Been there, done that. Then been there several more times, because apparently I never learn.

I ran across this little piece of painful truth in a meme a week or so ago. It’s pretty funny because I bet we can all identify to some extent.

I’ve been there and done that, and then returned for seconds.

What is it in our nature, I wonder, that makes us want to get muddy in the same hole twice?

I have a friend who, before he finally got around to getting married, went through multiple girlfriends. The last half-dozen relationships had the same trajectory. Meet, get consumed, get serious, crash and burn.

When his future bride came along, his comment was, “She’s just not like my other exes.”

And I thought, “That’s probably why they were exes.”

What said friend came to realize that he was repeating the same formula over and over with what he came to see were predictable results. With women, he’d been there, done that, and it never went well.

Think about putting the breaks on a bad habit. You know what to do to rid yourself of it, you work passionately to dump it, and you end up just as you were.

Weight loss, for instance. Most of us who have fought the battle of the bulge have tried multiple ways to shed pounds. We chased after the latest and greatest no-fail method. And we found out that diets just don’t work. Been there, done that.

Fact is, no one ever ate anything accidentally. Actions are alway preceded by a choice.

You can come up with your own list of lessons unlearned.

The most grievous unlearned lessons are the ones from our souls. We know what to do. We absolutely know what has to happen to change our life trajectory.

And we don’t do it.

The apostle Paul understood this and riffed on it at some length. Here are his struggles as found in Romans 7:14-25:

¹⁴ Certainly we know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵ For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not keep doing what I want. Instead, I do what I hate. ¹⁶ And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But now it is no longer I who am doing it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸ Indeed, I know that good does not live in me, that is, in my sinful flesh. The desire to do good is present with me, but I am not able to carry it out. ¹⁹ So I fail to do the good I want to do. Instead, the evil I do not want to do, that is what I keep doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who am doing it, but it is sin living in me.

²¹ So I find this law^[c] at work: When I want to do good, evil is present with me. ²² I certainly delight in God’s law according to my inner self, ²³ but I see a different law at work in my members, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of sin, which is present in my members. ²⁴ What a miserable wretch I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵ I thank God^[d] through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my sinful flesh I serve the law of sin.

Yeah, that Paul. He got it. He understood “been there, done that.” Sounds to me he knew exactly what to do and kept going back to the same old pattern of living.

Often, when I’m dealing with some sort of internal struggle – which, on a bad day, can lead to some real self-loathing (NOT healthy), I look back on the times I made good choices. I think about when I was able to prevail against unwholesome patterns and corrected my behavior.

It’s a fallacy to say “you never learn.” You do learn. We just don’t let that knowledge of failure become wisdom.

I know when I’ve screwed up. No one has to point that  out.

So, here’s a little exercise. If you’re really ambitious, you could do this in your journal. That’s best, of course, but even just quietly thinking this through could be helpful.

• What’s the one been there, done that issue in your life that you tend to repeat over and over? You may come up with a list. Just pick one.
• Why is this such a thing? Do you enjoy feeling the way you do about it? Is this something like a favorite sin? (Don’t get so high and mighty and say “I don’t have a favorite.” I bet you do. It just jumped full-blown into your head right then.)
• What have you done in the past to move past that thing and bury it once and for all?
• Why didn’t any of your attempts work?
• Worse, did you even try?
• Now that you’ve isolated that one thing – the one been there, done that thing you repeat over and over – what do you plan to do about it?
• Re that previous point – there is something you haven’t tried, or else you’d be over it. So I’ll ask again – what is your plan?

You’ve probably realized that this isn’t easy. Perhaps you prefer whatever it is that’s dogging you to giving it up.

That’s a spiritual issue. If you know something is wrong and to continue doing it – well, it’ll take divine intervention to banish it. Seeking God to heal and deliver, in other words.

You have to really want that. That’s step one.

Step two is to do what you need to do. That’s as simple as it can be to understand, but extraordinarily hard to act on. You just have to move. Act now.

When Mike Singletary was asked, “How do you account for your success playing college and professional football?” he answered:

“I determined what I had to do to be successful, and I did it.”

There’s a pretty good lesson there for the “been there, done that” league.

Candidly, we all know what we need to do to break the cycle of repeating the same mistakes over and over.

Let God do the heavy lifting. Just be obedient without question.

Tony’s Question: What’s the next big risky step you need to take to end the pattern of “been there, done that, and I’ll never learn” in your life? Share your thoughts below.

See that title? Read it again.

