So I'll be referencing it quite a bit today. And, James Clear says, when you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs, and the outputs will fix themselves.
Noah Mancuso:So as a little exercise right now, as all of you are jotting down the little words, which is fun to see. I'm glad you guys are doing that. I want all of you to to close your eyes, and I want you to think about your room. What does your room look like right now? Is it really clean?
Noah Mancuso:Is it spotless? Is it not spotless? Maybe somewhere in between. I live in the Briarcrest dorms throughout the course of the year, and I've seen it all. I've seen the most tidy rooms we've ever seen and some of the, like Yeah.
Noah Mancuso:I won't I won't go on. Now okay. I want yeah. So if you clean your room let's say you clean your room. You're fixing an outcome, But next week, it'll be just as gross and disgusting as it is right now because the trick is to fix the system.
Noah Mancuso:You see, the system is the way you interact with the things in your room. So in a completely perfect system, you would actually never have to clean your room, ever. But if my strategy is to try harder and to hope harder and have really good intentions, I'm gonna be like, okay. Well, my room's gonna be super clean. I'm gonna like, if there's no intention and there's no strategy behind it, I'm gonna continue to fail.
Noah Mancuso:We need a structured plan for change. So, ultimately, the goal is to give you guys some tools so you can unlock the power of habits in your daily walk with God. So quickly, let the person next to you introduce yourself if you have it, and take 30 seconds. Okay. What I want you to talk about with your neighbor sorry.
Noah Mancuso:What I want you to talk about with your neighbor, share with your neighbor. So you guys are gonna be partners for for this, you know, for this seminar. Share a habit you you would like to start doing in your life. Preferably, for the purposes of this one, a what we call a spiritual discipline. So a spiritual discipline could be prayer, solitude, fasting, if you're wanting to do that, you know, scripture reading, what most people call a devotional, which is a combination of a lot of those things, spending time with God in any way, shape, or form.
Noah Mancuso:And I want you to write that down, tell the person next to you, and we're gonna be working through that habit over the course of this seminar, and kind of brainstorming together what we can do as we go along. So take, take a minute. Alright. I'm gonna bring us back in here if I can get your attention back up in the front. My voice is a bit strained from, kickoff, among other things, so bear with me.
Noah Mancuso:But before I continue, I hope that was good. Make sure you write it down. It's really important. I wanna give a quick disclaimer In saying that the goal of building better habits in your spiritual life is not the end goal of formation. You see, spiritual disciplines, when they're done correctly, can open you up to God's power to transform you.
Noah Mancuso:The end goal is love. The end goal is love. The end goal is to become a person of love. You see, you could have all the habits in the world, but if you don't have love, if they're not pushing you toward becoming more like Jesus, this is exactly what Chris has been saying, then I guess that just, you know, it just makes you a really non loving person with a whole lot of habits. That doesn't really that's not the point.
Noah Mancuso:They're not a measure of your spiritual maturity. You see, disciplines are the path. They are not the destination. In fact, in the New Testament, we see throughout the gospels, the people that oppose Jesus the most are the people who everyone thought were the most disciplined. They had the best habit regimen, they had the best spiritual disciplines, whatever, all that stuff, but they missed the most important thing.
Noah Mancuso:So keep that in mind. You see, disciplines, they're the path. Yeah. They're not the they're not the destination. So Robert Mulholland, who wrote a great book on spiritual formation, called Invitation to a Journey.
Noah Mancuso:I recommend it I recommend it to anyone. He defines spiritual disciplines in a really unique way, and I really like the perspective he adds on this, when he says that spiritual disciplines are acts of loving obedience by which we offer our brokenness and bondage to God for healing and liberation. I'll say that one more time. Acts of loving obedience by which we offer our brokenness and bondage to God for healing and liberation. You see, God is the one that heals.
Noah Mancuso:God is the one that restores the ruin. God is the one that transforms. It's not you. It's not your habit. Your habit opens you up.
