This morning I learned about waiting five minutes before we indulge in anything from a place of learned emotional response. Set a timer when you want to eat something when you’re not really hungry but rather bored, stressed, or angry. After five minutes, the urge often dissipates.
While I haven’t read the research behind waiting five minutes exactly, I like how much you can do in five minutes instead of that thing you’re trying not to do. Clean a surface. Take a walk. Paint your nails. Call a friend. Weed. Journal. I love this idea of setting a timer for five minutes to interrupt learned behaviors.
Then, in the afternoon, we staked the tilted top of the gingko tree to correct its direction. It will take two years to correct the wayward growth. I like thinking about the new directions our lives take and how change doesn’t happen over night. It might take two years to right ourselves, to allow God to do His work. If it takes that long for a tree to reorient, maybe that’s what it’s like for the heart.
So in small ways, in five minute increments, we’re changing. In two years, we’ll be set in our new direction.