Resistance 

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So the alarm clock goes off in the morning, what do you do? Do you get straight out of bed, bound out of bed, with fabulous energy? Or do you slap the snooze button and roll over? You slap the snooze button, you roll over, you think, “I get a few more minutes of sleep.” What just happened? No big deal, right? You just slapped the snooze button. You just took a few extra minutes of sleep. Wrong.

 

Resistance just kicked your butt. Okay, that's your first decision of the day. It's your first victory or loss of every single day. And resistance just kicked your butt. That's what resistance does to us. Resistance is that sluggish feeling that stops us from doing the things that we know are good for us. It's that sense that, "I don't want to do that," even though we know it's the thing we should do. Sometimes it's the sense that, "You know what, I'm going to do whatever I want even though I absolutely know it's the wrong thing to do." That's resistance too, and resistance is a big part of the reason why we often feel like we're our own worst enemy. Resistance is a big part of the reason why we often feel like happiness is just outside of our reach. Lent is, I guess in some ways, sort of a funny time to be talking about happiness. But not really. You know, because it's important to understand that God created us for happiness. You know, you open up the Catechism of the Catholic Church to the first point in the first chapter, which I think turns out to be point 27 because of the preamble: God created man for happiness. You know, man's greatest desire is for happiness because God created us for happiness.

 

You have to remember that what happened on Good Friday, what happened on Good Friday, was designed to restore the possibility of happiness for you and me. Not only in this life, but in the next life. Not just for you and me, but for every man, woman, and child in every place and every time. Because God does have this enormous desire that we experience the happiness that he created us for. And resistance absolutely gets in the way of that happiness. It gets in the way of us accomplishing our dreams. It gets in the way of us doing what we know is good for us. It gets in the way of us being the-best-version-of-ourselves. It gets in the way of almost everything that's worthwhile. And what I want to help you discover in the days and weeks ahead, is that resistance is real. It's not just a concept. It's not just a theory. It's not just a figment of imagination. But it is something very real. We do encounter it every single day, and many, many, many times throughout the day. And it is critically important that we

learn to recognize resistance, and that we learn to conquer resistance, in those moments of the day, one moment at a time, to learn to conquer resistance.

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Your Quest for Happiness

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So, how did you experience resistance in the last 24 hours? You saw this reflection in your  email box this morning, were you resistant to watch it? Did you put it off? Did you watch it  straight away? Did you say, "Oh, I'll do that later," or "I'll do that tonight"? As we make this journey through Lent together, as we make this journey over the next forty days you're going to encounter resistance in a thousand ways in your everyday life, even in relation to this program. You’re going to be resistant to keep watching the videos, you’re going to, some days you’re going to watch the videos, but resistance is going to stop you from doing the reflection. And then the question is, if you do miss a day, what happens the next day? You get back into it, or you sort of fall down and say “oh well I’ve already missed a day, and I’ll miss again today.” Then, before you know it, you’ve missed a week and uh, and you just drop out of the program. And that’s the difference between having, really, an extraordinary Lenten journey, a phenomenal Lenten experience, and just having another Lent. That’s the difference between having the best Lent ever and just another Lent.

 

And so, what we’re talking about here, this concept of resistance, it’s real. It’s something we experience everyday. And it’s something we experience in relation to everything. That's really the paradox of happiness. It's that we know the things that make us happy, we just don't do them. And very often the reason we give for not doing them is because we're too busy trying to be happy. It's the stunning paradox that surrounds the desire that we all have for happiness. We want to be happy, but we don't do the things that make us happy, because we're too busy trying to be happy. And it relates to all aspects of our lives. So if you think of the four aspects of the human person (physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually), I know the things that make me happy. Physically, if I exercise regularly, and I sleep regularly, and I eat the right sorts of food, I'm just massively happier than I would be if I neglect those things. Emotionally, when I give focus and priority to the most important relationships in my life, I'm just happier. Intellectually, when I make the effort, when I have the discipline to read for a few minutes each day, my vision of myself expands, my vision of the world expands, my vision of God expands. I become more focused, more alert, more vibrant, and I'm happier. And spiritually, silence, solitude, Scripture, sacraments, they make me happier. I am a-better-version-of-myself when I spend time in these disciplines. But I can come up with a thousand reasons every day why not to do any of those things. And behind every single one of those reasons, we find resistance. And that, that’s the happiness paradox. We want to be happy. In 90% of the cases, we know the things that will make us happy, but we don't do them. Why? Resistance.

 

As we make this journey together, you’re going to encounter resistance in a thousand different ways. There’ll be hundreds of different temptations to do the program, not do the program, push the video back later into your day or watch the video and not do the reflection. There’ll be a lot of temptations along the way and behind all those temptations, very often, you’re going to find resistance. Here's the thing I want you to keep in mind: In every one of those situations, either resistance is going to win, or you're going to win. There's no middle ground. Either resistance wins, or you win. There's no middle ground. So you've got to, you've got to see that as a challenge. And you've got to get out there and slay resistance in the moments of the day.

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Making Sense of Everything

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So let me ask you something, what do you want? What do you spend your days thinking about? What do you, what do you spend your days desiring? What is it that you, you want?

 

You see, God, he gave you the ability to want for a reason. God wants you to want. But he wants you to want things that make you happy, that really make you happy in a deep, deep, deep way. And he wants you to want things that will help you become the-best-version-of-yourself. Obviously sometimes we’re attracted to things that don’t help us become the-best-version-of-ourselves.

