The Missing Component in The Habit Loop You Must Know Now! #210

You know when God gives you a mission within a mission? Of course you do!   What on earth does that have to do with Habit Loops? Cues? Routines? Rewards? EVERYTHING!

Buckle up, buttercup! Today's episode is a MUST LISTEN to move forward to peace, joy, and contentment in your relationships, businesses, and homes!

0:00 Power & Fear
0:49 Powerful Questions about the Power of Habit
3:21 The power of Repetition
6:09 The HEART of the Habit Loop
9:21 Boundaries - A Necessary Part of Habit Loops
12:09 The Work of God in Habit Transformation
14:10 5 Prayers to pray to get your Heart right
17:52 Thank you Dana! 5 Star Reviews!

New to the show? Want to start at the beginning of habit loops?  Start with #206!

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Be strong, and let your heart be courageous, all you who put your hope in the Lord.
Psalm 31:24

Transcript

Jen Rogers, Certified Coach, Kingdom Entrepreneur, Keynote Speaker, Bible Teacher, Author

#1 Christian Podcast for Stepmoms
🏅Top 1.5% Podcast Worldwide🏅  

210 \\ The Missing Component in The Habit Loop You Must Know Now!

Host: Jen Rogers

00:00

He stood out from the crowd. It wasn't his size or stature per se after all, he was a young man. However, he exuded power, and everyone knew it. He was feared by believers. No doubt he was feared by those serving under him. This man, not only known for furious threats, endorsed the murder, one stone at a time, of our church's first martyr, Stephen. The Book of Acts, chapter 8, verse 1, is proof. “And Saul approved of their killing him.” On that very day, a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 

00:49

Throughout the last several episodes of The Empowered Stepmom, we've been studying the power of habit. You've been asking yourself powerful questions like:

What triggers me before I breathe out my own murderous threats? 

How can I modify that cue to get a different outcome? 

When I get triggered, what do I do next? 

What would happen if I didn't throw those stones? 

What if I offered grace instead? 

What routine could I practice that lines up with the outcome or the reward I seek, my values and how I want to show up as a woman after God's own heart? 

In last week's episode, number 209, we dipped our prettily polished big toe into the gritty, wet sand on the shores of what I'll call Emotion Ocean. We not only talked about the Emotional Quotient or Emotional Intelligence, which the smarty pants like to abbreviate as EQ or EI, we stepped a few more feet forward together. To keep rolling with the oceanfront metaphor, let's say the water's swirling about mid-calf right now, as we reflect on last week's mission related to self-awareness. That was one of the first of five components of Emotional Intelligence. 

02:08

Your mission from episode number 209 focused on assessing your emotions in conjunction with the habit loop. Do you remember the three questions? Here they are again, and yes, I'm, just like you, inundated with tons of opportunities to learn, way too many emails, challenged with recall amidst the world's noise, pollution, and sometimes feeling like I'm living in a brain fog with all this intel. All that to say, I went back to my notes and the transcript to snag those three questions. One day, when I grow up, I'll have more recall, I'm sure of it. On this day, I'm using all my resources and I lovingly invite you to do the same. 

Okay, number one what emotions are you experiencing in each part of the habit loop? Number two what emotions do you want to experience when you modify a cue or a routine. And number three how do your emotions change? This is your cue to be the button pushing boss lady, and lovingly yet gently, please push my podcast buttons so you can pause and reflect on those three questions. 

03:21

Repetition is key to learning and instilling concepts in our God-given brains. So boss me around and press pause as you give yourself permission to become more self-aware through the lens of emotion and the power of the reflective pause. 

Welcome back. What's one thing you reflected on? If you want to share a bit more, email me at friends@stepfamilypodcast.com or comment inside the Facebook group. I love hearing from you. 

03:56

When I created last week's episode, I intended to go a bit deeper on self-awareness this week and optimistically, I figured we'd hit those other four components of emotional intelligence. You know, motivation, empathy, social skills and self-regulation? Color me a high achiever. I know you can relate. 

When we are self-aware, we recognize our personal strengths and those nagging limitations. We're curious about new info and experiences and we do indeed learn from our interactions with others. We also learn when we bite off way more than we can chew! (Ahem…Jen)

Did you know? 95% of individuals believe they are self-aware? According to organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich, only 10% to 15% genuinely are self-aware. Where do the people you spend the most time with land on the self-awareness scale? In the, “I think I am aware, but I'm not self-aware camp” or the genuinely self-aware. 

How does self-awareness impact how we relate to others and how others relate to us? That's exactly the question we are going to answer… 

05:13

Uh, next week. Say whhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaatttttttttttt????