Noah Mancuso:It reveals things in you and allows God's love to touch deeper and deeper parts of your heart and your soul. And with that being said, here are the 4 laws of habit formation. Make it obvious. Make it attractive. Make it easy, and make it satisfying.
Noah Mancuso:So the process of building a habit comes in 4 stages. Cue, craving, response, and reward. Certain cues throughout your day cause your brain to predict a reward, and thus do a certain behavior. So cravings follow the cue with our brains craving the reward of the habit, not necessarily the habit itself. So, for coffee drinkers, such as myself, often, if you're in a pinch, you crave coffee.
Noah Mancuso:But you're not craving coffee itself, you're craving being awake. So you run to, like, a 711 or a Circle k or whatever it is, and grab whatever, you know, battery acids tasting coffee you can find. Not because the experience is awesome of drinking it, but because the reward outweighs the the poor experience that you have. You know, the drinking certainly was not very enjoyable, but the reward was. So next in the process is response.
Noah Mancuso:This is the habit that you perform. So whether you follow through to respond after having a cue and a craving is dependent on 2 things. One of which is your motivation. So, yeah, pretty self explanatory. Next thing is the effort or action required to complete the habit.
Noah Mancuso:So we'll we'll get a little more in-depth on that, in a little bit. So, finally comes the reward. You see habits are almost entirely driven by reward. So this is a very crucial step, And sadly, we're so incredibly driven by reward that often the most addicting things in life are the most instantly rewarding with the least amount of effort. Think about something in your life.
Noah Mancuso:Huge instant gratification, huge big reward, and it's so easy to do. This is where addictions start. Insert your bad habit here. So our strategy is deeply tied to this 4 step process where we hijack our natural tendencies in building habits to either make new habits or break bad ones. So today, we're only gonna be talking about building habits.
Noah Mancuso:However, there is, you know, some time after I'm around to chat all weekend. If some of you might have seen me at the merch booth, so I'm, you know, always down to chat, and I'm sticking around a little bit after here too. So we can talk about that. So I'm only going over how to build habits today. But with that being said, let's begin.
Noah Mancuso:So since a habit is initiated by a queue, our first step think about your habit as we're doing this. Think about the one you wrote down. Our first step is to make our desired habit obvious. So when we see or experience some form of stimulus, our brain predicts receiving some form of a reward. So this initiates the behavior.
Noah Mancuso:So our goal is to make the right choice the most obvious choice. So in developing a new habit, James Clear, who's the author of Atomic Habits, says many people think they lack motivation, but one they really lack is clarity. You see, they don't have a plan on when or what or where their new habit is gonna be, so you end up doing nothing. You know, you've seen this before. Think about New Year's resolutions.
Noah Mancuso:Like, someone you know, you've probably heard someone say, okay. This year, my New Year's resolution, I want to get in shape. You can see how that is the most that is a very vague thing. It's not actually a habit. There's no clarity on what it is, when it will be, where it will be.
Noah Mancuso:So having an exact plan of what you would like to do makes it extremely clear as to what your goal is. So in the little, on the little worksheet, you can see there is a step by step thing of exactly making a plan of when, where, what your habit is gonna be. So hopefully, that'll help out. So instead of having the goal be the, sorry. Instead of having the goal be the habit itself, such as working out yeah.
Noah Mancuso:Sweet. Okay. So coming up with a plan of where your habit will be, what it's gonna be, will make it a whole lot more obvious on how to do it. You see, the goal is not the outcome of the habit. The goal is not to get in shape.
Noah Mancuso:The goal is not to, you know of course, the goal is to become like Jesus, but as far as habits go, you can't, you know, the goal has to be, I'm gonna get up at this time, I'm gonna go to this place, and I'm going to read scripture for this amount of time, and then I'm going to pray, or I'm going to sit in silence, or I'm going to, have a conversation with someone I trust with, you know, about things that matter to me. So the goal is the habit. So you win every time you complete that habit. Every time you get up and do your devotional, you say, okay, amazing. I won today.
Noah Mancuso:This is this is really good for me. Because if your goal is to become like Jesus, there's no you can be becoming sorry. You can become like Jesus over time, but to quantify that in any way, you'll never know. So the goal is to have it. Another strategy we can use is to stack habits.
