Every time I go on a road trip I make sure to get the wheels aligned on my car. If I don’t, then I know I’ll be fighting my steering wheel for 900 miles and it’s just not fun. (fn) I’m either going to be pulled to the side the entire trip or my steering wheel is going to vibrate like mad.

Unsurprisingly, life is the same way.1

Last week we wrapped up what I’m calling Season 1 of Counter Culture, and it was all about the four foundational values that define the Kingdom of People and the Kingdom of God. Values are great because they help you decide what is important. But they can also be useless if you aren’t living in alignment with them – maybe even worse than useless.

And that’s the heart of Season 2: Getting in Alignment. We’ll be spending this next series of articles at Counter Culture talking about the four parts to building a life that stays in alignment with your values: Habits, Routines, Rhythms, and Seasons.2 Habits are things that we do on a regular basis without really thinking about it. Routines are groups of habits. Rhythms are groups of routines. And seasons are groups of rhythms (kind of).3

One thing I want to mention about these four building blocks before we set off: these building blocks will show up in your life whether you want them to or not. In fact, they already exist in your life, you just might not know it. We all have habits, routines, rhythms, and seasons.4 If habits are the things we do without thinking, and everything is built out of habits, then you have habits. Even seat-of-the-pants-random-spontaneity is a habit.

Fortunately, we can decide what habits, routines, rhythms, and seasons5 we create for ourselves. And that’s what this season is all about.

Photo by Rob Bye on Unsplash

  1. Don’t know what I’m talking about? This video will help. No, it’s not exciting. I’m not sure how to make wheel alignment “exciting.” But, unaligning wheels? Now, that can be quite exciting… ↩
  2. Why else would I be using a random car analogy to start an article? ↩
  3. I seem to be stuck on the number four… It’s not intentional. ↩
  4. This isn’t an exact science. ↩
  5. I realize that I’ve managed to say “habits, routines, rhythms, and seasons” something like 20 times. Sorry. ↩