Building Habits for Mental & Emotional Wellness

Front Cover

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 Building Habits for Mental & Emotional Wellness

Building Habits
for Mental and
Emotional
Wellness
Biblical Wisdom, Practical
Principles, Clinical
Insight

Dr. Jennifer Londgren

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 Building Habits for Mental & Emotional Wellness

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for
the glory of God.”
1 Corinthians 10:31

“Our lives are fashioned by our choices. First, we make our

choices. Then our choices make us.” 1—Anne Frank

Habits are the small choices that we make every day.

All of us have different habits and behaviors about how we
wake up in the morning, how we greet our families, the
supplements we take, our hygiene practices, our routes to
work (if we even have to leave our homes), how we cook
food, how we tidy our houses, and how we connect with
our loved ones. All our habits and behaviors look different.
They say that habits account for about 40% of our behavior
on a given day, and most habits are automatic. You don’t
think about them; you just do them. It’s kind of like
flushing the toilet. You don’t make a conscious choice as to
whether or not you should flush; you engage in this habit
mindlessly. If you have small children, you know that
flushing the toilet isn’t an automatic human behavior. It

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has to be taught in young ones. When we want to develop a

good habit or break a bad habit, it’s really important that
we start to develop an awareness of what we actually do.
Awareness is the first step. I started to notice that
every time I changed my clothes, I threw them on the floor
or on a bench in my bedroom. When the pile became a
certain height, I put the clothes away. Changing clothes
and throwing them on the floor became so automatic that I
wasn’t even aware I was doing it. I distinctly remember
looking at the floor and making myself pick up my clothes
immediately. I am currently teaching the same
methodology to my own children. When we change, we
deal with our clothes immediately, whether it is throwing
them down the laundry chute or putting them away.
It’s critical to understand the science of habits and use
it to our advantage. Helpful habits can become automated
too. If we want to direct our behavior toward our values, we
transform our intentional behaviors into habits, making
them so deeply ingrained that we no longer have to be
intentional about them at all. Consider the values exercise
you completed in chapter 3. If you haven’t done this, take

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some time to reflect on two or three of your core values.

When you have clarity in what matters to you, you can
develop habits that help support the things you care about.
The beauty of deliberately cultivating habits in line with
our values is that they can persist over time with almost no
further effort, on good days and on bad, when we’re really
paying attention and when we’re not. No matter how
frazzled we are in the morning, we always remember to
brush our teeth and to fasten our seat belts as soon as we
get into the car. The ability to form values-connected
habits not only makes our intentions durable, it frees up
our minds for other tasks as well.2

Reflection break
Take some time to write out four habits that you would like
to build and four you would like to stop.

Four habits I would like to build:

Four habits I would like to stop:

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Some examples that I have worked on are flossing my

teeth every day, drinking more water, writing thank-you
notes, watching less TV, engaging in less social media, and
reading every day. Habit development that is a continued
evolution is moving my body every day for 30 minutes and
meal planning every week.
When you want to engage in a new habit, make it
pleasurable and desirable. When I think about working
out, there is still an aspect of shame and pain associated
with going to the gym for me. I think about myself needing
to leave my warm, cozy house and running on a treadmill
in too tight clothes. I think about the fit and beautiful
people at the gym who will look me up and down and think
about what a lost cause I am. In reality, I know this is not
true, but there is still an aspect of resistance to going to the
gym for me. It doesn’t sound fun. I resist going because it
is associated with pain and discomfort.
When I really thought about how to make the
experience of going to the gym desirable for me, I made a
few shifts to make it fun. Now the first thing I do when I go
to our local YMCA is sit in the steam room. I live in

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Minnesota, and it is cold here for much of the year. Going

into a warm, quiet steam room by myself is an absolute
treat. I leave my house in the cold weather, drive across
town, and immediately go to the steam room and get warm
and cozy. That is the reward I get for going to the gym, and
it has rewired my association. I usually row or go on an
elliptical machine, and I turn the television channel to
Home and Garden Television (HGTV). This whole ritual of
going to the steam room and then watching HGTV while I
work out has completely transformed how I view the gym.
It has caused me to associate my time there with pleasure
and relief instead of thinking about it as painful.
Whatever new habits you want to build, make them
fun! If you associate a behavior with pain, you are much
less likely to do it. If you associate a behavior with
pleasure, the odds are you will likely engage in this
behavior. The same goes for getting together with people.
If you think about getting together with friends or other
couples as a painful chore, you are less likely to do it. One
thing my husband and I agreed upon is that if we host, we
are not going to stress out about it. We tend to host quite a

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bit, and we save a lot of time and energy not fretting about
every imperfection of our house but instead focusing on
the joy of connecting with friends and loved ones. Instead
of agonizing over making everything perfect, we have fun
planning food and drink menus and coming up with fun
games and activities.
As you consider the habits you would like to develop
and those you would like to stop, think of ways you can
make them pleasurable and think of how you can make
those you want to stop painful.