Noah Mancuso:So we all have habits throughout our daily life. There's all sorts of varying studies that are done on this, but I think the most common number I'm seeing is that around 60% of everything you do in a day is determined by what you kind of automatically move toward through your habits. So this is a pretty staggering number. Some studies go as high as, like, 90% or higher. We are creatures that like consistency.
Noah Mancuso:And, so going through your your day, thinking about, what habits do I do on a daily basis, and how can I stack a habit I would like to do on a stack on a habit that I already have? So take inventory of your habits and keep them in mind as we, as we go on. So for example, I was looking for a way to read my Bible consistently at camp. So I work at a summer camp, every year, basically called Green Bay. It's out in Kelowna, and which is pretty awesome out in BC.
Noah Mancuso:It's a lot nicer, weather, and we have water and mountains. So a lot of stuff you don't get here, which is pretty awesome. But I implemented habit stacking. So I looked at my habits, and I found something that I always do in the morning. Something I'm becoming increasingly dependent on.
Noah Mancuso:Something that's very firmly established in my routine, and something that I always do in the morning. It's making coffee. So what I did was using the law of making it obvious, I placed my my coffee station, yes, it's a station, in the office building. So what I had to do every morning, if I wanted coffee, I had to get up out of the top bunk I was sleeping in, get dressed, get ready for the day, walk down the street, or down the the road, down to camp, into this office building in order to make myself a coffee. And then what happened, as soon as the last little, you know, the last little drip comes out of the, the little coffee container that I have, I looked down and there's a beanbag chair, a cozy little beanbag chair sitting right there with my bible on it, opened up with my journal and with a pencil.
Noah Mancuso:So stacking habits. Through stacking a habit I already had with one that I would like to do, I was able, in the busy camp season if you guys have ever worked at camp, you know camp working at camp is no joke. Like, people are exhausted out out there, but I felt that this was something that was really important. So I was able to consistently read my Bible and have a, a dedicated time with the Lord every single day because of habit stacking. And the reason I say this is not to say, hey, guys.
Noah Mancuso:Look at me. I'm like mister habit. Cool guy. However, I'm saying this because this stuff actually works. This stuff really works.
Noah Mancuso:I'm convinced it works. I've seen it. My my, you know I can witness to the fact that what I'm talking about, I believe it, you know, to be really effective. So it's kind of my my my habit testimony, I guess you could say. So think about habit stacking.
Noah Mancuso:That's an important one. So, making it obvious can also look like designing your environment to produce the outcome you want. So we're very, visual, you know, humans, we we really use our eyes for, I don't know, a lot of things, like looking. And creating obvious visual cues in your environment can draw your attention toward a desired habit. You want the best choice to be the most obvious choice.
Noah Mancuso:When I'm doing homework, I, if my phone is sitting next to my laptop as I'm trying to type, you know, a paper or do an assignment, if I'm if I'm constantly looking down at my phone, having it right there makes me wanna grab it, makes me wanna look at it, it's distracting. I don't wanna do that. So what I do, put the phone away. You're not looking at the phone, so there's way less chance of you having that trigger to grab it, or whatever, you know, whatever, habit you're thinking of. And, you know, let's say if you wanna eat healthier, open up your snack drawer.
Noah Mancuso:I know a lot of you don't have a choice because your, you know, your parents buy all your food for you. I anyway. So with a with, you know, a snack drawer or whatever, try making the first thing you see what you actually want to eat. If it's something that isn't gonna be good for you, making that the only thing you see is gonna lead you in a direction you don't wanna go. So creating obvious visual cues can really help with this.
Noah Mancuso:And on the flip side, the people who are the best at avoiding negative habits, remove the bad cues from their environment. EC research shows that the people with a lot of perceived self discipline or self control aren't actually that much more genetically self controlled than other people. They're just better at structuring their lives in a way that doesn't require a lot of willpower to resist bad habits. They just remove themselves from tempting situations. So making a new habit obvious and coming up with a specific plan to complete it is the first step of effective habit formation.