 

Sometimes we’re attracted to things that, that give us momentary pleasures but that don’t truly make us happy in the long run. It’s a, it’s a temptation we all fall into, um, but it is a temptation we should grow out of over time as we become older. We should become wiser, and in some ways we should grow out of these temptations. We should be mindful that we’re going to encounter resistance even before resistance has occurred. Because of experience and because of wisdom that we develop over time, we should be mindful. “Oh today, where I’m most going to encounter resistance today is in the afternoon when this happens.” We should know that. In many, many cases resistance, it shouldn’t be a surprise to us. We should be mindful that it’s there. You know, when we think about the things that we want, very often we want things because we're trying to, to fill something within us. We feel restless, we feel that we're not content. We feel unfulfilled. We feel hungry for meaning in our lives. And so, a lot of the things we want are in response to that. And in our spiritual journey, one of the things that we're called to do is, is to recognize, "Ok, I want that thing, but why do I want that thing? What's the motive for wanting that thing? What is it in me that wants that thing? And what am I trying to accomplish?"

 

You see, you've got a hole in you. You've got a hole in you, I've got a hole in me. Pretty big hole. When we're little kids, we try to fill that hole with different things. You know, as little kids, we think, "Oh, if I get that bike, then I'll be satisfied, then I'll be fulfilled, then I'll be content." We get the bike, and it doesn't work. A few weeks later, we're not fulfilled, we want something else. We think, "Oh, if I get those running shoes!" And we get the running shoes, and that doesn't work either. As we grow older, we tend to develop these desires around social connections. We tend to think, "Oh, if this person is my best friend, or if that person if my best friend, then I'll be fulfilled, then I'll be satisfied, forever." And of course that doesn't work. As we grow into adolescents, we tend to turn our attention towards pleasure and the idea that, "Ok, if I had this pleasure, or that pleasure, or this other pleasure, or maybe all the pleasures at one time, then I'll be fulfilled, then I'll be satisfied, then I'll be content." And of course that doesn't work either. As we come into early adulthood, we tend to turn our attention toward accomplishment and the idea that, "If I can accomplish this thing, or that thing, or the other thing, or all of the things, or something great, something notable, then I'll be happy, then I'll be fulfilled, then I'll be satisfied." And of course that doesn't work either. At that point, what most people do is they just cycle back through the same cycles again. Things, people, accomplishments, money, just more, more, more. See, we've got this hole, we're trying to fill this hole that we've got within us. The problem is, it's a God-sized hole. Only God can fill it. All that other stuff we're trying to fill that hole with, all of that in some way is saying we haven't allowed God to take a big enough role in our lives. We haven’t allowed God to have a big enough role in our world. And all of that is an invitation to, to explore that.

 

Last Easter, um, I overheard a conversation between my oldest son Walter and his sister Isabel. Walter was, um, six, and Isabel was five. And, uh, Walter said to Isabel, “Isabel, you are just too into all this Jesus stuff.” Isabel can hold her own, so she said, “well, you know, Walter, Easter is all about Jesus. So it’s good to be into Jesus.” Walter said, “well, I am just more interested in the chocolate eggs and the chocolate bunnies.” And I’m standing outside the door and I thought to myself, man that is life. That is life. Sometimes we’re into the God thing, and sometimes we’re just more interested in the chocolate eggs and chocolate bunnies. Where are you at the moment? Where are you at the moment? Because it’s only by placing God at the center of our lives that things start to make sense. If you feel confused, if you feel a little bit lost, if you feel just even a little disoriented in your life, chances are something other than God is at the center of your life right at this moment. And so the question becomes, "How do you get God back at the center of your life?" Because when God's at the center of our lives, everything makes sense. What we tend to do is, we tend to say, "Ok, God I'll do whatever you want, I'm a hundred percent available." And we put God right at the center of our lives. And then little by little, we take everything back from God. You know, little by little, we just sort of move God over a little bit each day. And then we realize, we're back at the center of our lives, or something else is back at the center of our lives. And so, this is a great time for us to say, "Ok, what is at the center of my life, and what do I need to do to, to put God back at the center of my life?" And I'll give you a tip. A great way to do it is through your decisions. When you're making decisions, ask yourself, "Am I putting God at the center of this decision?"

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Resting in God

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I think one of the most interesting things for me, around this whole topic of resistance, and resisting happiness, is that when we resist happiness, we resist God. And when we resist happiness, we resist the-best-version-of-ourselves. When you think about how much energy goes into being the best you can be in different parts of your life, and then you think about the idea of actively resisting what is good for you, actively resisting goodness Himself, and actively resisting, sort of the best you. It really is sort of a fascinating thing that shows that, that we are all a little bit sick. And that we are all, um, in need of the divine doctor, because we’ve got some very strange things going on in our heads from time to time, and we act in very counterintuitive ways at time. We act in very counter logical ways at some time, and we’re aware of it. And that’s, it’s that idea that we’re aware of it, that we say “okay, this is a bad idea, but guess what, I’m going to do it anyway.”  It’s a fascinating part of our lives and it’s really important that we become aware of it because otherwise, we look at the world and we say “ah, look at those stupid things people are doing over there.” It’s the same thing. They are experiencing exactly the same thing that you and I experience, almost everyday of our lives.

 

The danger is when we see people doing stupid things, the danger is of course to judge the person rather than the stupid thing that they’re doing. But the real danger is not to be able to see ourselves in that person and in what that person is doing. Because every single one of us, every single day, does things that we know we shouldn’t be doing. We do things that we know are not good for us. We do things that we know don’t help us become the-best-version-of-ourselves. We do things that don’t bring us closer to God.

