Beginning and Being Consistent is the Key
September 9, 2025
Hello! How is each
and every one? Yesterday the Church
celebrated the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and our
mother. We also celebrated in the house as we would celebrate our biological
mother’s birthday.
Talking about birthdays just the other day somebody
introduced a young girl by the name of Julyna as July na. When she was introduced to me I instantly
muttered e September na. She laughed and explained that she was born on the
July 1. So her parents named her Julyna.
That reminded me of an episode when one of us went for a
trim to one of the parlors around the area she was asked the name of the one
who cut her hair and she answered “his name is July”. A month after she had her hair done by the
same person and somebody asked who the cutter was. She said April. No, it was July, her
companion replied. There is nobody there
by the name of April. It turned out that she was thinking of her birth month
which was April.
Going through my documents in the
laptop, I came across a page entitled just for laughs. One item really made me
laugh and I was alone laughing. It was the following:
Employee : Sir, you are like a lion in the office. What about at home?
Boss: I am a lion at
home too, but there we have a lion tamer.
Let’s get back to business. Following is the next chapter on Habits vs Superhabits (From SUPERHABITS, The Universal System for a Successful Life by Andrew V. Abela, PH.D., Dean, Busch School of Business, The Catholic University of America, 2024)
#4
Habits vs. Superhabits
With
the “disciplines” of superhabits, beginning is winning; there is no lag. The moment you begin to train for a
superhabit, you’ll experience your life getting easier, happier, and
healthier. You’re winning from the
start. Mastering the superhabits is like becoming the World’s Greatest Athlete
of life.
The
“habits books” that I mentioned in the introduction show that small changes,
repeated regularly, can have a big impact on your life. Take Stephen Guise, for example. He was frustrated with his inability to get
in shape. He just didn’t have the willpower to do the exercises necessary. Then he tried one small change – he started
with just one push-up. Just one! Anyone can do just one push-up. The key was to make that one push-up a
regular habit. Eventually, one became
two, and then more – and finally, a healthy lifestyle with regular workouts. Stephen now writes the Tiny Buddha blog, and
has several million followers.
When
you make something a habit, by repeating it, you make it easier to do. In a sense, it becomes part of you. Building habits is a very effective way to
improve your life.
But
if you really want to improve your life quickly, you need to know which habits
provide the greatest benefits, the highest leverage, to make your life easier,
happier, and more effective. This book
is about the habits that ancient traditions and modern social science agree are
the most important habits in your life – the superhabits.
You
may be wondering: If these superhabits
are so valuable, why haven’t I heard more about them? A big reason, I think, is that in our society
we tend to default to process over content.
We’re happy to tell people how
to do something, but hesitant to propose what
to do, for fear of seeming to be judgmental.
As a result, habits books tell us how
to develop habits, but they don’t say much about which habits to develop.
Yet
consider this: What if you had a recipe
that told you how to make the world’s best soufflé (the process), but didn’t
tell you which ingredients (the content) to put in it? What if it told you to preheat the oven to
four hundred degrees, coat the bottom and sides of the soufflé dish, melt some
ingredients in a separate bowl, blend other ingredients until the mixture is
fluffy and holds its peaks, and so on – but it didn’t explain that you should
use eight ounces of bittersweet chocolate, six eggs, and half a teaspoon of
cream of tartar?
It’s
true that soufflés can be made from a whole host of ingredients, including
peaches, cheese, chicken, potatoes, even cauliflower. So the same process could certainly be
applied to different types of content.
Still, process alone is not enough.
At some point, you need to know which ingredients to put in.
It’s
the same for habits. While cultivating
habits is a powerful force for personal change, it is just as important to
choose the right habits and to
understand how they all fit together.
Like a soufflé, human flourishing also has its process and its
ingredients. We need to know what they
are.
It
is important to recognize which habits are superhabits, because they are
different from regular habits. They are
much more fundamental, more broadly applicable, and have a much higher impact
on your life than regular habits. The
habit of brushing your teeth, for example, just applies to brushing your
teeth. The superhabit of Courage – which
you might develop, say, on the football field – is applicable to an interview,
a presentation, facing an illness, or in countless other challenges.
The
impact of superhabits can be truly astounding.
