Forward-looking Process
January 6, 2026
Hello! How is each
and every one? We have only just began the New Year and it is already the 5th
day looking forward to the 6th for this post to be published. At
God’s pace we will go okay and with Him we will surely go with joy, peace and
love. Wow! I just finished reading and enjoying two
social media shares, one on the gift of aging and the other on Don’t We all?
Acceptance is the way to go. The best
prayer is “Your (God’s) will be done” “Do what He tells you” “Everything goes
well for those who do the will of God” and “A grateful heart always accepts
whatever God wants”.
After thanking the good Lord for all His blessings which is
everything that came our way throughout the past year, let us now look forward with
open and enthused hearts to this New Year we just started. Hope endures forever and like faith is shown
with deeds of some effort in the struggle to do the will of God at all moments;
a constant struggle against comfort, easy going ways, mediocrity, feelings,
routine, unintentional or unmindful ways of doing work or any activity in daily
life.
There are several kinds of people in the world: The humanists, the sinners, the selfish, the
Intelligentsia, the Moderns, the Sensationalists, and the Thinkers. To which class do your tendencies and habits
define you? I am sure you and I would
want to be counted among the Thinkers. We will meet these persons in the next
book we will be sharing hopefully by February?
Let us also ask God’s forgiveness for all our misgivings,
weaknesses, offences, pride manifested in almost everything we do without God
present in our midst. We need to make God present in our daily life. The truth is He is always present and sees
everything. Maybe what you and I need to
do is to be constantly aware that He is present and sees everything, hears
everything, knows everything.
Finally, let you and I ask for His constant help to live our
daily life according to His will. This
is the only way you and I can truly say life is lived to the full.
Following now is the superhabit of practical wisdom (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).
Practical Wisdom
Practical
Wisdom is the superhabit of making and implementing wise decisions, whether
well-deliberated, strategic decisions over extended periods of time, or
near-instantaneous ones like the ones Flight 1549 faced. Both making
and implementing decisions are
equally important parts of Practical Wisdom.
This is not “theoretical wisdom.”
It is not making a decision and then filing it away. In a very real sense, Practical Wisdom
recognizes that a decision is not properly made until it is implemented.
Practical Wisdom is sometimes
referred to as Prudence from the
Latin word prudentia. However, like so many other virtue-related
words, Prudence has come to mean other, very different things, including
“cautious,” “discrete,” “timid,” even “prissy.”
Practical Wisdom is not in any of these things: it involves a firm grasp
of reality; gathering the available, relevant information needed to make a
decision; reasoning through this information; drawing practical conclusions;
and then turning those conclusions into action, even – indeed, especially –
amidst uncertain, changing conditions.
Like
self-discipline and Courage, it has several component superhabits. According to
Aquinas, there are eight of these: four
for gathering the relevant information, one for reasoning, and three for
implementing. (Aquinas was writing 750
years ago; but it is remarkable how closely his framework matches, and yet goes
deeper than, many contemporary decision-making processes.) Example, Sully (if
interested, research on your own).
But
let’s “freeze” the plane in mid-air while we explore the situation in the light
of each of the eight superhabits of Practical Wisdom.
The
first four superhabits that make up Practical Wisdom are for assembling the
information needed to get a firm grasp of reality. Two of these are for
recalling existing information, and the other two are for acquiring new
information.
The
existing information can be of two kinds – data principles.
MEMORY
Existing
data are gathered through the superhabit of Memory. Is memory actually a habit? There is a
complex scientific literature on what exactly memory is, which we don’t need to
dive into here. What is clear is that it
certainly acts like a superhabit, in three significant ways: repeated practice can improve your memory; a
good memory has a wide range of benefits; and improvements in memory lead to
greater mental health and happiness.
The
important thing about the superhabit of memory is that it be reliable. Reliable information is required for sound decision-making; faulty
information will lead to faulty decisions. Aquinas offers four suggestions for
how to remember things reliably:
1. Organize
what you want to remember into a logical structure that will make it easier to
remember.
2. Be
enthusiastic, even anxious, about what you want to remember; it will set it
more firmly in your memory.
3. Make
“some suitable yet somewhat unwonted illustration of it, since the unwonted
strikes us more.” (That is to say, by
making a funny or unusual image in your mind of what you want to remember, you
will make it more memorable.)
4. Reflect
often on the things you want to remember, which will fix them in your memory.
Collectively,
these four strategies allow you to create a strong mental model of what you are
trying to remember.
For
the purposes of Practical Wisdom reliable recall is most beneficial if the
experiences recalled are themselves of excellent quality. Memory of thousands of hours of average
quality flying experience will not be as valuable as the memory of hours of focused
effort on highly skilled flying, cultivated to perfection. As coach Vince Lombardi was supposedly fond
of saying, it’s not “practice makes perfect” but “perfect practice makes perfect.” His famous quote: “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can
catch excellence.” “Winners never quit and
quitters never win.” “The measure of who we are is what we do with what we
have.” “Confidence is contagious.”
