What’s familiar is not always what’s best

Change is hard. Our brains are wired to prefer what’s old and familiar. Even  when we know that making a change is important, the DNA from our ancient  ancestors scream out that change means danger. The relatives of our ancestors  who wandered into new territory often met with disasters that they were not  equipped to handle. Those who preferred to stay in the safety of the known and  familiar were the ones who survived to pass their genes onto us.

Today, we spend a lot of time and money to overcome these genes. We buy books  about reaching new goals, hire coaches to spur us on, sign up with exercise  gyms to lose weight because we can’t change the lifestyle that made us fat.

But how many New Year’s resolutions do we even remember making? How often do we  restart new habits because they never became well-ingrained habits? How many of  our problems are reruns with only small differences?

It’s tempting to say, “This is who I am, it’s in my DNA, I’ll just accept  life as it is.” Remember, though, who the tempter is. And Who the victor  over temptation is. Jesus has given you his Holy Spirit to empower you to make  any changes that he has asked you to make.

© 2014 by Terry A. Modica

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