We’ve already seen how the superhabit of Restraint can lead to better
physical and mental health, fewer substance abuse problems, and better
financial security; how Humility is linked to lower stress, greater happiness,
and greater quality of life and how Diligence is associated with a whole range
of positive outcomes. A similar pattern
of impressive results is repeated across all the superhabits: the superhabit of Forgiveness, for example,
is associated with improved cholesterol levels and blood pressure, as well as
lower anxiety, depression and stress; the superhabit of Orderliness leads to
greater job performance, academic achievement, and well-being and the
superhabit of Contentment is associated with stronger romantic relationships,
stronger social connections, and overall greater well-being and happiness. And on and on.
The
beauty of all this is that, because superehabits are still habits, you can
develop them just like any other habit, by practicing small changes each
day. Anyone can grow in any of the
superhabits. Anyone can become more
orderly, more creative, more courageous, more restrained, more forgiving or
more grateful, and experience all of the health, wellness, and life success
benefits of each. They are truly
superpowers, and accessible to anyone, any time.
How
does this happen? How does growing in a superhabit make you happier and
healthier? It’s not hard to see how
growing in a superhabit like Restraint would make you healthier, because you’d
eat better and avoid binge drinking. But
Gratitude? Forgiveness? Humility? How do
they make you happier and healthier?
What is going in here?
Here’s what I think is happening – and I’ll admit up front that this is a controversial claim. Superhabits are not arbitrary strengths chosen from a large range of possible options. No. They are more like wheels on a bus. There is a fixed number of them, and they represent fundamental aspects of our makeup as human beings. Some of them might be a little underinflated right now, or even entirely flat. But you already have all of them, even if you didn’t know it. You already have the ability to be Courageous, or to practice Restraint, or Forgiveness, or Gratitude. Your task is to figure out which wheels needs inflating – and to start pumping.
There are over six hundred muscles in the human body. Most of us use only a fraction of these. Our bodies try to conserve energy by using only the muscles necessary for each movement. This can lead some, even many, of our other muscles to atrophy. Pilates forces the body to use a broader range of muscles, especially in our core. This gives us better posture, movement, and strength, and generally helps us live better. Likewise, activating and exercising Restraint, Humility, Diligence, and other superhabits, by practicing them in small steps, helps us live better.
Why
do I say that superhabits are already within you? I can’t prove it biologically. After all, if you dissect a corpse, you won’t
find Restraint or Gratitude in it. But I
can point to two large bodies of evidence that suggest this.
First,
consider the extensive research that I have already cited. Can you think of another reason why
developing any of the superhabits will make you happier and healthier other
than that using these superhabits is how we are supposed to live? Living according to the superhabits is living
the way that best fits us. (Whether the
superhabits are part of us because we have evolved that way, or because we were
designed that way is beyond the scope of this book. It is sufficient for our purposes to notice
that the reason these particular superhabits have such an outsized positive
impact in our lives is that we are activating potentials that are already
within us. We are inflating tires that are already there, strengthening muscles
that already exist, not creating something new.)
The
second body of evidence is that many different thinkers in many different
cultures, throughout history, have identified these same superhabits as
critical to living well. Whether it is
Plato, Aristotle, or the Stoics, or other writers in ancient Greece or Rome, or
in the Islamic Caliphate, or Judaism, or Confucianism, or Christianity, or medieval
and Renaissance Europe, the same superhabits appear again and again.
The
rest of this book is a review of all the superhabits. As we examine them, you’ll figure out which
superhabit would be most helpful for you to focus on right now, and how you
should start developing it. Small steps
will build momentum, first for one superhabit and then for the others. You’ll find yourself carving a path through a
life that is self-reinforcing, and significantly easier, happier, and
healthier.
You
will recognize some of the superhabits.
You may already be pretty good at some of them; your superhabit
“muscles” for some may already be quite firm.
But there are almost certainly others that will be quite new to
you. Have you ever heard of Gentlefirmness,
for example? I doubt it, because I made
that word up. The real word is mansuetude. But “Gentlefirmness” gives you a better idea
of what this superhabit is about:
dealing with really strong emotions, like anger.
In the meantime, let us reflect on the above more intently during
the quiet moments of our conversation with the Lord in prayer and listen to
what He tells us each time even throughout the day as we work and go about
doing what we have planned for the day. Let
us act on what He tells us to do. Let us offer our efforts to improve ourselves
for the Pope and his intentions, for the Church, our country and countrymen,
for the whole World, for the glory of God.
See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and
laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us
together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
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