😇 TREE 662: There is a place for morality but this is not it

L A W R E N C E × J E F F
chapter · 5
part · 1

I have two thoughts I want you to mash together today

1. Change is hard.

2. Most things are not morality.

Let’s say you want to

stop doing something, e.g.
eating junk food
scrolling mindlessly
losing your temper,

start doing something, e.g.
exercising
reading books
practicing generosity,

create something, e.g. writing a book
recording an album
building a log cabin.

All those things are hard to do. You will not succeed immediately.

I have found that when I frame my attempts to change as moral I am less likely to succeed. Here’s how the inner monologue goes:

I need to stop eating junk food. My body is a temple. Junk food is harming my body and will eventually destroy it.

[I stop eating junk food for a day.]

Oh how the junk food tempts me!

[I eat junk food.]

I am a failure! I have no self control. My character is weak. I only crave what destroys me.

[I eat more junk food because I am a failure.]

I have mostly stopped framing things I want to change as moral issues. I try to think of change as a practical challenge. Now the monologue is more like:

What do I need to change in order to stop eating junk food?

[I create a list of things.]

[I eat junk food.]

OK, thing A worked. Think B didn’t. Also, this is harder than I thought it would be. What if I break think B into three smaller things?

[I eat less junk food.]

Huh. That’s cool. What can I do to build on this success?

Ditch the internal morality drama. Change is hard and usually gradual. Self-flagellation along the way is the opposite of helpful.

Grow slowly (and enjoy the process)
Jeff

PS Here’s the quote from Brother Lawrence that today’s post is based on (emphasis mine):

This made me resolve to give the all for the All: so after having given myself wholly to God, to make all the satisfaction I could for my sins, I renounced, for the love of Him, everything that was not He; and I began to live as if there was none but He and I in the world… I worshipped Him the oftenest that I could, keeping my mind in His holy Presence, and recalling it as often as I found it wandered from Him. I found no small pain in this exercise, and yet I continued it, notwithstanding all the difficulties that occurred, without troubling or disquieting myself when my mind had wandered involuntarily. I made this my business, as much all the day long as at the appointed times of prayer; for at all times, every hour, every minute, even in the height of my business, I drove away from my mind everything that was capable of interrupting my thought of God.