JUDGEMENT
In addition to committing our experience to memory, we also draw lessons from it; this refines Judgment, the superhabit of knowing what principles should operate in the particular situation.
TEACHABILITY
Getting new information
from another source requires an openness to learning, and this is the
superhabit of Teachability. It is the
habit of being able to learn well from others.
Teachability is related to, but distinct from, the superhabits of Diligence and Humility, both of which we saw earlier. As you’ll recall from chapters 2 and 4, Humility is an accurate assessment of your own abilities, including what you know and don’t know, and Diligence is a harnessing of the desire to know. Teachability, by contrast, is an openness to learning, arising from a commitment to grasping the reality of things. It takes Peterson’s rule nine, “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t,” and turns it into a habit.
The QRH (Quick Reference Handbook) is an important resource. The complexity of a modern aircraft is such that you cannot commit the procedures for dealing with every kind of emergency to memory. Accessing it immediately to learn what to do is a necessary first step. Far more important to the safety of the passengers and crew was how teachable Sully had been throughout his entire life – a mid-air crisis is not the time to be learning many new things.
CREATIVITY
The second superhabit
for acquiring new information is Creativity, gaining new information by
discovery. Creativity, like every other
superhabit, can be learned by anyone. If
you think, “I’m just not a creative person,” it’s just because you haven’t yet
started to develop this superhabit.
Anyone can do it.
A necessary first step is to let go of any false beliefs about Creativity, such as the wrong-headed idea that to be creative you must eliminate all boundaries. In fact, we know that the right kind of structure actually improves Creativity.
REASONING
Once you’ve gathered
the information you need to make your decision, you draw conclusions from this
information by using the superhabit of Reasoning. Reasoning is the habit of
moving logically from one step to the next until you reach a conclusion.
Even when you’ve collected the information you need, drawn conclusions from it, and come up with your decision, the work of Practical Wisdom is not yet done. The superhabit of practical Wisdom is not complete until you’ve acted on your decision. A decision is not truly “made” until the decision is implemented – the plane has to be landed.
Successful implementation of a decision requires three things: keeping stock of the situation as it evolves, staying focused on your goals (and updating them when necessary), and anticipating and avoiding obstacles to implementation.
ALERTNESS
Alertness is the superhabit for having situational awareness. This can be developed by practicing paying attention to your surroundings and experiences.
FORESIGHT
Foresight is the superhabit for having the right goals, and updating them as necessary, as conditions change.
PREPAREDNESS
Along with scouring your surroundings and prioritizing your goals, effective implementation of a decision also requires anticipating and preparing for problems.
Preparedness is the superhabit for anticipating the obstacles you might hit in the process of implementing your decisions, and deciding what you do to avoid them. If you are the kind of person to whom bad things often seem to happen, lack of preparedness may be the root cause. Growing in the superhabit of Preparedness will help.
Research suggests that Preparedness is associated with success in academic and workplace settings. It is also one of the most crucial factors in adapting to life stressors and natural disasters. Studies of victims of natural disasters, for example, suggest that individuals with higher Preparedness tend to withstand stressful times better.
Preparedness is the habit of thinking through the possibilities of what might go wrong and what you could do about it – before you get punched in the mouth. “Every time we push back from the gate, we must be prepared for the unexpected.”
To grow in Practical Wisdom, one can practice each of these
eight superhabits separately, until each becomes second nature. For example, in
an office setting, you can work at your own pace on an important strategic
decision, exercising each of them deliberately to ensure the best decision
outcome possible. But in a situation where you have seconds to make decisions,
with 155 lives in your hands, as Sully did, then all eight superhabits must
kick into action at the same time. This can only happen if you have already
developed them. In Sully’s words, “Flight 1549 wasn’t just a five-minute
journey. My entire life led me safely to that river.”
Captain Sullenberger and the crew of Flight 1549 behaved heroically and were treated as the heroes that they are. The reactions of people to the incident are instructive. Sully wrote: “I have people coming up to me with tears in their eyes. They’re not sure why they’re crying. Their feelings about what the flight represents, and then the surprise of meeting me, just cause a swell of emotion.”
What does Flight 1549 represent? Here’s what I think. It is
the coming together of competence and decency, of true human excellence. Human
excellence means not just being supremely competent, being really good at what
you do. It also means using that competence in the service of others. The
pilots, the crew, and the first responders embodied both senses of the word
“good”: they were good at their jobs, and did good to others. The plane was
landed safely and everyone was rescued.
Whatever is true, good and beautiful will always be rewarded accordingly. Therefore it is always just and right to seek what is true, want and do what is good and there will always be beauty coming out of it. These are the transcendental attributes of God who is absolute truth, absolute good, absolute beauty all in one.
May I ask you to remember me and whoever are there with me in a two week seminar that starts on Jan 13. Accompany each one of us with your prayers and offerings that each one of us benefits fully from the fruits of this seminar throughout the year.
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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