Repetition is the Mother of Retention

All learning and re-learning takes repetition. Whether it's guitar playing, your role in a stage play, computer programming, hitting a baseball, telling a joke, or working on any personality habit that you want to change for the better in life.

You can never break an automatic response to any particular situation (trigger) without deciding on, learning, and then practicing, a better, more acceptable to you, and more doable, replacement response to that particular trigger.

With the right replacement choice, you just need a set schedule that you can keep, and a private place to do your practicing over time. Continue the practice for as long as it takes to make the changes permanent in all daily life situations.

Practice really does make perfect. And, it can be just as easy to create positive habits as negative ones—especially with God's Support from within in response to your Prayers and Receiverships. Remember—the only failure is giving up.

Preventive Medicine: If You Skip, You Slip

You can't be anxious and relaxed at the same time. You can't be stressed and peaceful at the same time. And relaxed and peaceful almost always handles everything and everyone better than anxious and stressed does.

Ask your significant other, your family, your friends, your employers, your employees, your co-workers, or your teammates, etc. They'll all tell you, of course, unless they're afraid of you.

If you're easily pulled from your positive center by outside events, your stress levels must be much higher than they should be; and thus they can negatively affect your health, your performance, and your relationships, over time.

If you just can't turn your mind off and relax—even when you're far away from those difficult situations and relationships—you have an even bigger challenge for your overall peace, health, and happiness over time.

But Modern Life Can Be Very Challenging

Modern life can certainly be quite challenging. That's why all actors rehearse, ballplayers practice, and candidates do dry runs of prepared speeches before they go out on stage—they are preparing to insure that they perform their best.

If you prepare yourself to handle your life better when you're home alone, and especially as directed by God within you, situations and relationships may still pressure and stress you at times—but they won't distress you—as well. 

If a situation that stresses you also distresses you—if it immobilizes you instead of mobilizing you—if it upsets you and gets you worrying rather than planning and doing—you have a bigger problem than the one you started out with.

Distress can send you into the kinds of attitudes and behaviors that can be hurtful to you and others—socially, professionally, and karmically, over time.

It can also send your body into various stress-related conditions that are no fun to go through; and that are not easily recovered from over time as well.

Preventive Medicine is Scheduled & Consistently Kept

All the above is why the Keys Teachings recommend regularly scheduled and consistently kept sessions that are between you, yourself and God—with or without a Spiritual Teacher.

Those sessions should be focused on Stress Relief, Practical Guidance, and Spiritual Growth—all of which God within you can certainly help you with through Receivership—especially over time.

Anyone who wants to be at their best as often as possible must work at it as often as possible. It is always better to prevent negative incidents and actions before they happen—than to try to fix the fallout afterwards—especially when you've been known to lose control and act negatively even once in a while.

Why You Should Remember to Ask God to Take Charge?

When you ask God to take charge of you, and to show (or tell) you what to do before you speak or act, you create your best chance of not only doing all that you do in the karmically correct way, but with the right words and tone as well.

And you are asking God to take charge of you every time you do a Surrender Meditation; every time you declare your desire for God's Will to be done; every time you ask God to free you from any and all lesser god influences; and the most effectively—every time you do and follow your Receivership.

Surrender Meditation, in particular, is the time when all of your prayers can best be answered—because it is the time when you are most completely letting go of control of your mind, body, and spirit, and thus are voluntarily giving God complete access to do as God wants therein.

Old Habits Die Hard and Often Long to Return

The longer and more consistently that you have been doing your "preventive medicine," the stronger your protection against relapse will become and stay over time.

The realization that it takes consistent work to prevent relapse of a person's worst habits is why Alcoholics Anonymous has all of their adherents continue to affirm that they are and will always be alcoholics—so that they never allow themselves to rest on their laurels.

And it is likely why the Bible writers so strongly put forth the idea that all humans are sinners (meaning that they all have the capacity to fall back into negative behaviors if they are not consistently aware and careful over time).

All the above correlates with the Sabbath principle where people are advised to take the day off from work in order to feel able to take the time to consult with God within them through prayer and contemplation.

Sabbath adherents are supposed to do the above in order to be able to review the past week and learn from all that occurred in preparation for doing better next week (ideally through changes suggested by their Receivership).

God Wants to be Our Loving Parent and Teacher

The Keys teaches that God wants to be our Loving Parent and Spiritual Teacher. Thus God wants to help us all become and stay the happiest, the healthiest, the most positive, and the most karmically correct people we can be, forevermore.

That is why God wants us all to spend some time every day in contemplation through Receivership—so that God can help us all learn and grow, serve and work, and socialize, enjoy, and experience pleasure, in the best ways possible.

God's Direction is God's Protection. And God's Guidance provides the ultimate form of Preventive Medicine because it addresses all aspects of life on Earth, spiritual, material, and practical.

Spending time each day improving the clarity of your connection to God within you (Receivership) is the most valuable tithing to yourself, to your loved ones, to God, and to the Universe, that you can do on Earth with your time.