 

Have you ever wanted something for somebody more than they wanted it for themselves? It's really the classic dilemma of a parent. I think as parents we, we want good things for our kids, you know? And very often we want good things for them more than they even want them for themselves. I think it’s the classic dilemma of any type of leader. I think it's the classic dilemma of any type of coach or mentor. We fall into this, this idea of wanting something for somebody else more than they want it for themselves. You know, at my consulting company, we've got all these coaches. We've got life coaches, we've got business coaches, we've got executive coaches. And one of the things I'm constantly trying to say to the coaches is, one of the biggest challenges you're going to have is that you're going to see what is possible in people, and you are going to want what is possible more than the people themselves. Of course as a coach, as a parent, as a leader, as a mentor, you can cross a line  where you get too involved, where you start to do things for them, rather than empowering them to do those things for themselves.

 

This emotion we feel, this dilemma we experience, it's Godlike. It's what God experiences every day with you and me. He sees what's possible, and then he sees who we are and the lives we're living. He sees what's possible in you, he sees what’s possible with your life, and most of the time, he wants it more for you and me than we want it for ourselves. That's the great parental frustration. And it's one of God's great frustrations. It’s that he wants things for us more than we want them for ourselves. He wants you to become the-best-version-of-yourself more than you even want it for yourself. He wants Heaven for you more than you even want heaven for yourself. But he never crosses that line. That's free will, and that's an incredible love. There's an incredible love in that free will not to cross that line, and there's a thousand lessons in all of this for us, but let's focus on this one today: Let's ask God to give us the desire for goodness, the desire for being the-best-version-of-ourselves, the desire for Heaven, the desire that for everything that's good, right, noble, and just, to fill us with that desire. To help us to desire it as much as he desires it for us. To help us see the possibilities the way he sees the possibilities.

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Life Is Messy

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When I first started speaking and writing I was, I was 19 years old, I look back on those times now and I was just so naive. I’d grown up in sort of a bubble. Didn’t really have that much of an idea about what was going on out in the world, and then I would start to travel, and I was travelling and speaking and writing and, and meeting a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds and, and a lot of different countries. And, what you realize very quickly I think is that life is messy. You know, life is messy. And it's sort of one of the great themes of this 25 years of speaking and writing for me, is the idea that life really is messy. And I can have these very clear and logical ideas in the solitude of my writing place, but real people in real places have to live them in real ways in the midst of what is very often a very, very messy world.

 

It impacts me in a few ways. One is the, uh, desire to share ideas in simpler ways, ideas that are, I mean, immensely practical, that are just really helpful to people’s lives. And to do the work and to make the effort to make those ideas as simple, as poignant as possible, so they can really resonate in the reader’s life. But the other response is just prayer. Just, you meet people, they share with you some of their deepest secrets, some of their biggest struggles, and uh, the only response to that’s uh, has got to be prayer I think. At Dynamic Catholic, we invite the Ambassadors each month to submit prayers, and I get a report at the end of each week with all the prayers on them. And it's amazing, you know, it's astounding it is . . . I mean, it is just, I can't even put in words what it feels like to sit in the chapel and read through those prayer requests. I cannot get through a set of those prayer requests without tears. It's just not possible. You just, you couldn't be human. And I think the lesson is that everyone’s struggling with something. I love reading, uh, biographies and autobiographies. I just find looking at a person's whole life, um, is really powerful. I think very often our temptation is to look at one part of our life or one part of somebody else’s life. And when you can step back and look at a whole person, and their whole life, I think it is, it gives phenomenal perspective. I was reading Bob Dylan’s a few years ago, and he was talking about his grandmother and how she used to give him sort of wisdom and perspective, and I think had this sage type role in Dylan’s life. And one of the things he talks about that he said to her after he started travelling and touring, she said to him, you know, “be kind to everybody, because everybody you’ll ever meet is fighting a hard battle.” And it’s true. Everyone is struggling with something, you know, and uh, we send out the Christmas cards, right? And everything looks great in the Christmas card, but behind every Christmas card, there’s a hundred stories, and every person in the Christmas card is struggling with something. Everyone’s struggling with something. I remember when I first got cancer, you know, I remember walking out of the doctor's office after he told me I had cancer, and my head was just spinning, and my realization was nothing else in the world has changed. Everyone is just going around their business, going about doing their thing. And nobody knows what you're struggling with, and nobody knows what I'm struggling with. We're all struggling with something.

 

And I think it's important that we realize that everyone's carrying a heavy burden. It’s important that we realize everyone’s struggling with something. It's important that we realize that everyone is fighting a hard battle. Because when we do realize that, we treat people differently. We treat people differently. So be gentle with yourself, because you've got your own struggle, and be gentle with other people, because everybody is fighting a hard battle. Because life is messy.

 

 

Something Is Missing

 

Do you ever get the feeling that uh, something's missing in your life? It's good. It's good that you get that feeling. It's, it's, it’s good that we get that feeling. It's uh, it's an expression of dissatisfaction. And I think in a lot of ways we're taught that, um, to be dissatisfied is a bad thing. I think in a lot of ways we're taught to, you know, not necessarily talk about our dissatisfaction. The problem with that is that it prevents us sometimes from really looking at our dissatisfaction. And dissatisfaction is a powerful voice that God uses to speak to us at different times in our lives. And so today what I really want you to look at is, what is missing in your life?