That’s either encouraging or very scary.

I dunno, y’all. There have been so, so many times that I’ve taken the position of the proverbial deer in the headlights, paralyzed, not knowing what to do in some given situation or in dealing with that “one” person.

Which brings us to to a salient point: You always have the power to choose.

Breaking it down.

There’s no telling how many choices you made today. Chances are, you chose what clothes you put on. You chose what to eat. You will choose how to spend your free time this weekend. That’s the power to choose.

There are some choices you are forced to make, granted. You can’t choose to drive a car with no fuel. It won’t happen, because the car won’t run. You can’t choose your relatives (although you can choose how you relate to them.)

That’s not what I’m talking about. There will always be some choices that aren’t really choices at all because you’re coerced into making them. (April 15, I’m looking at you. I can choose to ignore it, but I know the outcome won’t be particularly good.)

What I want you to consider are those internal choices. Specifically – and I’ll pose this as a question – can you choose the condition of your own heart?

I think you can. And I think we should.

Millions of people fail to realize that you can choose hope. They allow circumstances, life episodes, and external factors to determine the state of their heart and mind.

Now, I’m not talking about clinical issues that prohibit us from functioning normally (and what is normal, anyway? Remember, normal is just a setting on your washing machine.) There are health and physical factors that can really screw up the best you. I know whereof I speak. There’s good medicine for those.

Nope, I’m talking about things like courage, strength of heart, of embracing hope in spite of what’s swirling around us or inside of us.

Shhhhh, kids. Move in close. I’m about to reveal one of the secrets of the ages to you (or maybe you’ve heard this elsewhere, in which case it isn’t much of a secret.) Ready? Here it is:

Change, and the world will change for you.

So what does that even mean? Here come the bullets, in no particular sensible order:

• Go through life expecting a daily battle and you’ll get just that. It’s sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you expect a bad day just like the one before, that’s what you’ll get. I bet you don’t want that.
• Want enemies? Anticipate having them and they’ll be waiting behind every tree waiting to ambush you.
• Want grief? Spend time thinking about how bad things are, and you can expect a barrage of more bad things.
• You can’t fight life. If you try it, you’ll fail, just like others have.
• You are not a bundle of preprogrammed responses. There may be some sort of reptilian brain stem buried in your physiology, but it doesn’t control you. You’re smarter than that. You can choose your response to what’s happening and what you’re feeling. There are certainly automatic responses in all of us, like those adrenaline rushes you get on a roller coaster, but even those can be reasoned with.
• There’s a phrase I’ve referred to before in my blog: I am responsible. There are some huge implications here, but your main takeaway is that you are responsible for the condition of your own heart. You can choose, and to say that you’re incapable of choosing a proper attitude reduces you to the level of an amoeba or lungfish or other primitive critter.
• What is now is not the now that will always be. You’ve heard that from me, too. I’d suggest that if you aren’t happy with your current now, understand you might not be able to change what’s happening “out there.” Again, you are responsible for changing yourself. You can do that. Others have. If they’ve been successful in change, you can be successful too.
• Start immediately identifying what needs to happen for you to change. And do that. Now. It’s not gonna fix itself.

Here’s my huge disclaimer: I am an utter novice at all this. I’m sharing what I know to be right, but some days there is a huge disconnect between what I know and how I’m acting.

Right now I’m looking out the window at storm clouds curdling and massing in dark majesty. Some days, that’s my inner state, and I just can’t will the darkness away. I totally get that.

But, if I didn’t have an ideal to strive for, all this would be pointless. There is always hope. Always, always, always.

I stole this from Andy Stanley, but he has a series of messages on “The Question.” The question is (and I’m probably not getting the quote exactly right, but it’s the way I’ve internalized it):

In light of my past experiences, current circumstances, and future hopes and dreams, what’s the wise thing for me to do?

When you ask that question and honestly engage with it, you can get clarity in surprising ways. There may be a subtle distinction in making a “wise” decision as opposed to a “right” decision, because what’s “right” might not have a basis in being right. It might just be simply expedient.

The bottom line is is that we have the power to choose, and we need to choose wisely.

Ancient script teaches this:

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.*

I know that I’m not all that smart, and some days wisdom is in scarce supply. It seems, though, that the solution to making choices that bring about the change we need is found in that ancient wisdom that God has seen fit to provide for us. I’m claiming that. I’m just weary of acting like the world and circumstances are beating me up. Nope. I think I’ll choose to be better than that.

*James 1:5