Bounce Back and Resume Momentum
December 16, 2025
Bounce Back and Resume Momentum
Hello! How is each and every one? Last Sunday, we entered the week of joy; rejoicing in the coming birth of the Son of God, Jesus, our Savior and Redeemer. We faithfully await His birth and we pray to attain the joys of so great a salvation, and to celebrate them always with solemn worship and glad rejoicing. We pray that the sacrifice of worship, be offered to him unceasingly, to complete what was begun in sacred mystery and powerfully accomplish for us his saving work. Let each one of us be strong and not to fear for certainly our God will come, and he will save us. We therefore implore God’s mercy, that this divine sustenance may cleanse us of our faults and prepare us for the coming feasts.
Tomorrow we start the nine days before
the birth of the child Jesus. December 17 to 24 mark the final and most intense
period of preparation for Christmas, shifting focus from Christ’s second
coming to the immediate anticipation of his birth. Each day has its proper Mass. “Nine Days to Christmas” is a tradition known
as Simbang Gabi or Misa de Gallo, which are early morning
Masses dedicated to spiritual preparation for Christ’s birth, focusing on devotion to Mary and the perseverance of faith in the nation,
leading to Christmas Eve. These Masses are a
powerful, traditional spiritual journey, blending Filipino cultural devotion
with core
Catholic
beliefs in preparation for the Nativity.
With the above in mind let us continue with our ordinary life keeping the infant Jesus, Mary and Joseph present in everything we do and think. Following now is the superhabit of Resilience (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)
The
second habit for enduring a challenge is Resilience, the superhabit for
enduring mental challenges like sorrow, anxiety, and depression.
Resilience
is yet another superpower. It is
associated with improved health outcomes and serves as a predictor of mental
and physical well-being in multiple domains of life. One study on Resilience and high-strain work
environments found that workers with high Resilience have lower depression,
stress, and burnout rates compared to those that have low Resilience. Another
study found that increased Resilience was associated with psychological
well-being in elementary-age children.
In the brain, Resilience correlates with increased activation in the
prefrontal cortex and lower activation of the amygdala, the area of the brain
associated with fear and stress response.
Studies
also show that Resilience can be increased, and interventions aimed at
increasing Resilience have had positive effects on people’s physical and mental
health. A randomized-controlled trial of
a Resilience training approach in adults with Type 2 diabetes found that those
receiving the Resilience intervention developed positive ways of coping with
diabetes-related stress, ate healthier, exercised more, and had a better
outlook on life compared to the control group.
Surviving
in succession the deaths of loved ones, the hardships of life at sea, and
separation from his wife and child, Fred Larsen had had numerous occasions to
practice both Perseverance and Resilience. Each time he found the energy in his
fear or sadness to move on, he built up the superhabit of Resilience; each time
he kept moving forward – despite tiredness, cold, or danger – he cultivated the
superhabit of Perseverance. And each
time, he made it easier to be resilient, persevering, and courageous the next
time around. That is how he developed
the strength to endure the sleepless nights, gunfire, and bomb blasts as the
convoy crossed the western Mediterranean.
To
cut the long story short.
The
success of the convoy meant that Malta was able to continue the fight. Bombers
from the island stopped much of the supplies to Field Marshall Rommel in nOrth
Africa, leaving him critically short of fuel and contributing to his defeat at
the battle of El Alamein – a key turning point in the Second World War.
Fred
Larsen’s wife Minda and their son eventually made it to the United States. When Fred returned, he was finally reunited
with his family. He participated in a
total of sixty-five convoys throughout the war, and for his actions in the
Malta convoy, he received the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal, the
highest award the branch can give, “for heroism above and beyond the call of
duty.”
Minda
and Fred had another child, a daughter, and they spent a happy life together in
new Jersey, until Fred passed away peacefully in 1995, aged eighty. In what
turned out to be the last year of his life, he was invited to give a talk about
his experience to his local chapter of merchant marine veterans. It was the
only time he ever spoke publicly about the Malta convoy.
As
the subject of his remarks, he chose Courage, and the example of Courage he
gave was Minda.
After
Fred died, Minda lived for another twenty-six years, until 2021, to age
104. By then she had five grandchildren,
ten great-grandchildren, and two great great-grandchildren.