Make good habits obvious and bad habits hard

Every time I’ve gone to the dentist since I’ve been a
child, I’ve felt embarrassed about my lack of flossing habit.
When the dental hygienist asked if I flossed, I replied,
“Umm, sort of?” as my gums bled. I like to floss. I identify
as a flosser. Yet it seems that in my adulthood I could never
make the habit stick. It wasn’t until I made flossing so easy
and accessible that it was impossible not to do it. How did I
do this? I bought several flossers and consistently keep one

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on my nightstand. Every night when I read in my bed (the

book I am currently reading is also readily available on said
nightstand), I floss my teeth. The last time I went to the
dentist I could confidently say that I had flossed my teeth
every single day. It’s not that I have amazing willpower or
discipline to do this; it’s just that I made it super simple
and removed any possible barrier.
Make good habits easy to do. Researchers have
referred to the impact that environmental defaults can
have on our decision-making as choice architecture. You
can set up your environment to help make good choices
really easy. How you organize furniture, what you display
on your shelves, the sensory experience of your space, and
the availability of items all make a difference. It is
important to realize that you can curate and be the
architect of your choices. You can design for default. Make
good habits so easy to do that you can’t possibly not do
them.
It’s important when you are developing new habits to
remove any barriers you might have. Want to eat healthier?
Buy healthy food, cut it up, and put it in to-go containers

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or in the front of your fridge. Put the fresh fruit or the

avocados out so you will easily see them and consume
them. Have good books on hand, position your piano or
instruments in a high traffic area in your home, or get a
really great beverage container that holds water.
With all change, you have to start really small. I have a
tendency to overwhelm myself. Whenever I want to eat
better, I buy a ton of vegetables and throw away anything
processed and then lament that we have no food and order
a pizza. The vegetables sit in our veggie drawer until I find
them squishy and soggy several days later. Whenever I
want to work out more, I lift or run really hard until I’m too
sore to go back to the gym or I see I haven’t lost any weight
in two solid weeks of working out. Then I quit. When I want
to drink more water, I force myself to drink a gallon, and
then I hate it and go back to what I always do. In all the
wellness and habits literature, starting small is a huge
theme. Start so small you can’t fail. If you do fail, then you
weren’t starting small enough, and you need to go back
and start even smaller. This seems really dumb at first and

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like you are trying to trick your brain, but in my

experience, it does actually work.
Small changes that add up is a concept called the
“aggregation of marginal gains.” When you start making
small changes, they add up to a big change. As Jim Rohn
said, “Success is a few simple disciplines, practiced every
day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment,
repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our
disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either
fortune or failure.”3 For a change to be sustainable, it has
to be integrated into your life. You start by saving one extra
dollar a month. You start by taking one deep breath. You
start by having one more carrot a day or drinking one more
glass of water a day. Like I said, I have the tendency to go
big and then get discouraged and stop. For anything to be
sustainable, start small, start where you are.

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Reflection break
1. Where can you improve your life by 1%?

2. How can you strengthen your faith by 1%?

3. How can you improve your marriage by 1%?

4. How can you improve your relationships with your

children by 1%?

5. How can you improve your health by 1%?

6. How can you increase your joy by 1%?

A critical part of habits also goes back to the idea of

identity. We as humans strive to operate in alignment with
how we define ourselves. I define myself as a boring mom,
so on weekends you can typically find me reading a book
with a cup of tea and being in bed by 9:30 P.M. I don’t
identity as someone who is wild and crazy, and my
behaviors are reflective of that. When thinking about any

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sort of goal you might have, don’t ask yourself, “What do I

want to do?” Instead ask yourself, “Who do I want to
become?”
Any sustainable behavior change has to be an identity
change. The goal is not to run a marathon; the goal is to
become a runner. The goal is not to write one book on self-
care; the goal is to become a writer. The goal is not to learn
how to play one instrument; the goal is to become a
musician. It’s not about accomplishing a goal; it’s about
who you become in the process. As you continue to reflect
on this, think about ways you can serve God and spread the
gospel. How can you continue to develop into the person
God has created you to be?
So many people have things they want to accomplish,
but after they accomplish their goals, they feel a sense of
emptiness or disappointment that meeting that goal didn’t
bring them the happiness or the satisfaction they were
expecting. Many of the men who were involved in first
landing on the moon became alcoholics after that historic
event. What did they have to look forward to? As a
Christian, you can instead focus on God’s love and will for

