#5 of Seven Ancient Practices for Connecting with God
Soul Sculpting: Make a Change With a Little Help From Our Friends
Augustine: November13, 354 –August 28, 430 A.D.
Augustine had some wild years in his younger days. We know all about them because he fessed-up in his Confessions. He began as a child pear-thief, whose crime was all the more despicable because Augustine didn’t even like pears. As an adult Augustine had sexuality issues.
He felt badly about it and provided us with the honest prayer “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” (Confessions 8:7, 17)
When Augustine was 31 a friend introduced him to the story of St. Anthony.
Anthony’s choice to abandon his comfortable life and pursue connection with God in the remote desert gripped Augustine. Anthony’s radical passion for God began to awaken a deep desire; the God-shaped void inside Augustine called to be filled.
Augustine chose into the Christian faith and chose into a new lifestyle. He converted his home into a monastery and invited a group of friends to join him.
Living a new lifestyle can be tricky. For Augustine and his friends this new lifestyle was radically different from their past and from the culture around them. To support this new way of living Augustine used the tool of social accountability.
When Augustine wrote the rule book for his monastery he was aware of the dangers his brothers would encounter every time they left the house to do business in the busy city. Old lifestyles would call to them. So, his rule reads:
“When you go out, walk together; when you come to your destination, stay together.” The Praeceptum 4:3
The brothers never traveled alone. They always stuck with another brother who would hold them accountable to their new chosen lifestyle.
A Tool for Change
Most of us have had the experience of having a goal to change our lifestyle and then just not sticking with it.
Goal setting researchers give us a set of tools that increase our odds of success.
Three well-known tools:
- Make the goal clear and measurable
- Create sub-goals for reaching big goals
- Write it down
These three tools help but there is another tool:
Social Accountability.
If we tell a friend about our goal our odds of success will increase a bit more.
But better yet —
We will increase our odds of meeting our goal by 33% more if we give our friend (or a coach) a weekly written report of our progress on the goal. Dr. Gail Matthews Dominican University California
Social accountability works because we are designed as social beings. Our mood, our actions, even how much we weigh is profoundly influenced by our friends.
Augustine used this social influence to help his fellow monks to stick to a new lifestyle.
How can we use the power of social influence?
Soul Sculpting Project: Make a Change With a Little Help From My Friends
- Write down a small change you want to make.
- Write down the action steps you need to do to make this change.
- Write a report each day/ week and give it to your accountability partner.
“Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made.
You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all.
You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.” Confessions 10
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