I am sure you have heard it being said that everything happens to us for a reason and that all things work for the best. However, when we look at the negative things that happen in our lives, we might be left wondering what good could possibly come from those things.

Take for example an undesirable habit that a person has struggled with for a long time. You will bear me witness that when it comes to these habits, we sometimes feel like captives and it might even seem like God Himself has refused to turn us lose from our chains. But then when one steps away from the problem and looks at it objectively he might begin to see a totally different picture.

Take a moment to look at a habit that you want to change without judging it as right or wrong. You will realize that in the moments when the habit is ruling your life, it takes over almost all your resources so that it may be played out. You will notice is that the habit demands perfection and it is done with incredible planning in the mind such that when it starts to execute, the body runs in automatic with very little input from you. If you have heard personal development gurus talk about visualizing, concentration, drive, efficiency, emotions, and such kind of things then you realize that you apply them all very successfully in feeding the habit.

If you think about it, you might realize that many of our most spectacular successes in life are achieved in actualizing bad habits. You perhaps know that a guy who really has to smoke at 2 am in the morning will smoke one way or another. The craving will result with him driving to the mall at that hour, something that he might not do if another person’s life depended on it.

People overcome great obstacles in order to succeed in fulfilling bad habits. If a person who finds it difficult to lift a finger to do anything useful at work looks at himself in both situations, he might realize that his ability to act is intact, and that he just needs motivation in order to be effective. What if he was to isolate the motivation for performing the destructive habit and import it into a pursuing a constructive habit?

I suppose that the challenge is for us to find the reason so that we can give our circumstances meaning. If we see bad habits as a constant reminder of just how good we are as planners and how efficient and focused we can be, then we might even begin to understand why God stands aside and lets us prove these qualities that are mandatory to success to ourselves over and over again. Just think, if a person isolates the motivation for performing a destructive habit and imports it into pursuing a constructive habit, then he or she will have turned weakness into strength and will most probably have changed his life for good.