It
is an inspiring story. Yet developing
the superhabits of Perseverance, Resilience, and Magnanimity does not require
the crucible-like environment that was Fred Larsen’s childhood. Daily life contains plenty of occasions where
the superhabit of Courage is required, plenty of occasions that can generate
fear. These moments are when fear can be
reframed and used as energy to grow in Courage through its allied superhabits.
Reframing
is a simple but powerful tool that recognizes that fear, and anxiety in
particular, is “adrenaline with a negative frame.” Adrenaline is a
performance-enhancing hormone. Reframing
replaces the negative frame with a positive one, and repurposes adrenaline in a
more constructive direction. It’s not
just a mind game – reframing can have an immediate positive physiological
impact. For more on this, listen to the Optimal Work podcast #193, “Mindset
Mistakes that Sabotage Success.”
The
point is not to compare your level of courage to Fred’s, or to anyone
else’s. The point is to use the everyday
fears that invariably arise in life to grow in the superhabit of Courage. And
remember, with superhabits, beginning is winning, because you’ll experience the
benefits as soon as you start practicing them.
Here’s
a simple exercise that anyone can use to grow in the superhabit of Resilience,
as described by Jia Jiang in his popular TED talk and his book Rejection Proof. Many people fear rejection, and this can get
in the way of growing in Resilience. If
you are one of them, this is Jia’s rather amusing approach. Once a day, for thirty days, ask someone for
something where you know that the answer will be no. Start simply – go to a
clothing store and ask if they sell a brand that you know they don’t sell. If you’re a student, ask a professor for an
extension on your assignment, if you know that she typically doesn’t allow
that. Try this kind of question for a
few days.
When
you get used to hearing the word no
without wincing, then you can move on to harder questions. Examples that Jia tried: ask a stranger to borrow one hundred
dollars. Ask for a “burger refill.” Ask
a donut shop if they could sell you five donuts linked just like the Olympic
symbol. (This last one “backfired” for
Jia when a keen Krispy Kreme employee actually did it.) After thirty days of
this exercise, you will have begun to bold Resilience – you’ll be able to ask
for things without as much fear of rejection as you used to have. And that’s a very good place to begin growing
in Resilience.
Courage,
like every superhabit, is the mean between two extremes. It requires paying the
right amount of attention to your fears. Too much attention to fear, and you
fall into the vice of cowardliness. Too little attention, and you have the
opposing vice of rashness. The wisdom to
know the difference is what the next cardinal superhabit is about: knowing when to abandon ship, and when to
reboard.
Or
when to land the plane, and when to ditch it…
I invite you and myself to stop and think over the following
words of advice from another source on words of St. Josemaria, the Saint of the
Ordinary. In our moments of silence with
the Lord, our Father God in prayer, these thoughts will surely give us the
necessary confidence and motivation you and I need to grow in this superhabit
of resilience.
Here’s 10 invigorating St. Josemaría Escrivá quotes to help navigate your daily way to holiness:
1) “You’re bored? That’s because
you keep your senses awake and your soul asleep.”
2) “Let us work. Let us work a lot
and work well, without forgetting that prayer is our best weapon. That is why I
will never tire of repeating that we have to be contemplative souls in the
middle of the world, who try to convert their work into prayer.”
3) “To reform. Every day a little.
This has to be your constant task if you really want to become a saint.”
4) “Place on your desk, in
your room, in your wallet…a picture of Our Lady, and look at it when you begin
your work, while you are doing it, and when you finish it. She will obtain, I
assure you, the strength for you to turn your task into a loving dialogue with
God.”
5) “If you have so many defects,
why are you surprised to find defects in others?”
6) “Our Lord is calling us to
sanctify the ordinary tasks of every day, for the perfection of the Christian
is to be found precisely there.”
7) “The Holy Rosary is a powerful
weapon. Use it with confidence and you will be amazed at the results.”
8) “Don’t judge without having
heard both sides. Even persons who think themselves virtuous very easily forget
this elementary rule of prudence.”
9) “Compromise is a word
found only in the vocabulary of those who have no will to fight.”
10) “Sadness and uneasiness grow
in proportion to the time you waste. — When you feel a holy impatience to use
every minute, you will be filled with joy and peace, because you will not be
thinking about yourself.”
St. Josemaría Escrivá, please pray for us!
Let us rejoice and be glad for the
Lord is near.
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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