 

You know, when you think about your life, when you think about what's working well, what's not working well, what do you like in your life, or what don't you like in your life, what are you dissatisfied with? What do you feel like is missing in your life at this time? Or what are you dissatisfied with, and what is God saying to you through that?

 

You know, God speaks to us every day of our lives in a thousand different ways. And part of our spiritual journey is about recognizing the different ways. St. Ignatius was an incredible champion of awareness. You know, in his spiritual exercises he talks about how, um, God speaks to us even through our emotions, you know. So if you get really happy, God is saying to you something through that happiness. But if you get really mad, you want to throw something, or kick something, God's saying something to you through that as well. And so, yes, God speaks to us through the Scriptures. Yes, God speaks to us through the life of the Church. Yes, God speaks to us through other people, some of them wise and some of them not. God sends unlikely messages at unlikely times through unlikely messengers. But God is constantly speaking to us, and he speaks to us through our dissatisfaction. So at those times in your life when you feel like something is missing, don’t ignore that. Don't push that aside. Don't skip over that. Don't pretend that's not there. God is speaking into you. God is speaking into your life.

 

So what do you feel is missing today? What are you dissatisfied with in your life today? And what do you think God is saying to you through that dissatisfaction?

 

 

The Big Question

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One of the key moments in my life was when I was around 15 years old, and I was sitting in church, and I was struggling with something. And I stumbled upon the question, you know, "God what do you think I should do in this situation?" And it really became a turning point in my life. I call it the big question. "God what do you think I should do?" I think it’s a question that we don't ask anywhere near as often as we should. I think very often we ask the wrong people for advice. When we're struggling with something in our lives, or when we really have a decision to make, I think very often we go to people who know almost nothing about nothing and we ask them what they think we should do, rather than going to the one who has the answer to every question and saying, "Hey God, what do you think I should do?"

 

If I could only do one thing, you know, if I had to narrow everything I do down to one thing, if Dynamic Catholic could only do one thing, if we had to narrow everything we do down to one thing, I would teach people how to develop a daily habit of prayer. It's the whole ball game. A lot of other things will come from that, but without that, a lot of other things will never come at all. They'll never develop. If you really want to grow spiritually, if you really want to have a better life, if you really want to have a better marriage, be a better parent, whatever it is that's important in your life, if you really want it to change, and grow, and be transformed, I'm telling you, develop a daily habit of prayer. It will change your life, it has changed lives, it will change your life. It's the thing. When it comes to everything we’re talking about.

 

You want to slay resistance? Develop a daily habit of prayer. Whatever it is that you feel called to accomplish in this phase of your life or this stage of your life, nothing is going to help you accomplish that more than developing a daily habit of prayer or renewing a daily habit of prayer. It’s the thing. And you know what? We resist it. Man, do we resist it. We find excuses, after excuse, after excuse, after excuse. We find excuses. We've got so many  excuses about why we can’t pray, daily, why we can't pray at the same time every day, or in the same place every day. And of course very often I encourage people to stop by their church. Spend a few minutes. There's something very, very powerful about spending a few minutes in a quiet, empty church. People say, "Oh I'm real busy and I can't do that." "What about once a week, could you do once a week?" "Well I don't know, I've got a lot of things going on and . . . " If I put a thousand dollars in cash in an envelope, and stuffed it in the song book in the seventh row on the left-hand side of the church, and told you I'd put the same thousand dollars there every Thursday, all you have to do is stop by and spend ten minutes in prayer, when's the next time you think you'd miss a Thursday?

 

You see, everything's a matter of priorities. Everything's a matter of priorities. We do the things that we believe are most important. The problem is, sometimes we're confused about what's most important. Prayer, daily prayer. Create a habit. It's different for different people. I'm not going to say you have to do this, I'm not going to say you have to do that. I do know, if you’re trying to do it for the first time, The Prayer Process is very, very, very powerful. But create a habit of prayer, it'll change your life. And it will increase your ability to fight resistance. But, beware. You will experience more resistance around trying to create a daily habit of prayer than anything else. Resistance will do everything within its power to stop you from establishing a daily habit of prayer because resistance knows that if you create this daily habit of prayer, resistance is in big trouble.

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Four Words​

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One of the things that I'm amazed at in our culture today, and I suppose it's always been there to some extent, is the things that God gets blamed for. People will say to me, "Well, I don't go to church anymore because my brother died." Or, "I don't go to church anymore because I saw this situation in Haiti and I thought, "How could a god ever, you know, let that happen?" Or, "I don't go to church anymore," or, "I don't believe in God anymore because of this, or that, or the other thing." It's astounding the things that God gets blamed for. And every time I hear about these things, what I realize is that the god that these people believe in, or don't believe in, is vastly different to the God that I have experienced and the God that I believe in.

 

And so, I think it is really, really important at times to step back and take another look at our image of God. How do we see God? You know, what is God really like? What are the qualities of God that loom largest in your heart, in your mind, in your life? Because the way we see God has an enormous influence on our spirituality, it has an enormous influence on the way we relate with other people, and it has an enormous influence on our lives. How do you see God? One of the things I'd really encourage you to do today is sit down and just write down a list of God's qualities. You know, what are the qualities of God that affect your image of God the most? How do you see God? How do you experience God? How have you experienced God at different times in your life? How have you seen God at different times in your life? I think it's a good exercise to sit down and say, “OK, what was my image of God when I was five years old? What was my image of God when I was 15 years old? What was my image of God at different times in my life? How has my image of God evolved, or not?” Because sometimes it doesn't. And if we really take this exercise seriously, we will realize that. For better or for worse. Sometimes we are hanging on to an image of God that we developed as a child, or as a teenager, and that image of God is misaligned with reality.

