You do not rise to your aspirations. You fall to your habits. Build wisely.
Sit Down and Eat First
Tobi had been driving around all evening with no real destination, just trying to outrun the noise in his own head. Somehow he ended up outside his Uncle Debo’s gate.
He wasn’t even planning to stay long. He just wanted to breathe for a minute in a house that didn’t feel like it was falling apart.
Uncle Debo opened the door, took one look at him, and didn’t ask what was wrong. He just said, “Come in, come in. You look like a man who hasn’t eaten today.”
Tobi laughed, tired. “Uncle, I don’t even remember my last proper meal.”
“Then that’s the first problem we’re solving,” Uncle Debo said, already walking toward the kitchen. “Sit. Eat. Then we’ll talk.”
Tobi wanted to protest, wanted to launch straight into everything piling up on him, the deadlines, the plans that kept falling apart, the sense that his whole life was a set of open tabs he never closed. But something about his uncle’s calm made him sit down instead.
Halfway through the meal, Tobi finally said what he’d been sitting on the whole drive over.
“Uncle, how do you do it? Everything about you is just… settled. Organized. Peaceful. My life is scattered in twenty directions and I can’t even tell you what I did today that mattered. How are you like this?”
Uncle Debo smiled, the kind of smile that comes from a question he’d clearly sat with before, for himself.
“Finish your food first,” he said. “Then let’s talk properly.”
It’s Not Motivation, Tobi. It’s Habit.
When the plates were cleared and they were sitting across from each other with cups of tea, Uncle Debo finally leaned back.
“You asked how I do it,” he said. “The honest answer is, I don’t wait to feel motivated. Motivation is real, but it’s unreliable. It rises when things are going well and disappears the moment they don’t. If I built my life around how I feel each morning, I’d be as scattered as you’re describing right now.”
Tobi frowned. “So what do you build it on?”
“Habit,” Uncle Debo said simply. “Habit doesn’t ask how you feel. It just runs. Once something becomes a habit, it doesn’t need your willpower every single day, it needs it once, to build the habit, and then the habit carries you.”
He reached for his worn Bible on the side table, more out of habit than performance.
“Paul understood this. Read his letters and you’ll see he wasn’t offering vague encouragement, he was describing practices. Put off the old self, put on the new. Set your mind on things above. Pray without ceasing. Those aren’t one-time decisions, Tobi. They’re habits, chosen again and again, until they shape you without you having to think about it.”
“So you’re saying I don’t have a motivation problem,” Tobi said slowly. “I have a habit problem.”
“You have a habit problem,” Uncle Debo agreed, not unkindly. “And I had the exact same one, years ago. Let me show you what changed.”
Before I Give the Day to Anyone Else, I Give It to God
“It starts before the day even properly begins,” Uncle Debo said. “How you open a day decides its whole tone. Before my phone, before anyone else’s demands land on me, I give the day to God first.”
“What does that actually look like?” Tobi asked. “Long prayers? A whole ritual?”
“No,” Uncle Debo said, shaking his head. “Not a performance. Just a real, honest moment where I turn toward Him. I acknowledge that I can’t actually carry this day on my own strength. I receive His peace before I need it. I set my intention before the world sets it for me.”
He tapped the table lightly. “Jesus did this. Mark tells us that very early, while it was still dark, He got up and went to a solitary place to pray. If the Son of God needed that kind of morning communion before He could face His day, what makes either of us think we can skip it?”
Tobi sat with that for a moment. He couldn’t remember the last morning he hadn’t reached for his phone before his feet even hit the floor.
I Don’t Just Read the Word. I Sit With It.
“After that,” Uncle Debo continued, “I spend a little time in the Word. Not to check a box. Not speed-reading a chapter so I can say I did devotion today. I sit with it.”
“What’s the difference?” Tobi asked.
“Reading fast tells you what a passage says. Sitting with it lets it tell you something about God, about yourself, about how you’re meant to be living. Even five honest minutes of that does more for you than an hour of religious activity you weren’t really present for. Romans tells us the mind is renewed this way, Tobi, not by information, by transformation.”
I Work Like It’s an Offering
Tobi shifted in his seat. This was the part he actually wanted answers on.
“Okay, but Uncle, my biggest problem is work. I’m working so hard and I still feel like I’m not accomplishing anything. Everything feels urgent and nothing feels important.”
Uncle Debo nodded slowly, like he’d expected this. “That’s because you’re starting your work without dedicating it, and you’re letting urgency choose your priorities instead of your values.”
“What do you do differently?”
“Before I begin each working day, I take a brief moment and offer the work to God. Then I set my priorities around what actually matters, not just what’s shouting the loudest. I give my best hours, not my leftover hours, to my most important work. All through the day, I try to hold the posture that I’m working as unto the Lord, not just unto my to-do list.”
“And at the end of the day?”
“I close with gratitude for what got done. And I release what didn’t.” Uncle Debo said it firmly, like a rule he’d had to fight for. “I don’t let the unfinished things ruin the day I actually had. You do that, don’t you? You let the three things you didn’t finish erase the seven things you did.”
Tobi didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
My Body Isn’t Separate From My Worship
“There’s something else,” Uncle Debo said, “that most people treat as unrelated to any of this. How you treat your body.”
“I barely have time to think about that, Uncle.”
“I’m not talking about an elite fitness regimen, Tobi. I’m talking about reasonable stewardship. Enough sleep. Food that actually nourishes you. Regular movement. Rest. Going for your check ups instead of waiting until something forces you to. Your body is a temple, not a machine you run until it breaks.”
He said the next part slowly, like he wanted it to land. “Small daily choices about your body, compounded over years, decide your vitality far more than any single dramatic change ever will. I’ve come to see caring for my body as a form of worship, not a chore competing with it.”
Every Night, I Name What I’m Grateful For
The evening had grown quiet around them. Tobi noticed his uncle didn’t seem to be in any rush, unlike everyone else in his life, including himself.
“One more thing, before we go any further,” Uncle Debo said. “Every day, I name what I’m grateful for. Not in general terms. Specifically.”
“What do you mean, specifically?”
“Not just ‘thank you, God, for today.’ I mean naming the actual gifts. The conversation that went well. The meal I just had with my nephew. The provision that showed up exactly when I needed it. Gratitude named specifically pushes back against anxiety and comparison and discontentment in a way vague gratitude never manages to.”
Tobi let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “Uncle, none of this sounds complicated. Why does my life not look like this?”
Uncle Debo smiled again. “Because you’re looking for one big change, and what I’ve just described to you is seven small ones. But we’re not done. There’s more, and it doesn’t happen daily, it happens weekly and seasonally. Go home, sleep properly tonight for once, and come back Sunday. I’ll show you the rest.”
(Part 2 covers the weekly rhythms and seasonal practices Uncle Debo hasn’t gotten to yet, and how all of it, daily, weekly, seasonal, adds up to a life that actually holds together.)
