Escaping Ruts

Imagine yourself sledding down a hill covered with fresh snow. As you steer your sled, it begins to create a path. If you were to spend an entire afternoon sledding down that same path, then your sled would wear deep grooves into it, creating ruts in the snow and making it difficult to steer in other directions.

You lay down mental paths in a similar way. When you choose the same negative thought or make the same poor choice over and over again, you create a rut in your mental path that can be tricky to get out of. Then, try as you might to steer another course, you slide into the rut and follow it all the way down the hill.

It becomes a challenging undertaking to forge new paths because the worn paths are deeper and faster, or more “neurologically entrenched” as it’s described in neuroscience. In this way, mental training is just like sledding down a snowy hill. If you continuously choose a destructive path, you strengthen the thoughts and behaviors associated with it, possibly to the extent that those thoughts and behaviors become automatic. In short, the paths you choose establish your habits.

Every repetition of an action increases the likelihood of that same action recurring in the future, so whatever you do consistently becomes what you do automatically. This is likely a biological component that explains why people persist in doing the very things they do not want to do, just as it’s explained in Romans 7:15–20. But you can change! The same brain mechanisms that get you into a rut can also help you escape it.

If you want paths that lead to good, virtuous thoughts and actions, then you need to practice those that demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. By replacing destructive pathways with healthy ones and practicing them consistently, the healthy pathways become entrenched in your brain as your automatic, go-to thoughts and behaviors.

Takeaway: Whatever you do consistently becomes what you do automatically.