 

And so I do think it's very, very powerful, very, very valuable, for us to step back from time to time and reassess our image of God. Reassess: How do we see God? How do we experience God? The reason, or one of the reasons, is because the whole idea of Christian spirituality surrounds four words: Thy will be done. Thy will be done. And if you think God's a tyrant, you're certainly not going to carry out his work here on earth. If you think God's a dictator, you're certainly not going to further his will by doing his will in your own place, in your own time. In order for us really to live out our Christianity, in order for us to be able to surrender to that idea of “Thy will be done,” but surrender in a really active way, not, "Oh, OK I give up," but, "Oh, OK I get it. I'll surrender to that, and I will proactively, with all my effort and energy and intention, go out and try and bring about this will." In order for that, we have to have a really strong and positive image of God. And that really strong and positive image of God, even if you had it, even if you have it, it's constantly being challenged by many voices and influences in this world. Thy will be done. I will do the will of God. That’s the chant of the saints. I’ll do the will of God when it’s convenient and when it isn’t. I’ll do the will of God when it’s what I want to do, and I’ll do the will of God when it isn’t what I want to do. I’ll do the will of God when it’s beneficial to me, and I’ll do the will of God when it costs me something, even when those costs are unimaginable. That’s the chant of the saints. That’s what the saints have been doing for 2000 years. They’ve been doing the will of God. They’ve been putting the will of God above their own self centered interests so that other people’s lives could be better, and so the world could become more and more how God imagined it for us from the beginning. And it’s a beautiful thing when we see that in people’s lives.

 

I think especially in our culture, it can be so caught up in, you know, self interest. When we see people who set that aside to the benefit of others, to the benefit of the whole world it’s attractive. Because at the end of the day there really is nothing more attractive than holiness. There really is nothing more attractive than someone who says “yes, I will do God’s work on Earth, in my own limited way, in my own little place, I will do whatever God wants me to do today.” That’s a beautiful thing.

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Are You Spiritually Healthy?​

So let me ask you a question. Are you healthy? And when I ask the question, what do you think about? You probably think about physical health, right? "OK, how healthy am I physically?" and, "How's my blood pressure?" And, "How's my cholesterol?" and . . . these sorts of things. But are you spiritually healthy? It's interesting, I think we, we almost never talk about it. We talk a lot about the health of the body, you know, which, let’s face it, at some point is going to be just buried in the ground, and, you know, that'll be that. But the soul lives on forever, and we almost, we almost never talk about soul health. We almost never talk about spiritual health. And one of the things that Dynamic Catholic is all about, one of the things that this program is all about, it's about helping people become spiritually healthy, or healthier.

 

Do you know when you are spiritually healthy? Can you tell, some days you're spiritually healthier than other days? Because that's the kind of awareness that God wants to give us. I think we can tell some days we're physically healthier than other days. God wants us to have that same sort of perspective on our soul, on our spiritual health. For me, one of the easiest ways to measure spiritual health is how easily I get frustrated. When I’m, when I’m spiritually healthy, nothing bothers me. When I’m spiritually healthy, nothing bothers me, anything can happen, crisis, problem, whatever. Nothing bothers me when I’m spiritually healthy. And it’s a really good barometer for me. Cause other days I’ll realize, man, that was the smallest thing, and it really frustrated me. And that my response was disproportionate to what just happened, and I realize, I’m not spiritually healthy today. I am not spiritually healthy today. And you think about all the things that we do spiritually, think about just going to church on Sunday, part of going to church on Sunday is just about taking our temperature, taking our blood pressure, spiritually, working out where we are spiritually, and what do we need to do to become a little healthier in the spiritual life.

 

One of our reasons for our obsession with the physical over the spiritual is because the immediate impact that the neglect of our physicality has. If you don't eat, you die in a few days. You don't breathe, you die even quicker. And so we are obsessed in some ways with the physical because there are very dire consequences to ignoring the physical realities of the human person. But we do have these spiritual realities as well. And they play out in different ways. And when we do become spiritually unhealthy, I think one of the things is that it distorts our personality. You know, it distorts our personality in ways that affects us from doing what God's called us to do, being the person God created us to be, and from relating with other people in healthy ways. I think sometimes we do meet people and they can’t seem to get on with anybody, they seem to upset everybody, and there’s something about those people, their personality has become distorted in some way. It’s stopped them from relating, you know, in regular ways with people with a certain goodness, in a certain positivity, in a certain willingness to serve other people and each each other. We all have questions that are on our minds. Questions that are in our hearts, you know. But, at the end of the day I think that a lot of life comes down to four questions: Who am I? What am I here for? What matters most? And what matters least? If you look at your day yesterday, did you spend most of your time on the things that matter most? Or did you get distracted by a million little things that don't really mean anything to anyone that significant? It happens to us all the time. And not just a day, you could go a whole week and then look back and think, “Wow, I didn't really do anything important this week. I didn't really spend any time on the things that matter most this week.” And worse than that, it could be a month, or it could be a year. Who are you? What are you here for? What matters most? What matters least? The answers to these questions take a long time to develop. And one of the ways we develop them is through this daily habit of prayer.

