This is a Salaback Church podcast.

As we launch into this message today, I want to start with a question.

And so I want to ask, would you please engage your minds and be a little bit reflective right now?

The question that I want to ask you is do you ever feel incredibly

frustrated by your own inability to change? Like there's some area of your life where you feel

discouraged, disappointed, you don't want to be that way anymore, but you just keep ending back

up in that pattern.

Maybe you've told yourself a hundred times, I'm going to quit smoking, or I'm going to get in shape,

I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to eat healthy, I'm going to drink more water, sleep more, I'm going to stop cussing, I'm going to stop yelling at my kids, I'm going to be more patient. I've got all these different things inside of us that we want

to change and do better, but we just can't seem to get there. We depend a lot on willpower

to change, don't we? Like if I can just get motivated enough intrinsically, if I could get a good

plan together, I can work my plan, but I wonder how many of you

would be honest enough to say that willpower, it just ain't cutting it, right?

Like, it's not enough.

And so we end up frustrated with our own inability to change.

But did you know that there is so much research these days that

is showing us that change is a team sport. Change is not something that we can just approach

individualistically, which might be where we go wrong because we are such individualistic

kind of people. Even globally in cultures where they're more community-based,

more tribal, there is this rising sense of individualism. And we tend to think that we are much

more self-sufficient than we actually are. I want to share with you a bit of research I came across

as I was preparing for this message.

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