#DoSomethingDifferent Archives - IdentityInWholeness

Many of us are familiar with Bill Murray’s comedy movie Groundhog Day, where he keeps reliving the same day, day after day. Sometimes we live our lives like that, where we keep making the same mistake over and over again. Why do we do that?

Often, it’s because we think we’re the problem. If I can fix myself, if I can just try harder… That gives us a false sense of control. But the truth is, often, we’re not the problem at all.

Doh! Who Left the Secure Room Unlocked? Again?!?

In a previous job as a government contractor, we had a secure room in our building, a lab dedicated to a certain customer. It had its own spin-dial combination lock on the door so only people working on that program could enter.

We had several incidents where the secure room was left unlocked overnight. Typically, an early guy unlocked the room in the morning, and a late guy locked it up at night. But if, for example, the late guy had a doctor’s appointment so he was out early that day, and the early guy didn’t know it, nobody locked the room. The early guy expected the late guy to lock it but the late guy was already gone.

This is a big deal. When a secure room doesn’t get locked, you have to report the security violation to the customer. Enough security violations over a short enough time interval, and they cancel your secure room, your contract, and your business with that customer. The place could shut down and we all lose our jobs.

When this happened yet again, the office manager sent out an email about the importance of locking the secure room and how we all had to try harder and do better.

I told him that wouldn’t work. We were all conscientious professionals, and we were already trying as hard as we could. We couldn’t “try harder.”

The people weren’t the problem. We all understood the importance and what was at stake. Everyone wanted the room locked each night. It wasn’t the people that weren’t working. It was the system, the procedure, that wasn’t working. We needed to do something different.

So we laminated a colored 3” x 5” card as the “door tag,” and put it on a chain you could hang around your neck. It hung outside the door at night, signifying the room was locked. When you unlocked it in the morning, you hung the tag around your neck. That tag signified the open room was your responsibility. No one was going to accidentally go home with the 3” x 5” tag around their neck.

When you left for the day, you either had to find someone else to accept the tag (and hence responsibility for locking the room), or you locked the room and hung the tag outside the door.

So when an early guy who unlocked the room that morning was going home, he’d find a late guy to pass the tag off to. If he couldn’t find a late guy, he’d lock the room.

We never had another problem with the room being left unlocked. It was a very simple solution. But it was different. And it worked.

Trying Harder Doesn’t Work

More willpower doesn’t work. Trying harder doesn’t work. When we double down on our willpower, determined to just white-knuckle it and try harder, we’re saying, “If I just do what didn’t work hard enough, it’ll work this time.” No, it won’t. Because trying hard enough is not the problem.

“If I just do what didn’t work hard enough, it’ll work this time.”
No, it won’t.

Like in the example above with the secure room, we were already trying as hard as we could. We needed to do something different. And if you are going around the track again, you need to do something different too.

Losing a Body Part

Jesus talked about making changes and doing things differently. In the Sermon on the Mount, he put it rather graphically like this:

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” – Jesus, Matthew 5:29-30

Jesus was speaking figuratively. He didn’t really want a bunch of one-eyed disciples named “Lefty.” He’s talking about removing yourself from situations that lead to the mistakes we keep making. He was talking about doing something differently.

For example, if you’re an alcoholic, don’t go to the bar after work with the guys. If your “no” is not strong enough yet to take on the peer pressure at 5:00 PM when everyone’s leaving, then work 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM.

“But I’ve got to reach them for Jesus!” Not at the bar, if it’s causing you to stumble. It’s someone else’s job, who doesn’t struggle with alcoholism, to reach them in the bar. You get coffee before work and lunch in the cafeteria.

How to Do Something Different

Here are 3 ways you can make a positive change toward doing things differently.

(1) Design your environment to support the behavior you want. For many of us, the environment we live in fights against the behavior we’re trying to install or the goals we’re trying to achieve.

It’s hard to, for example, lose weight when there’s a half-gallon of ice cream in the fridge calling your name. It’s much easier to not eat the ice cream if it’s not there. Yes, I realize I’m over-simplifying this issue. But you get the point.

It’s much easier for me to go to the gym in the morning when I’ve set out my gym clothes the night before. Then, when I wake up and I’m groggy, my environment is reminding me of my goal and helping me achieve it.

(2) Get help. A trained outsider can really help with this. There is no shame in seeing a therapist or a counselor or a life coach. We all need help sometimes. An outsider, someone outside your regular circle, will see the dysfunction your circle takes for granted. I highly recommend counseling. And, BTW, it’s normal to go through several counselors/therapists/life coaches until you find the one that works for you.

In the weight loss example above, along with not having ice cream in the house, what about if we dig into the pain that the over-eating is medicating? Be willing to deal with the root, not just the bad fruit.