 

Yes, we're resistant to establishing this daily habit of prayer, but by establishing a daily habit of prayer, a few minutes each day, 10 minutes a day, I’ve been . . . for 25 years I've been encouraging people to spend 10 minutes a day in prayer. By establishing this daily habit of prayer, God will, very powerfully, answer those four questions. He will show you who you are, and what you're here for, and what matters most, and what matters least.

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Get Busy Living​

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When I was a kid, I don't know, maybe 9, 10 years old, I used to be in this choir at school, and we used to sing at funerals. We used to sing at funerals all the time, I don't know, once a week or something, we'd be singing at a funeral. And for some reason, it really had an impact on me. And, it really, I don’t know, just sort of put in my mind the idea that life really is short, and that we do all end up dying, and that we are, we're only passing through this place. We are pilgrims. You know, this is not home. You know, this is just, we're just passing through here. And, it is easy to forget that. It's easy to get caught up in life and forget that this, all of this, is temporary, and that we're just passing through here. And some people might say, "Well that’s a bit dark," or, "That's a bit grim," or, "That’s a bit depressing," or whatever. But I don't feel that way at all. I think that it is actually very, very healthy for us to spend some time thinking about death, from time to time.

 

As we make this journey toward Easter, and especially when we go into Holy Week, we will spend some time thinking about death. We'll spend some time . . .The Church, in her wisdom, will challenge us to think about death. And there's another instance of the genius of Catholicism, because when we think about death, and, you know, there’s another instance of the genius of Catholicism because when we think about death we actually live differently. When we think about death we live differently. You know, we go to Church on Sunday and one of the things that I, I just notice more and more and more is that I go to church on Sunday, every Sunday I go to church, and God tries to rearrange my priorities. I go back out into the world, my priorities get all messed up, come back the next Sunday, God tries to rearrange my priorities again, He tries to put my priorities back in order, you see, God loves order. God loves order, He loves peace, He loves order, He loves happiness, He loves joy. And the world very often robs us of those things and replaces those things with um, chaos and confusion. God loves order and clarity, but the world very often can fill us with chaos and confusion.

 

We come to church, you know, God tries to rearrange our priorities. When you read the Gospels, when you read the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, it is impossible not to have to either accept the Gospel, or reject the Gospel. And in accepting the Gospel, what happens? The Gospel wants to massively overhaul our priorities. When you fall in love, love rearranges our priorities. That’s what love does. And when you think about death, death rearranges our priorities. If you knew you had three years to live, what would you change on your schedule this year? If you knew you had three years to live, what would you change on your schedule this week? It changes things, doesn't it? And so from time to time, it's just really healthy for us to think about death.

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Ordinary Things

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At Dynamic Catholic, there are three qualities that I always want every team member to have and every team member to be growing in: committed, coachable, and aware. You can tell if someone’s committed or not committed, right? It’s sort of a binary thing. I saw, um, Steven Spielberg interviewed a few years ago and he said that, um, you can’t really put a movie on a scale to one or ten. He said that the movies either work or they don’t. It’s like a binary language. And, and the same thing’s with our commitment. You can’t sort of be sort of committed, you’re either committed or you’re not. And the second quality, coachable, you know, champions love coaching. Champions love coaching, they love getting you inside so they can grow, so they can become better. And the third quality, aware. You know, are we aware of how what we’re doing or what we’re saying is affecting the people around us. What I want to talk to you about is this third quality of awareness. It's one of the incredible gifts that God wants to give us and increase in us gradually as we grow spiritually. Most of us have awareness in hindsight. Most of us can look at something that happened last Christmas and say, "Ah, I get it now. When he said that to her and she said that to him, what was really going on was this." That's awareness in hindsight. What God wants to give us, he wants to, to give us an extraordinary gift really is the gift of present moment awareness. He wants us to be aware of things while they're actually happening.

 

So right now you're experiencing this message. Are you here? Are you thinking about what you have to do today? Are you thinking about something that has already happened today? Or are you here? He wants to give us incredible present moment awareness. He wants us to be aware of things that are happening while they're actually happening. You know, he doesn't want you to look back on some experience of your granddaughter coming up and giving you a kiss, three weeks from now, he wants, when your granddaughter comes up and gives you that kiss. He wants you to be completely absorbed in that moment. He wants you to be aware of it while it's actually happening. When you walk up to receive Jesus in the Eucharist at church this Sunday, he wants you to be completely aware of what is happening in that moment, while it's actually happening. He wants you to have life in every breath. He wants you to taste every mouthful of food, and he wants you to taste every drop of water. He wants you to have this astounding awareness.

 

Like any of these great spiritual gifts, we tend to find it very attractive. You know, when I talk about personal clarity and knowing who we are, and what we’re here for and what matters most and what matters least and the personal clarity that comes with that, people are like “yeah, great, give me that,” or “how do I get that?” or “sign me up for that.” You know, when we talk about this kind of awareness, this incredible present moment awareness, I think it’s the same thing. I think it’s like “yes, give me some of that.” And of course there’s hard work involved. How do we, how do we, develop this awareness? We develop the awareness by giving our full and complete attention to whoever and whatever is before us right now.

 

You know, I uh, I had a friend who spent a lot of time with Mother Teresa, and I asked her one day, I said, um, what was your favorite thing about Mother Teresa? She said to me, she said, “it didn’t matter what was going on in her life, if you were talking to her, it was like it was only you and her in the whole world. There was nothing else in the world, she just gave you her full attention for that time. Whether that time was three seconds or three minutes or an hour, she just was completely engaged in you.” And, when you think about the idea of all the things that must’ve been on her mind, all the things and people that must have been pulling her in a hundred different directions, and to have that ability just to give her complete attention to whoever was right in front of her at that moment, is really an astounding thing. That’s a way for us to practice awareness.

