My dear friend and fellow author Anne Baxter Campbell is joining us today with a guest post that I know will bless you. And don’t miss her excellent new release, The Roman’s Quest:
The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Anne Baxter Campbell
Everyone is busy setting goals and resolutions by the score. Personally, I quit doing resolutions. I like to set goals instead. Â How about you?
Someone a few years back coined the phrase, “This is the first day of the rest of your life.” The hope was that people would realize their faults and failures belong to the past, which can’t be changed, but they could start out new now.
One of the enemy’s best tricks is to convince you that you can’t change or improve. That your bad habits are too deeply ingrained to fix. That you aren’t worth anything, so what’s the use? Well, the enemy is wrong.
Maybe today just change one thing. Do the improved habit for 21 days and you will create a new habit. Then try one more.
For instance, maybe you want to stop smoking. Today, smoke one less than you did yesterday. Tomorrow repeat that. How many smokes are in a pack? Maybe by the end of 21 days you will be a nonsmoker! How would that be?
Or maybe you want to improve your diet. I would start by dropping sugar (or at least sugary treats and drinks). Replace it with a protein–maybe almonds or peanuts. Twenty-one days later, stop eating french fries or potato chips or maybe even Cheetos. I can bear witness, at least with the sugary stuff, it has reaped huge benefits.
For most of the years I’ve been alive (and that’s a bunch!), I have battled food cravings, mostly for sweets. An irresistible drive to eat was never satisfied by a full feeling in my stomach. I had no control over my appetite. I totally relate to alcoholics and drug addicts. I couldn’t quit. Or so I thought. I began in the morning one day, eating a fried egg with a whole wheat bagel. I don’t remember what I ate the rest of the day or week or month, but I avoided sugar like the plague. The result?
I lost the craving. It didn’t happen overnight. It took months before I stopped eating just four dark chocolate kisses a day, thinking at really didn’t have much sugar at all. I was a raving chocoholic. When people would bring brownies to food events, I was lost. Finally I quit even the chocolate kisses. Now I can ignore even brownies. Plus—I have lost a little more than ten pounds. Not a huge amount, but I’m not that overweight. The weight has gone down by maybe a pound every two months, consistently.
It won’t be easy, but you are totally worth it. God didn’t make any junk, and He did create you.
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Thank you so much for hosting me and for the shoutout on Amazon, Kathi. It’s an honor!
~Anne
My pleasure, Anne. This is a wonderful book!