(3) Treat everything like an experiment. Try different changes to your routines. You don’t have to commit to a change forever. Put a timeframe on it. “I’m going to try this for two weeks.” And then re-evaluate. See what works. Keep what does, dump what doesn’t. Chew the meat, spit out the bones.

Often we don’t try new things because we’re afraid of the shame if we fail. That’s a self-limiting mindset that needs to be reframed. Think of it as just an experiment. There’s no shame if an experiment doesn’t work out. We learned something, and we’ll try something else.

Your Turn

Is this helpful? What are you going to try differently? What have you changed in your life by doing something different? Tell us in the comments, and please share this post if it would bless others.

It’s Not “Just the Way You Are”

Do you have a behavior you just can’t stop? Maybe an addiction? Maybe just a bad habit that you keep finding yourself doing? Maybe you’ve given up and told yourself, “That’s just the way I am.”

Hogwash. It doesn’t have to be the way we are. That’s a choice we make. We can make another choice. But just trying harder is not going to work. We actually have to do something different.

As long we’re still breathing, God’s not done with us. Sanctification is a lifelong process. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is nonsense. That’s a choice the dog makes. Personally, this puppy wants to keep learning until the day I die.

“The Room Was Unlocked Again!”

Years ago I worked for a certain engineering company with government contracts. We had several “cleared” program rooms; they were special rooms with added security for processing classified information. We had different rooms for different programs, which could all be locked and alarmed independently.

We also had a serious problem. Every other month or so, one of the rooms wouldn’t get locked at night.

They were always innocent mistakes. Maybe the guy who unlocked the room in the morning didn’t know the guy who usually locked it at night left early that day. Or the person who meant to lock it up got busy with some other important project and just forgot, an honest mistake. Or some such thing.

But we had to figure this out. Leaving a special room unlocked is a security violation we had to report to the Customer. Too many of those and they cancel your program. This was a really big, serious deal.

After every violation, our boss would email everybody about the importance of making sure the special rooms were locked each night, reminding everyone to be vigilant and try harder.

After several episodes, I had a talk with our boss and our security officer. “Trying harder is not going to work,” I said. “We are all conscientious, responsible people. We can’t try harder; we’re already trying as hard as we can, and this keeps happening. We have to do something different.”

I had an idea from what I’d seen work at other facilities. We needed a physical token. Room tags. We laminated 4” x 6” colored cards: red, blue, orange, and green. Each program had its own color. We put each one on a lanyard so you could put it around your neck. When the room was locked, its tag hung on a hook outside the door.

When you unlocked a room in the morning, you put the room tag around your neck. It was big and clunky enough so you couldn’t go home and forget you had it. Before you left, you had to give it to someone else. If they accepted it, they were now responsible for locking the room that night. If you couldn’t get anyone to accept the tag, you had to go lock up the room before leaving.

It worked! Once we started doing this, our security violations completely stopped. We did something different.

So What Can You Do Differently?

Here are some ideas to get you started thinking about what you personally, in your situation, might do differently.

If it’s a social thing, like drugs or alcohol, you need to change friends. Ouch! That’s hard, I know. But if the thing you want to change is something you do when you hang around certain people, you need to stop hanging around those certain people.

If it’s a private thing, like porn, you need accountability. Throw away your laptop and disable the data on your phone. Buy a desktop computer and put it in a very public/open area of your house. Everybody can see what you’re doing on the computer. Alternatively, ask a spouse or friend to regularly review your browser cache to see want you’ve been doing. You can also buy software that blocks those sites.

If you’re trying to go to the gym every morning, set out your gym clothes the night before, next to a glass of water. When you get up, first thing, drink that glass of water. It hydrates your brain and helps you think clearly. Your gym clothes are there staring at you. It’s easy to put them on and go. This has worked wonders for me.

It’s a Kingdom of God principle that we attract to ourselves what we think about, what we dwell on. Write down your goals every morning and pray over them. It’ll focus your mind on your goals instead of your problems.

These are just some ideas. What ideas can you come up with for your situation?

Let’s Be Honest

Listen, if you don’t want to change, then don’t change. But be honest with yourself, and everyone else, about it.

If you don’t do something differently, if you don’t change your behavior, you need to face the truth that you actually want the addiction, bad habit, or whatever it is. You’re getting something out of it. It’s probably medicating pain on some level. Knock yourself out, you’re free to choose.

And honestly, if you’re medicating pain, just stopping the addiction won’t work anyway. You’ll just trade it for something else. You need to deal with the root cause of the pain. We write a lot on this blog about doing that.

But if you do want to change, what’s the first step? What can you do differently? Tell us in the comments, and please share if this post would bless someone else.