 

The great enemy of awareness: multitasking. Multitasking, which has been completely, sort of, defunked by scientists as not actually saving us time. We don’t actually accomplish more through multitasking, but we are addicted to multitasking. And multitasking is the great enemy of awareness. So if you want to grow in awareness, two things: 1)When you're with people, give them 100% of your attention, and 2) Stop multitasking. Whatever you're doing, give it 100% of your attention, get it done, and then move on to the next thing.

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Living Soulfully

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There’s a lot of different ways to think about life. There’s a lot of different ways to think about living. And I was, I was reading something about music a couple of years ago, and I saw the idea of like this soulful music. And I thought to myself, you know, “What does it mean to live soulfully?” You know? And When I think of living soulfully I think of something sort of unique and handmade, not mass produced. But I think we can stop living soulfully. I think we can start living in a mass-produced way. And when we do that, we actually lose ourselves.

 

God has this incredible dream. He wants you to become the-best-version-of-yourself. It’s an astounding dream when you think about it. It’s the dream every parent has for their children. They want them to reach all their potential, to become all they can be, to become the-best-version-of-themselves. And, of course, every day I make decisions that don’t help me become the-best-version-of-myself. You know? I wrote this stuff—I write this stuff, but that’s the struggle we have with our humanity, right? You’ve got your things you’re struggling with, I’ve got my things I’m struggling with. And guess what? Every single day I do things that I know, when I’m doing them, will not help me become the-best-version-of-myself.

 

Part of this great spiritual journey we’re on is minimizing the number of times that happens each day. You know, there are certain things we do that we know help us become the-best-versions-of-ourselves. There are certain things we do that we know don’t help us become the-best-versions-of-ourselves. So to increase the former and decrease the latter… and sometimes people, when they want to change something in their life, they’ll focus and focus and focus on the behavior they want to stop doing. And that tends never to work. Bad habits need to be crowded out of our lives with good habits. So if there is something you want to stop doing, you've got to crowd it out with other good things that do actually help you become the-best-version-of-yourself. And I guess it’s probably important for us not to assume that you want to become the-best-version-of-yourself. It’s probably important for us to pause and think about the question today, “Hey, is that important to me? Do I want to become a-better-version-of-myself today? Do I want to be able to look back a year from now and say, ‘I’m a-better-version-of-myself today than I was a year ago’?” The reason that I think it should be important to us, well one of the reasons, because there’s obviously many reasons, but one of the reasons I think it should be really important to us is because when we're striving to become the-best-version-of-ourselves, we tend to be living soulfully. And you know when you’re living soulfully, and you know when you’re not. But when we’re striving to become the-best-version-of-ourselves, that’s when we’re most fully alive.

 

You know, Jesus said in John’s Gospel, chapter 10 verse 10, “I have come so that you may have life and have it to the fullest.” Do you have that kind of life? Do you feel like you’re having life to the fullest? Do you feel like you’re experiencing life to the fullest? Do you feel like you’re becoming the-best-version-of-yourself, to the fullest? Because that’s what God wants for you. And I think deep, deep, deep down, none of us want to live a sort of generic, manufactured life. I think deep down, all of us, every single one of us, we want to live soulfully, in a way that is really beautifully hand-made, and unique, and just us. And guess what? God wants you to live soulfully like that as well.

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Hour by Hour

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So hopefully you’re finding these reflections helpful. Hopefully they’re speaking into you and speaking into your life in a really practical way. I think that’s one of the things we really strive for here at Dynamic Catholic, is to speak into your life in powerful ways, but also in very, very practical ways. Ways that you can take out and live today, tomorrow, the next day.

 

One of the things that changed my life is the idea I want to talk to you about today. And when I say it changed my life, I mean it completely changed my life. It completely changed my approach to God and my faith and spirituality. And it’s the idea that everything we do as Christians can be transformed into prayer. St. Paul said, “Pray constantly.” And we obviously can’t go into church all day and just pray all the time. And even if we could go into church all day and pray all the time, then we’d have to sleep at some point. We have to go home and sleep at some point. So, what did Paul mean when he said, “Pray constantly”? What did he have in mind? And what he had in mind was this incredible idea that everything we do can be transformed into prayer. Even sleeping. We can offer our sleep as a prayer. The idea that every hour of every day can be offered to God for a different reason. And I talk to people about this in different ways. Maybe you want to set an alarm on your clock or on your phone that just beeps every hour, and every hour you just take 10 seconds and say, "Alright, God. I’m gonna offer the next hour of my life and of my work, and I’m gonna offer it to you as a prayer for my friend Joe who is struggling with cancer at this moment.” Or, “I’m gonna offer it as a prayer for this couple who is struggling in their marriage at the moment.” Or, “I’m gonna offer it for one of my children.” Or, “I’m gonna offer it for my parents.” Or, whatever. You pick any intention you want, but every day, every hour, as that alarm goes off, you just take 10 seconds to say, “Alright, God. I offer the next hour of my work, or the next hour of my life, as a prayer for this intention. It’s 10 seconds out of every hour, but it changes the way we live. It changes the way we work. And when I first heard of the idea I was still a student, and it changed the way I studied.