Noah Mancuso:So once again with the people, the person you were talking to, I want you guys to ask each other, how can you make your habit more obvious, based on what we've talked about here? So we'll we'll come back in 45 seconds. Can I ask who would ask you? Oh, yeah. Of course.
Noah Mancuso:Yep. Alright. We're gonna bring it back in here. So the second step in habit formation is craving. So the law for this step is to make your habit attractive, or in the case of breaking a habit, making it unattractive.
Noah Mancuso:Woah. Shocking. So the goal is to make the habit into something that you want to do. With any habit, the anticipation this is really important. The anticipation of the reward is what motivates us to act.
Noah Mancuso:James Clear, says your brain has far more neural circuitry allocated for wanting rewards than for liking them. A way to twist this in your favor is by connecting a habit you want to do with the habit you need to do. So for example, this past semester, I wanted, to start going to the gym, start start going to the gym. So I took Abbott I already had, which was going to chapel. So at Briarcrest, there is mandatory chapel 3 times a week in the morning.
Noah Mancuso:So from, you know, 9:30 to 10:15, on 3 days of the week. And since I already went to that, I said, okay. That is gonna be considered my baseline habit that I end up, consistently doing. So it's something that I, you know, it's very similar to habit stacking. So I paired that with the habit that I need, which is going to work out.
Noah Mancuso:I also grabbed a couple buddies to go with me. That really, really helped. Accountability can change the game, and I'll talk about I'll talk about that in a little minute, in a minute here. But what I did after that, I paired it with a habit. I paired working out with a habit that I wanted to do.
Noah Mancuso:So what I did was I went to the Supplement King store and got this, like, really sugary, delicious peanut butter chocolate, protein powder. This big canister of it. And then brought it, you know, to my room. Mini fridge, big jug of milk. So after working out, I come back to my room, fix up a little protein shake, and enjoy a a velvety smooth chocolatey peanut buttery drink after working out.
Noah Mancuso:Because who doesn't want to get into a habit of drinking chocolate milkshakes? So I paired a Habit, Chapel, with working out, with something that I enjoyed. So the 3, they're now connected, kind of in a little bit of a a stack. So another great way to make a habit more attractive is to place yourself in environments where your desired habit is a normal way of being. You see, new habits become a lot easier to implement when everyone around you is doing the same thing, and when your desired habit is praised and when it's affirmed by those around you.
Noah Mancuso:So if you desire to grow in love and intimacy with God, first of all, thank you for joining a youth group. If you're not in a youth group, I think you should seriously consider joining a youth group. Because I went to a Christian school in high school, and that was definitely you know, for those of you who go to Christian schools, if you do, it's not, you know, quite that youth group that youth group bod. And even, like, for those of you who go to public schools, you know as well as anybody that that can be really, really hard to kind of fight back and and resist the pressure that gets put on you. You feel like you stand out, and I'm not, I think that can be really beautiful as a as a witness to those around you.
Noah Mancuso:However, in order to make habits easier, your primary community I urge you that your primary community should be those that are pushing you towards Jesus, not those that are pushing you away from Jesus. You see, hanging out with people who influence you, away from Jesus can can be good as long as they don't as long as it doesn't truly negatively affect you. So primary community, I urge you, youth group, faith based community. That's really, really important. So for those of you who are thinking about college, Briarcrest is a fantastic place, as far as Christ centered community goes.
Noah Mancuso:They're not no one told me to say that, but I do love it here. So, yeah. So, again, with the people around you, how can you make your habit attractive using this? Go ahead. Alright.
Noah Mancuso:Next one. The third step of habit formation is response. So the law we wanna implement is to make it easy. Our goal is to reduce as much friction as we can between where we are and the habits we would like to implement. So when trying to make a habit, the amount of times you perform the habit is far more important than the length at which you perform it.
Noah Mancuso:See, the question to ask is, how can I make this habit as repeatable as possible? You see, we as humans, we naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work. So while we may have motivation to start a habit early on, it can be hard to continue when willpower runs out. See, this is the the the youth quake effect or the camp high effect. Right coming off of camp, maybe coming off of the youth quake, you're feeling really motivated.
