Last week we talked about small, low-effort portions of life that make a big difference. We called these small changes “shoelaces”. One example is taking the time to compliment or encourage someone. Now there’s a new question to address, however: how can we keep doing this? Shoelaces are low-effort, sure, but they still require effort. No matter how good it makes you feel to brighten another person’s day, it’s easy to get worn out. At some point, making that decision again seems like too much effort.

This is the hallmark of a lifestyle choice: it’s a choice that’s made over and over, even when it’s inconvenient. Lifestyles are defined not by the great big choices of life — the ones that are made by logic — but by the small everyday choices. These are the shoelaces that tie our lives together. For proof, we need look no further than Steven Levitt’s book Freakonomics. The author, an economist, devotes the fifth chapter to the analysis of parenting, posing the question “what makes a perfect parent?”

Surprisingly, Levitt found no connection between traditional parenting advice and the success of a family’s children (as measured by scores on standardized tests). Instead, factors such as parental education, eating habits, and PTA involvement were the determining influence. The author’s conclusion is that, when it comes to parenting, who you are matters more than what you do.

Why is it that character influences more than action? It’s a question of lifestyle choices. Big decisions, logical decisions, those are easy to replicate. But it’s the millions of tiny lifestyle decisions that change the course of a family, workplace, or town. Decisions like kindness, humility, generosity, and personal involvement shape the environment as well as the person. Those kinds of decisions cannot be duplicated by observation, for they are not logical conclusions, but organic results.

Lifestyles are determined at an early age. The broad decisions about what kind of person you will be are made as early as the middle school or early high school years. In a very real sense, all those millions of tiny decisions were made years beforehand. They were determined before we were aware of the repercussions. A lifestyle can be changed, but only rarely can it be planned. Who you become is more important than what you do, or try to do.

Returning to the original question, how can we continue to do this? Where can we find the power to change our lifestyle for the better? As a previous author has noted, Muhammad Ali understood the process of determining a lifestyle when he stated, “the fight is won or lost far away from witnesses — behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.” We need a source of power that affects us before the decision arrives. Matthew 6:6 states this very fact: “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”

We see from the evidence that it is impossible to consciously effect enough change in ourselves to be consistent in making these “shoelace” choices. We cannot perfect ourselves through force of will; instead, we must let God change us and help us become the kind of person that is loving and kind by nature. He is our source of power, the author and finisher of our faith.