Habits are hard things to break...and create

I'm still working through John Burke's Soul Revolution, a book that walks readers through his church's 60-60 Experiment. This experiment basically trains a person to become more aware of God throughout the day, by connecting with Him every 60 minutes for 60 days. The book includes lots of stories of how people's lives dramatically changed through their experience.

Whether 60 days is enough is debatable. Burke talks in one chapter about how people need to do something every day for 90 days for a new habit or way of thinking to take hold. But I suppose 60 days sounds more doable if you're trying to convince someone to take on the experiment.

I purchased an inexpensive kitchen timer (60 minutes) to try this. But during the dry run, I discovered that I have to cycle through every second to reset the timer for the next hour. That's a lot of thumb pushing, unless I decide to enter the "texting" Olympics.

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Another habit I plan to attempt to build is exercise. A local gym recently opened its doors and the cost was more than right: it basically removed all obstacles to joining. Since I'm pushing the half-century mark, and my family's medical history may start to catch up with me if I don't do something, I took the plunge and enrolled last Wednesday.

Then my wife and kids decided to visit friends in Connecticut over the weekend, leaving me with no car (yes, we did that on purpose). I planne to--and did--walk wherever I needed to go. I think I averaged about five miles each day. So I haven't made it to the gym yet. Today should be the day.