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you rather than relying on accomplishing big goals to make

you happy. The biggest goal that could ever be
accomplished has already been finished. It was finished
through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection from the dead.
Because of what Jesus did for you, eternal life in heaven is
yours! You can approach your goals with confidence,
knowing that the battle has been won. Second Timothy 1:7
says, “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid,
but gives us power, love and self-discipline.” With God’s
help, focus on developing a spirit of power, love, and self-
discipline. Remember that your goals are founded in Christ.
I remember when I completed my doctorate, I almost
felt a sense of emptiness and a loss of identity after my
dissertation was complete. I had spent the past four years
working toward this goal, not to mention the six years of
undergraduate college and my master’s work. Once my
dissertation was complete and I was a doctor, I felt like I
had lost a part of my purpose. It wasn’t the grand
satisfaction and relief I was anticipating. Instead of being
grateful to God and honoring him with the process, I was
searching for my own fulfillment and my own glory.

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I know now that it was God’s process of teaching me

and stretching me to lengths that I never knew were
possible that was so rewarding. It didn’t matter as much
that I was done with my degree; it mattered that I had
improved along the way. Instead of waiting to accomplish
your goal to feel happy, embrace the process.

Habits and systems

Once you have an idea of who you want to become, it’s
critical to develop a system to help get you there. In Atomic
Habits, James Clear says, “We don’t rise to the level of our
goals; we fall to the level of our systems.”4 This is
incredibly important when we are analyzing what we do.
What is your system for making these changes sustainable?
Is your system for eating dinner to see what happens
around 5:00 P.M. and decide if you want fast food or
something to quickly air fry? Is your system for reading a
book to think, “I should find a good book” and then never
really following through? Many times we have great goals
that we want to achieve but no system to get us there.

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I focus a lot on systems in my own life. Every time I

start a new semester of teaching, I typically call my first
week back my “system setting” week. I develop a plan for
morning routines, getting kids to school, doing household
chores and homework, keeping up with work obligations,
and meal planning. I think about when I can get my
workouts in. My husband and I both study and analyze
what works in our systems and what doesn’t work. We
absolutely are not robotic about it, and many of our
systems are definitely works in process. We are still
working on systems for our kids putting their winter gear
away consistently and for meal planning, etc. If you focus
on systems instead of outcomes, the outcomes will take
care of themselves.

Reflection break
What is your system for

• improving your life by 1%?

• strengthening your faith by 1%?

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• improving marriage by 1%?

• strengthening relationships with your children by 1%?

• improving your health by 1%?

• increasing your joy by 1%?

As we consider the habits that we engage in,

remember that we must obey God (Acts 5:29) and act with
a spirit of humility (1 Peter 5:5). God reminds us to stay
away from the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:19-21 and
to imitate him (Ephesians 5:1-33). He tells us to walk in
love and “to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives”
(Titus 2:12). We want our behavior to reflect the will of God
because we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to
do good works, which God prepared beforehand for us
(Ephesians 2:10). We want our behavior to reflect godly
living and putting God first, and we trust in the Lord with
all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding. God

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will make straight our paths (Proverbs 3:5,6). All our habits
and behaviors are not done for our own glory but for the
glory of God. John 15:8 reminds us, “This is to my Father’s
glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be
my disciples.”

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Citations:
1. Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (New York:
Bantam Books, 1994).

2. David, Emotional Agility, 153.

3. Jim Rohn, The Art of Exceptional Living (Shippensburg,

Pennsylvania: Sound Wisdom, 2022).

4. James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to

Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones (New York: Avery,
2018), 27.

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About the Writer

Dr. Jennifer Londgren is the program coordinator for the

alcohol and drug studies program at Minnesota State
University-Mankato. She is a licensed marriage and family
therapist, a nationally certified counselor, and a board
certified telemental health provider. Dr. Londgren’s
mission is supporting those who serve others, and she
frequently presents to educators and mental health
providers on topics related to wellness, self-care,
resiliency, and innovative-teaching strategies. Jennifer is
married to Trevor and has four children: Jack, Kate, Anna,
and Henry.

About Time of Grace

Time of Grace is an independent, donor-funded ministry

that connects people to God’s grace—his love, glory, and
power—so they realize the temporary things of life don’t
satisfy. What brings satisfaction is knowing that because

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Jesus lived, died, and rose for all of us, we have access to
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To discover more, please visit timeofgrace.org or call

800.661.3311.

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Published by Straight Talk Books

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