Instead of doing that, I’ll just do this …

Among the various topics that make up my stream of tweets on Twitter, you’ll occasionally find some fitness and personal training tips.

A couple days ago, I posted the simple tweet, “Exercise does not make junk food healthy.”

One of my Twitter friends responded with the humorous tweet, “No, but it reduces guilt ;)”

Even through his humor, my friend was right on regarding why many people occasionally decide to walk around the block or stroll the mall. They attempt to appease their guilt over lack of exercise and poor nutrition by occasional activity.

In other words, they choose the wrong change in an attempt to reduce the guilt they feel.

Instead of changing their diets and routinely exercising their bodies — doing what their bodies need for good fitness and health — they instead choose a level of change that falsely helps placate their feelings of guilt while maintaining their negative habits.

Choosing the wrong change will never lead you to where you really need to be or could be!

Yet we take on this behavior of purposely choosing the wrong change in all aspects of our life, whether it’s under performing at work, settling for mediocre relationships, or allowing sin to persist in our lives instead of allowing God to change us into the likeness of His Son.

Appeasing or reducing real guilt does not lead to change. Only real change leads to change.

In what areas of your life are you allowing negative behaviors to persist while making wrong choices to try to alleviate the guilt you experience? What changes do you need to make to achieve real, life-impacting change?

Scotty