Bad Habits Turn Into The Real You (January 18, 2004)

A couple friends of mine have developed bad habits lately. I said to one of them, "You're going to have to decide what kind of person you are going to be." Habits slide from being a thing about us to being what we are. Repeating a bad habit turns you into one kind of person; rejecting it will make you another.

People are notoriously slow to recognize what they have become. A single act turns into a practice which turns into a characteristic long before the person looks in a mirror and says, "I am a drunk," or, "I am a pervert," or, "I am a liar."

For some, the self-deception seems permanent. They maintain, "I may have done a bad thing, but I'm not a bad person." Take for example Elecia Battle of Cleveland, who recently tried to steal 162 million dollars. Earlier this month she claimed that lottery winner Rebecca Jemison had stolen the winning ticket from her. She filed a lawsuit to block Jemison from picking up her winnings. But when Battle’s story was revealed as a lie she said, "I'm not a bad person. I'm really not." Not a bad person? She had just attempted one of the biggest thefts in the history of the United States! And it was not an isolated incident - she already had a criminal record stemming from credit card fraud and assaulting a clerk. What does it take for her, or for people like her, to do an honest self-assessment and conclude, "Good heavens but I'm a wretch. God be merciful to me, a sinner."

Beware in yourself the slide from doing one bad thing to regularly doing bad things to becoming a bad person. It happens quicker than you think. You may be in stage 3 when you think you're only in stage 1. That moral choice you make today crystalizes into a firm decision about the kind of person you are going to be.