I know, I know, before you feel like tossing me out into the deep blue sea as shark bait, will you pause and check your self-awareness as you ponder this question?

Ask: What just happened to me emotionally when I was expecting Jen to zig and instead she's zagged? Here's the skinny. As I did the research and prepped my notes, I kept getting a different message to share with you during my devotional time. 

Want to know what it is? I'll reveal it in one hot sec, because I am emotionally aware that this may feel like you're clinging to a stick of wood floating all alone on the Pacific Ocean. I'm asking you to breathe deeply, loosen the grip on the board so your hands don't cramp and, yes, be vulnerable enough to trust me to deliver exactly what you need to hear first. 

06:09

In this week's episode, number 210 of The Empowered Stepmom podcast, we're going to get to the heart of the habit loop. Quite literally, my friend. 

You see, I realized I got stuck right into the world's way of looking at habits as I drew habit loop after habit loop, using the precision of my grad school’s round coaster to draw a mostly perfect circle. (Yes, I am that woman.)

Okay, back to drawing the habit loop. How did I get sucked in? Well, I started with what I love to teach: the power of thought. What we think becomes an action, that action becomes a habit, that habit becomes a belief and that belief, verified by experience time after time, becomes part of our thought life, which is directly tied into the habit loops we live out every single day. 

The thing is, what I missed is the literal heart of the habit loop. That's exactly what we must talk about pronto, before we move from mid-calf to knee high in the emotion ocean, assuming we're still together on this – that you haven't tossed me out a shark bait and you're not feeling all alone clinging to that piece of wood in the Pacific. 

The heart of the habit loop? Well, it is essential to our transformation as empowered women who are taking back our control and regaining our joy in our businesses, relationships and at home. 

07:40

The mission of The Empowered Stepmom podcast is to speak life into your journey as a woman. You are so beautiful, sweet friend. God sees you. Our heavenly Abba hears you. Jesus absolutely 100% loves you. He calls for us to abide in Him, for apart from Jesus, we can do nothing. Lord Jesus, you are welcome here. We ask your Holy Spirit to infuse our minds, hearts, thoughts, and actions, as we do Kingdom work today, in our families, in our work and in our homes. 

08:16

Hey, there, I'm your host, Jen Rogers, certified professional life coach, keynote speaker and fun fact: a recovered certified professional accountant. Oh, you'll still find plenty of columns and rows in my life, which does indeed explain why I like to look at the heart of the issue to gain wisdom on dealing with difficult in-laws, outlaws and exes. 

I want clarity in my own life, and I want clarity for you too. When we have clarity on what we want, we begin to take those teeny, tiny action steps to reclaim our power and joy. I'm leading you on this journey because for too long I felt well like shark bait in my own blend, in my work, especially as an entrepreneur and, yes, even as a podcast hostess with the moistest. 

I've struggled with imposter syndrome, shiny object syndrome and doubt-filled countless other syndromes. And I'm still here. I'm standing firm, and it all starts with what's in my heart. My mission is to empower you to stand firm too. 

09:21

Listen, one thing we all struggle with is boundaries. Remember, sis, there's never a one and done, because we all know that the number two comes after the number one! When you are living step number one, you have level one awareness. The only way to get to level two is to increase your awareness and, honestly, the best way to do that is by establishing boundaries. So head on over to www.buildbetterboundaries.com  to get to the next step. I'll be your personal guide. Go to www.buildbetterboundaries.com to learn exactly what I mean. It's good stuff, I promise. 

And if you're multitasking right now, come on back to me; come on! Come on back. Well, I guess it'd be okay if you click on the link in the show notes to go to www.buildbetterboundaries.com. Outside of that, come on back so we can get to the heart of the Habit Loop. 

10:16

Now that you're several weeks into practicing analyzing Habit Loops, I'm confident you can identify the cue, routine, and reward. Remember how I opened today's episode? 

I shared one of Saul's Habit Loops. You know, hunting down Christians? Let's identify the cue, routine and reward here. 

His cue: see a Christian. 

His routine: arrest, bind and kill. 

His reward: adhering to his religious beliefs as he got people who were of the way out of the Way, out of the way. 

10:51

Peeking a few verses back in Acts, chapter 7, verse 51, we hear Stephen’s rebuke to the Pharisees and Jewish leaders:

You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in the heart and ears. You always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers did, so do you. 

Did you catch the heart reference? Who does that circumcision of the heart? And all God's girls say, “God does!” Of course God does!

11:21

As we move on in the book of Acts, where Saul is on the road armed with letters for the synagogues, so that if he found any disciples of the Lord, anyone belonging to the way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. 

