Be Strong by Following These 3 Principles

As I type this message out, my new habit of blogging every Sunday, staying consistent.

So I started this Sunday, as usual, beating up on my teenage Sunday School Class. Some of these kids have been with me since 4th grade when I used to teach 4th through 6th grade, others are my kids, so they know me well. What was I beating them up on? Bad habits and lack of good habits. See I'm working on a series entitled "Training for Life." Part of that is building good spiritual habits. As I taught them these principles I thought about how much this applies so much to many areas of our life. Let me break these 3 key areas down for you.

1) Eating Habits: If you are going to maintain a good healthy body, you know you are supposed to eat right. That means a good well-balanced diet and variety, including the right fruits and vegetables. In a spiritual sense, this applies to what you are doing. What are you reading? Who are you hanging around with? What are you watching? Are these helping you grow? The same applies to other areas of our lives.  

If you want to get control of your finances you are going to have to stop hanging around with people that spend freely. You are going to have to stop seeing ads all the time. Rather you are going to want to look and study things that help you get control of your spending

If you want to lead people you are going to have to be studying good leaders. Reading books and listening to podcasts about being a strong leader. If you are not you are going to be weak in these areas.

Eating right overall does not just apply to our diets, but rather it applies to all we do and all that we put into our minds, our eyes, and our ears.

2) Exercise!! Yes, I used that dirty word. No one likes to talk about this. Well, I do. All of us know that we have to remain active in some way to maintain our health, including strong muscles, joints, immunity, and an overall healthy body. When I applied this spiritually it was about the actions we take. Many of us know the right things we should do, but are we doing them?  

Financially, the same applies. We know that we should not spend more than we have, but we do anyway. We know failure to budget and plan, results in overspending. We know investing now, will pay dividends in the future. Now it is time to take action, start getting control of these, set up some automatic savings, start a budget, or stop using the credit cards that are overused and running up.  

In leadership, this is about taking action. I've said it before many times leaders are readers and readers are leaders. Yes, many of us just use the excuse, I don't like to read. Okay, that is fine, you don't have to, but then you are accepting being less than your best. You can never stop learning and reading is one piece of the puzzle. We need to make decisions, take action, and get after it.

3) Endurance: This life is long, you are going to face trials and challenges, and you are going to need to build a strong foundation for the long haul. This area brings everything together. You have to eat right and take the right actions, day in and day out. Over time, that will strengthen you to continue, even when it is hard and you don't want to. This is where habits all come together. When you build lots of small habits, continually improving on them, and building more, you will be strong spiritually, financially, and in business.  

The same habits designed to take care of our bodies apply to our lives every day. So apply these habits in your life and continue to build upon them year after year.  

Need help getting started, here are my 2 favorite books on habits.

1) Atomic Habits by James Clear

2) The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg