You don’t see many dirty cats.
Why? Because it’s not in their nature to be dirty. They clean themselves regularly. Their habit of regular cleaning assures that if they’re dirty, they won’t be for long.
On the other hand, you don’t see many clean pigs.
Why? Because it’s not in their nature to be clean. They don’t have any cleaning habits. So if they’re clean, they won’t be for long. “A sow that is washed,” wrote the Apostle Peter, “returns to her wallowing in the mud.”1
The point is, eventually we go back to our habits. Unless we change our nature, meaning, develop new patterns of behavior, we’ll keep getting the same results. We’ll make temporary fixes then go right back to business as usual.
Fortunately, we human beings are endowed with the unique ability to change our nature and we’ve been doing it since birth. “It is natural to defecate in our pants and never brush our teeth,” writes psychiatrist Morgan Scott Peck, “yet we teach ourselves to do the unnatural until the unnatural becomes itself second nature. Indeed, all self-discipline might be defined as teaching ourselves to do the unnatural.”2
The secret of change is to teach ourselves to do the unnatural until it becomes second nature.
12 Peter 2:22, NIV.
2Morgan Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), p. 53.