And then…

A light from heaven shone around Saul. The only way to change the habit loop of Saul the persecutor was to get to his heart. In one heart-rendering moment Jesus asks Saul, “Why are you persecuting me?”

And the rest, as they say, is his story. In earlier episodes I mentioned throwing a monkey wrench in your habit loop, which means changing the cue or changing the behavior to get your desired outcome? Saul's monkey wrench in his habit loop?

12:09

Jesus! God, doing exactly as he promises in Ezekiel 11, 19 to 20, I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them, and they shall be my people and I will be their God. I have pages of heart references from my morning journal writings. Those notes are what prompted the preempting of the five components of emotional intelligence. 

As if to drive home the point one more time, in Bible study before working on the podcast, more heart talk came from Hebrews 10, 16. The Holy Spirit bears witness to us saying this is the covenant that I will make with them. After those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds.  

13:04

Love, if we do not first attend to the state of our heart, it doesn't matter what's happening within our habit loops. What we need first is heart work. 

What makes heart awareness critical? Take Ananias and Sapphira. Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit..

Or

Judas Iscariot during supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus. 

Listen in the heart of the day to day, when we're struggling to count our trials as pure joy, Jesus remains steadfast, interceding at the right hand of the Father for you and for me. God tells us to love Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. 

If we're modifying our habit loops in our own power, without our heart to heart with our Creator, we're set up to fail. The devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. If we're so focused on modifying a cue or a routine, danger signs may be overlooked. 

14:10

Here are five prayers to pray to get your heart right for the transformation that only God can do. 

Prayer Number one.

Abba, you cleanse me by the blood of Jesus. You have forgiven my sins; you have made me a new creation and you have given me a new heart. Thank you, Father, for your mercy, your goodness, your love. I repent of my selfishness and my pride. Forgive me for those times I have hurt others, because I too was hurt. You are my healing balm, Lord. 

14:45

Prayer number two.

Lord God, your Word reminds me to guard my heart above all else according to your word, for everything I do flows from it. Psalm 119:9, Proverbs 4:23. Embolden me with a supernatural memory to know your word, to use it to speak life into my relationships and my home and to cause me to delight in your commands. 

Prayer number three.

Psalm 139, 23-24. Search me, o God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, see if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. 

Prayer number four.

Father, as I do the nitty gritty work of habit loop change, I pray you bless not only the work of my mind and my hands, but you also bless my heart. You transform hearts, Lord God. Grant me a spirit of discipline and perseverance as I draw closer to you. 

15:52

Prayer number five.

Protect me from evil, Abba. The world today shouts from the rooftops to do what feels good, do what you want. I pray you strengthen my heart to hear your whispers from heaven. Teach me to pray, Jesus, one word at a time. 

Phew! God is so good. How is your heart, sis? I praise God for you, for your bravery, for your work, for your vulnerability and for being alongside this journey with you. I pray God uses you powerfully for Kingdom work. I pray he protects your home, your marriage, your relationships, your work, your finances, your big, big dreams. I pray that you know you are not alone. I pray you rebuke the naysayers and focus on your God-ordained mission here on earth. I pray we meet face to face, if not here, then in heaven. I pray whatever habit loop you are working on this week, you stay focused, just as Nehemiah did when rebuilding the wall. I pray you have a spirit of generosity, that you are encouraged by the good news of Jesus Christ. I pray you know your work matters. I pray all of these things with a grateful heart In Jesus' name. Amen. 

God willing, we will get back to those five components of emotional intelligence when we pick it up next week as we continue this Reformation, if you will, of our habit loops. 

17:26

So I've been thinking I wonder if it's time to rename the podcast to: I'm Not a Stepmom!

But…where does that (idea) come from? Well, in one of the latest reviews… We had so many reviews pop in over the last couple of weeks. I'm so thankful for each and every word, for each moment you took out of your time to leave a five-star review. This is how other women find us. Your voice has power!

17:52

Dana Byers, thank you so much for your review! She says: Clear and practical exclamation point. I value how clear Jen's communication is and how practical the tools she offers are. I'm not a stepmom, yet I still find her content truly helpful. 

Dana, thank you so much for taking a listen in and I am so glad that you have been blessed by the content! Listen, God is at work here and we are kingdom women on a mission, and God has a mighty work for us to do. It's important that we do indeed get our hearts right, aligned with him, aligned with his word, so we can carry out the work that he has prepared in advance for us to do. 

I can't wait to connect with you again next week. I will catch you on the flip side. God bless you. 

P.S. Hey, thank you so much for listening today! If this episode helped you, blessed you, encouraged you, gave you direction, made you want to share it with a friend, will you please leave a five-star review on whatever platform you're listening on?