Building Habits When You’re Not a Routine-Oriented Person

This post is by Jill Miller

I love Dr. Pepper. It is one of my favorite guilty pleasures in life. I have zero problems forming a habit of daily Dr. Pepper drinking. Seemingly, it’s easy to form all the bad habits I’ve had in life. It’s the healthy, life-giving habits I’ve really had to work at.

Building good habits, and breaking bad ones, is rooted in routine and consistency. Two things that wouldn’t fall under my “strengths” category. By nature, I’m more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of person. Daily routine gets very monotonous to me, and the robotics can make me feel stifled.

Society and culture these days cater to an overflowing plate - there’s never a shortage of things to be done and experiences to be had. The enemy makes busy so enticing and the fear of missing out keeps us running at the pace of chaos.

When you live life on the fly, chaos tends to follow, and that’s typically how my life has always been - chaotic, busy. As I’ve learned more about God and become more aware of His desires for me, I’ve come to recognize that chaos makes it very hard to slow down and be still with God.  

Learning to surrender my free spirit to the Lord is a daily choice (and not an easy one for me). But as I’ve done so, I’ve realized the growth that happens through routine and consistency. As I’ve started to embrace a more orderly day, I’ve found more peace and more opportunity to hear from the Lord. 

Once I realized that my resistance to order was really a resistance to God, I was able to embrace it more openly - not easily, just openly. Turning over the dictation of my day to God gave Him the power to order my steps rather than me. Instead of leaving my day up for grabs and falling prey to the latest whim, I chose to let it first be given to the glory of the Lord.

Since the whole routine thing is completely against my nature, this is not something that comes easy to me. I often find myself in resistance to a set schedule, and there are many days I just don’t do it. But every time I find myself just wistfully going about my day, I am always met with more anxiety and less peace.

Ultimately, it’s my choice how I walk through my days because God is a God of order, not control. So when we step out, put Him first, and build healthy habits into our days, within that order we can find peace and rest and the confidence to relinquish it all to Him.

Building and breaking habits are at the core of surrendering your life to the Lord. He wants to build in you a routine that is centered around Him and not your to-do list or the whims of the world. Consistency builds confidence and lays ground for your physical, emotional, and spiritual health to flourish.

If you find yourself struggling to build a new, healthy habit into your day or if you’re trying to break a bad habit that’s held you back, I encourage you to keep at it. Choosing to build these new healthy things into your life will be met with opposition because it’s good for you and brings glory to God. Fight for it. Pray for the strength of the Lord to sustain you and see you through.

Trust me, I was never met with opposition as I was building my daily Dr. Pepper habit! Those bad habits will disguise themselves as comfort. Take the high road and remind yourself of the true peace and comfort that lie in a life surrendered to God. You’ve got this!

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained in it.” Hebrews 12:11

 Jill Miller is a writer, speaker, and educator advocate from Fort Worth, Texas. She loves to share about her crazy life as she believes transparency is how we encourage one another and share in the victories God’s brought us to. She is the owner of Teacher, Be Still, a company dedicated to encouraging and equipping educators, and she and her husband John have 4 amazing kids and one gorgeous grand baby.