Noah Mancuso:But the key is to make your habit as repeatable as possible so that when your willpower, your motivation isn't as high, you can continue to do it. So James Clear says the central idea is to create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible. Much of the battle of building better habits comes down to finding ways to reduce friction associated with our good habits and increase friction associated with our bad ones. So a practical way you can do this is to condense your desired habit down to 2 minutes. And I know it kinda sounds maybe a little bit silly depending on what you're thinking of, but it's the repetition that counts.
Noah Mancuso:So you don't need to master your habit right away. What you need to master is the the habit of showing up. See, reading your Bible, doing a devotional time for an hour every single day is a whole lot easier when you already read scripture for 2 minutes every single day. It's way better to read scripture 5 minutes every day than, you know, 30 minutes or 40 minutes once a week or once a month. It's consistency that counts.
Noah Mancuso:On top of this, it would be worth considering some of the pivot points throughout your day that can lead you to vastly different outcomes. See, what I mean by this is at certain points of the day, you have to decide what you're gonna do. After school, you decide where you oh, maybe you don't decide, but at home, you have to decide, you know, where you're gonna go. Are you gonna go do homework? Are you gonna go to your kitchen table or the office space that that you have, or whatever?
Noah Mancuso:Or you could go to McDonald's, or depending on depending on what your goal is, that decision right there vastly changes what you're able to do with the next hour, 2 hours. If you think about this in terms of restaurants, your first decision is, what restaurant do I go to? But once you choose 1, you're limited to only the choices that they offer you at that specific restaurant. Right? So you feel like you have all the choices, but in reality, you're restricting yourself in a lot of different ways.
Noah Mancuso:So think about throughout the day, how can I place myself in a situation that allows it to be as easy as possible for me to reach the goal that I want to? I see this all the time. I mean, youth coach is a bit of an exception, but even with all a ton of the college students at Briarcrest, they go, I can't wake up in the morning to do a devotional. Why? Because I go to bed at 2 AM.
Noah Mancuso:Okay? You see, the decision in that moment makes it way harder in the future to do the that, like, the habit that you actually desire. So placing yourself in a situation or making your habit a lot easier, if you wake up feeling great, then that's incredible, and that will help you significantly. But putting yourself in a situation where you're exhausted, you're shooting yourself in the foot. So learn to master the habit of showing up, making your habits easy.
Noah Mancuso:So quickly with the people around you take 30 seconds again, or a minute and a half, they've been all a minute and a half. I like hearing all the chatting so it's fun. And share how you can make your habit easy. So go ahead. Alright.
Noah Mancuso:We're gonna bring it back in here for our 4th and final step of habit formation is reward. So naturally, our final law is to make our habit satisfying. See, the issue is that most of the time, you'll find that the habits that are the most rewarding in the moment are the most destructive in the future. And the habits that are the least rewarding in the moment are the most fruitful in the future, the most beneficial in the future. The key in this case is to find a way to make the difficult habits in the moment feel good because habits that are rewarded are habits that are repeated.
Noah Mancuso:The feeling of making progress can be incredibly satisfying. Like I said, the habit itself is the win. The habit itself is the goal. Every time you complete the habit, you win. So something like a habit tracker could be extremely beneficial, and create a sense of progress and satisfaction as you go.
Noah Mancuso:So I put at the bottom there, like, not very long, but kind of a template of what I'm talking about, with what you would consider to be a habit tracker. You can use a calendar. I mean, there's all sorts of ways you can do this. But I do think that that's really, really effective in making a habit satisfying, especially for ones that in the moment, you know, for me, working out isn't the most fun thing ever, but the reward of the chocolate peanut butter protein shake at the end really helps. It's satisfying at the end.