 

Because if you really think about offering an hour to God as a prayer for an intention that’s important to you, you approach that hour differently. You just approach that hour with a completely different awareness. And I think that’s part of the problem. I think part of our problem is, you know, we’re just not that conscious as we go through the days, and the weeks, and the months of our lives. And a lot of the various aspects of, you know, our Christian spirituality are just designed to wake us up. Because sometimes we really can be sleepwalking through life. And so if it’s time to do the dishes and you hate doing the dishes, well you do the dishes and you offer it as a prayer for some particular intention. And you do it well. And you pay attention to the details of the work. And you do it with joy. Even though you hate doing it, you do it with joy. And you offer that as a prayer. Maybe you hate mowing the lawn, maybe that’s your thing. But every moment of every day can be transformed into prayer. And as we grow in this awareness, it changes the way we live, but it also changes the way we love. Imagine being loved by someone who's that aware.

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Interesting People

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When you think about the people you most enjoy spending time with, when you think about the people you most enjoy conversation with, the people you find most interesting. What do those people have in common? For me, it tends to be books and reading, and that sort of thing. I find the most interesting people in my life tend to be readers. Um, and maybe that’s cause that’s something I’m interested in, and maybe that’s because there’s a thousand great books out there that I just don’t have time to read. But one of my favorite questions to ask people is, um, what are you reading at the moment? And, when I ask people what are you reading at the moment, and they say “ah, I’m reading this great book about this,” or “I’m reading this book, it’s not really that good I’m thinking about stopping reading it,” well I know I can tick that one off the list cause I was maybe thinking about reading that one but I know that maybe it’s not worth the time. But very often people can share with you in a minute, or two minutes, or five minutes, the essence of the book that might take me twenty hours to read, thirty hours to read. And so, I find I’m constantly learning things from people who are readers.  In my mid- to late- teens, I started reading the Bible, and tried to develop a habit over time of reading just a chapter a day, looking at some particular point or lesson in that chapter, and reflecting on that chapter. And uh . . .  and I’ve gone through periods of success and failure with that.

 

You know, I think that’s, that's the humanity of trying to establish any great habit in our lives. And the last thing I want to do is sit here and pretend that all of this stuff I’m talking to you about is stuff that I’ve mastered, because that absolutely is not true. And I think that the people who get to be around me every day, the people who know me, would tell you that. You know, it’s that I’m struggling with this stuff as much as it is that you are struggling with this stuff. And one of the things that I really have

struggled with over time is to keep this habit of just reading the Bible for a few minutes each day. And there are times where it, it just goes spectacularly well, and those times, it might be a whole year, it might be two years, it can be a season where it’s, it comes very naturally to me, um, I fall into it very easily. And then there are other days where it’s just, it’s a real struggle, I have to force myself to do it. And it feels, um, empty and fake and dry and like I’m not getting anything out of it, or that sort of thing. Um, and there are times when I don’t do it because, cause I’m lazy. And the thing I’ve noticed is that when I do do it, when I do make the effort, when I do break through the resistance, I tend to make better decisions. When I’m reading the Bible regularly, when I’m reflecting on the Word of God in a meaningful way, on a regular basis, I just tend to make better decisions. I’m a better decision maker.

 

And when you think about how important decisions are to the foundation of life, you think about how our decisions affect who we are and where we are today, and how our decisions will affect who we are and where we are a year from now, ten years from now, and beyond, it really is, you know, making choices, is one of the great building blocks of great lives. And so we should be constantly honing our ability to become phenomenal decision makers. And I think God wants us to be a phenomenal decision maker. And I think it’s one of the reasons he gives us the Bible. Because as you go through those stories you realize, “Wow! Some people make great decisions.” And, “Wow! Some people make phenomenally stupid decisions.” And, “Wow! Some people made some great decisions and some phenomenally stupid decisions, even though it was the same person.” And so I think it’s a great theme to explore the Bible with. Who made great decisions? Who made poor decisions? When was the same person making their best decisions, and when was the same person making their worst decisions, and what was different in their life at those different times? Are you a good decision maker? Do you feel like, do you feel like you’re a really good decision maker? Do you feel like your yes is a strong, passionate, purposeful yes? And do you feel like your no is a firm no? Or do you feel like you say yes to some things for the wrong reason sometimes? You know I think sometimes we say yes to stuff just cause we feel like we have to. Or sometimes we say yes to stuff cause we feel like everyone will notice if we don’t go, and I don’t know if they will or won’t notice. Maybe sometimes we say yes to stuff because we’re afraid, right? We’re afraid of disappointing people. Sometimes we say yes to stuff because we want people to like us, you know. We want everyone to like us. It’s a fascinating thing, really, when you think about it. We want everyone to like us, even the people we don’t like. We want them to like us. It’s staggering when we think about how important other people’s opinions to us are, and how little we let God’s opinion play out in our lives. It’s an extraordinary thing. The point is, we say yes to a lot of things for the wrong reasons, and we say no to a lot of things  for the wrong reasons, and God wants to rectify that. He wants you to become a phenomenal decision maker.

 

And so here, the practical takeaway that you can start living right now, today: Read one chapter of the Bible each day. For how long? For the rest of your life. And on days when you’re struggling to do it, force yourself to do it. Break through resistance. And offer that for me so that I might do it that day, because I’m probably struggling to do it as well. Our lives change when our habits change. Read one chapter of the Bible, pick out a word or a phrase or an idea or a lesson, and just reflect on that one lesson each day. You’ll become a better decision maker.