Keep Your Kids Catholic

Soul Searching

The Six Sources of Influence

Personal Motivation

Help Them Love What They Hate

• Do they enjoy it?
• Change tactic: If you interrupt impulses by connecting with goals during crucial moments, you greatly improve your chances of success.

Motivations

• Conversion
• Relationship w/ God
• Jeremiah 29:11
• Pope Francis' Gospel

"Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen, and free you."

Personal Ability

Help Them Do What They Can't

• Can they do it?
• Change tactic: Changing persistent and resistant habits always involves learning new skills

Skills

• Regular Bible reading
• Conversational prayer
• Adoration

Social Motivation

Make Use of Social Forces

• Do others encourage wrong behavior?
• Change tactic: Bad habits are almost always a social disease--if those around us model and encourage them, we'll almost always fall prey. Turn accomplices into friends and you can be two-thirds more likely to succeed.

Social Ability

Do Others Enable Them?

• Use confederates to enable good choices
• Change tactic: Changing deeply entrenched habits requires help, information, and real support from others. Get a coach and you'll make change far more likely

Structural Motivation

Make Use of Things

• Do rewards and sanctions encourage them?
• Change tactic: Directly link short-term rewards and punishments to the new habits you're trying to form and you're for more likely to stay on track

Structural Ability

Make Use of Physical Environment

• Does their physical environment enable them?
• Change tactic: Small changes in your environment can have a surprising effect on your choices. For example, just add a few visual cues that help you focus on your goals and your behavior will change rapidly