Noah Mancuso:It's rewarding. However, I I believe that the most important way, thank you, to make Abbott rewarding is by having an accountability partner, or an accountability group. You see, accountability in my life with my friends, with those close to me, with mentors, has completely changed the game for me. Even in the act of speaking to all of you about habits, I'm accountable to you in a certain sense to live out and practice what I'm preaching, because this is really, really important. So I love sharing about this, because I'm in the same boat as all of you.
Noah Mancuso:I'm trying to I'm trying to become more like Jesus every day, and I think, you know, habits I need accountability. So have, having an accountability group or an accountability partner makes habits communal with people you care about, especially if you're all moving towards the same thing. You know, think about your youth group. What are you guys moving toward as a group? What are you guys trying to become together as a community, but as individuals as well?
Noah Mancuso:And celebrating wins is way better in community. I love celebrating wins. Like, the Bible says, rejoice with those who rejoice. The Bible also says mourn with those who mourn. And mourning losses and celebrating wins in the context of accountability, in the context of your community, in the context of vulnerability is absolutely transformational in in community.
Noah Mancuso:So it makes bad habits as well a lot harder, and it makes them way more unsatisfying. Confession in my life, confession of sin has the Lord has used that to transform my heart, when it comes to, you know, like you you know, think about your your bad habit, whatever it may be. Confessing in the context of community, in accountability, not only makes that a bit harder, but it brings you closer to that person as well. There's something really, really special about that. And, yeah, like I've been saying this whole time, accountability produces incredible fruit in relationship.
Noah Mancuso:There's nothing that brings 2 people together quite like sharing your burdens together, and, and confessing how your day has gone to each other. So, one last time within your desired habit, how can you make your habit satisfying? Fuse detail with, yeah. So one one last discussion time, and then we'll and then we'll close here. Thank you.
Noah Mancuso:Alright. One last time, we're gonna bring it in. So good habits in your life can help you turn your vision, your hope, your intention of having your life be honoring to God. It can turn it into a reality. You see, you don't have to just merely hope anymore that you can change or that you will change, but you have practical tools to see that through in your daily life, sustainably, in a way that opens you up to God's power to change you.
Noah Mancuso:Remember, once again, I can't stress this enough, the point of habits is to open you up to God's power. God is the one that heals you. God is the one that transforms you. Habits are not a measure of your maturity. Stephen Covey, who is some smart guy, once said, we achieve inner peace when our schedule aligns with our values.
Noah Mancuso:So are you ready for your life to match your vision? I believe it's possible. I've seen it happen. My favorite stat from Atomic Habits is this. If you get 1% better every single day, by the end of the year, you will be 37 times better than where you were when you started.
Noah Mancuso:Habits compound. I'm not saying growth is exponential or linear. In fact, it's quite the opposite, especially for followers of Jesus. But I believe that habits can, I don't want to say fast track, but they can really help you in consistently being in the word, consistently being in communion with the father, consistently entering into community with with others? Deep community.
Noah Mancuso:Where your your brokenness is is laid bare before others, that is a different type of community that's found in in in Christian, in Christian circles. So I'll finish with a story. Have any of you ever heard of Young Life before? Not one. Oh, that is so sad.
Noah Mancuso:Okay. Anyway, Young Life thanks, Bryce. Young Life is basically just a youth group in Calgary. So this guy named David Woods, who was one of the big directors for Young Life in Calgary, who I knew throughout high school, wanted to get into a habit of taking a short 5 to 10 minute walk every single day around his block, just in Calgary, no matter the weather, just taking a 5, 10 minute walk every single day. And while he would walk, he would pray.
Noah Mancuso:And on its own, you see this habit doesn't really seem very impressive or significant or impactful, but when he was asked, David's response was really powerful, and I think it sums up a lot of what I've been trying to say today. He said this, you might be right, but can you imagine if in a few decades, I can say that I literally walked with God for 40 years? You see, can you imagine where you would be if you walked with God every day for the next year, for the next week, for the next decade, for the next 2 decades? How how would that shape you? How would that shape you to take part in the life that he offers you that's to the full every single day?
Noah Mancuso:Where would you end up in 40 years, In 50 years? That's the power of habit in spiritual formation. So thank you all for listening.
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