I'm gonna explain to you how ideas become a person's nature and how this information will actually help you in not just forming habits, but raising children that will not only make you proud, but will align with the perfect will of God for their life.
How Ideas Become a Person's Nature
First let me explain what an idea is.
An idea is the actual reproduction of an imagination, meaning that we have thought through an influence enough to make it where it has began to form an imagination around the idea of thought.
The more we think about the same thought and produce others of its kind, and we internally digest these things, the next thing that happens in the line of an idea is that it doesn't stay in our mind forever.
It requires us to act out further.
Now, the first beginning steps of an evidence of an idea is when we begin to see it playing out.
For children, it can be questions like, why does this happen? How does this work? These types of questions that we often roll our eyes at. As parents, I encourage you to not roll your eyes at the questions of your children.
Encourage them, listen to them, answer them, because that is only the way that we can decide what our children are inwardly, digesting what ideas their imagination is processing and will know if they're beginning to go the right way or if they're starting to go the wrong way.
Listening is important when they're asking these questions and when their mind has inwardly digest this enough and they begin to get deeper information on it, then and only then does a mind begin to require the next step, which is action.
Now, when a child is engrossed in something, rather it be a really good book or a Disney movie or an trip that you may have gone on and they begin to use those ideas in play, it means that the the imagination has now required action. It's not enough to think about it anymore. It cannot stay between the ears. It now needs to become eternally acted out.
You might see it with your children are reading about Daniel Boone or Davey Crockett, which all of our children have read. Then you will see them out there with coon hats and wooden rifles and in the woods trying to hunt down their first bear. Then you will see that they're trying really hard to emulate parts of the story, rather it be from the Jungle Book movie and becoming the elephants walking heavy down the hallway like our children have done, or David and Goliath story where one was David and the other was Goliath and mimicking the exact fall of the giant to the point of bruising their knees.
This is when ideas have begun to form into actions, the external evidence that an idea have taken root.
Now, if that continues and it is repetitive action, and that repetitive action continues for 40 unbroken sequences, meaning they keep doing that same thing without any break in it, now I'm not saying 24 hours, seven days a week for 40 days.
I'm not saying that.
What I'm saying is if they do that same thing 40 times, it begins to form a habit.
Now, when that habit continues and continues and continues over time, it becomes so part of them that it becomes their nature and that forms almost involuntary once the thought process has actually created enough evidence for them to act it out on their own.
This is the key because what we have to recognize is that we have three types of Habits.
We have our good habits,
we have our bad habits, and we have our indifferent habits
Indifferent habits make us unique from someone else. These are the things that one child would do something completely different than anyone else in their family. That is a unique factor that was birthed in them and that makes them uniquely and wonderfully made.
Now, there are good habits that always brings a smile to a mama's heart,
or I always say, melts my heart.
Then there are bad habits.
These bad habits happen because of allowances that you and I have allowed our children to do or we have allowed ourselves to do. And over time those allowances begin to form this thought in our head that guess what? This is acceptable and the more we keep doing the good, the bad or the difference in repetitive action,
those habits are being formed. And before you know it, whenever there is not a break in those habits, the next thing that's going to happen is the nature is there and it is so much harder to change a nature of a person than it is to form a good habit.
And that's what I want you to recognize as a parent.
If you think you've never worked on habits before and you're living in chaos right now and have endless friction in all of your relationships, guess what?
You have been working in habits.
In fact, Charlotte Mason said that each and every day and every hour we are actively and passively forming habits in our children.
Problem is we might not like the habits that are being formed, so we have to recognize we are always habit forming. It is part of our nature.
We are constantly forming habits.
The problem is we are not becoming intentional enough to form the right habits and then you know, become the first of the year, we often get so overwhelmed with wanting to change so much that we start out with all excitement and it dies out quickly.
So what I want to encourage you is to think on this one thing.
What's one thing that you would like to see happening in your family and begin to work on that one thing and work on that 40 days of unbroken sequence or 40 unbroken sequence. It depends on what it is. If it requires days or if it just requires a repetitiveness of 40 times, meaning like if it's something you do multiple times a day, then it only requires 40 times before it starts to become a habit.
Then you keep it up.
It's not enough to become relaxed after those 40 times because you want it to become the nature.
The beautiful thing is that when it starts to become a habit to the point where it goes beyond those 40 days, our mind is no longer engaged in that decision to do that action.
After we get past those 40 days, our mind is no longer engaged in the decision to make, to have us do that action.
That is the key.
If we can just work diligently for that amount of time, that habit in and of itself will either be broken and a new one in its place, or will be well on our way with a good habit that forms our nature. It's well worth the work.
And imagine how your life would look like if you concentrated and said, in the next 12 months, these are the 12 habits that I'm going to work on and myself to help my family, or I'm gonna focus on these habits to help our children.
And please don't be focused on all the negative habits that are going on in your family. You will never have the energy if that's where your focus is.
Instead, think of the opposite.
The best way to build a new good habit is to fix a broken habit by doing the opposite.
In other words, if there's laziness in the house, then you work on being a good worker. And don't ever talk about the laziness again, just focus on the opposite habit.
When you are doing that, what's gonna happen is that your mind becomes positive, and with it the energy changes not only in you, but in your home. And I want you to work on that energy change.
All right?
Pick 12 habits that you wanna work on over the next 12 months and work on one at a time, knowing that in this process you are forming the habits that will lead to the nature of your people in your home.
I hope that that helps you to get so encouraged and all along the way you're thinking of positive things that will help the energy of your home be a positive one.
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