Note to God

The danger of imprudences is that they fool us. Little by little they put our vigilance to sleep, they dull the edge of our conscience, they lessen the repugnance that sin aroused in us at the beginning, they make us see the law and the divine demands as less strict than they are; they make in conjunction the scope of the liberties we allow ourselves even greater. In parallel fashion, as one borders on sin without succumbing to it, one presumes about one’s own strength. One day, sin will no longer frighten us, and then we are disarmed and we fall. This is the inevitable result of indiscretions.

Supernatural life The Fourth Life 1. The Way, 279 Most people have a plane-like vision, stuck to the earth, of two dimensions. When you live a supernatural life, God will give you the third dimension: height, and with it, perspective, weight and volume. There is an order to living things: Lowest order: vegetative life, animal life and rational life. But often, men are ignorant or forget that there is another much more important kind of life, of a higher order, supernatural, way above the possibilities of human nature. It is a gift from God, fruit of his love for men. We may call it in different ways: **spiritual life, interior life, or supernatural life.** - I have a close friend, who is non Christian, he is really Kind and generous. But he always share with me this sense of emptiness. This void he is feeling. I tell him it's the yearning for God, for our homeland isnt here. But in heaven, united with God. But his rational side cannot accept it. Truly faith is a gift and...

Love becomes a demon when it becomes a God. Cause love can be distorted.  Apart from agape, the other 3 types of love can be distorted. - eros , distorted and ignore parents - Philia , overly attached to friendships -  Romantic love (Eros) may demand immoral actions, or love of country (patriotism) can become a demoniac force that justifies atrocities CS Lewis , the 4 loves

As Blessed Guadalupe Ortiz encouraged: ‘Go deeper in that silence to arrive where God alone is: where not even the angels can enter without our permission.’

To help us understand the essential things 

The more you repeat a behavior, the more you reinforce the identity associated with that behavior. In fact, the word identity was originally derived from the Latin words essentitas, which means being, and identidem, which means repeatedly. Your identity is literally your “repeated beingness.”

When faced with decisions, big or small, we have the privilege of bringing them to Him in prayer first. As Blessed Guadalupe Ortiz encouraged: ‘ Go deeper in that silence to arrive where God alone is: where not even the angels can enter without our permission

Only two things are needed to commit a sin: negligence and an occasion of sin. The occasion of sin can always surprise us, it does not depend on ourselves, but it is up to us whether we give in to negligence or avoid it. Now, to follow Jesus from a distance is to neglect Him. Negligentia is the opposite of diligentia. In one we find care, exactitude, zeal. In the other carelessness, forgetfulness, coolness. Diligere means to love someone chosen from a thousand others, Neglegere means not to pay attention, to have no preferences, to be detached. Negligence is a lack of attention (in the singular) and a want of attentions (in the plural) and both take us away from Jesus. Lack of attention which can extend from simple illusion to blindness. If Peter had observed himself more he would have spotted the moment when his first impulse of beautiful generosity veered towards imprudence and rashness. Let us be attentive therefore to the first warnings of our conscience and severe in correcting th...

The goal in any sport is to finish with the best score, but it would be ridiculous to spend the whole game staring at the scoreboard. The only way to actually win is to get better each day. In the words of three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Walsh, “The score takes care of itself.” The same is true for other areas of life. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.  Both winners and losers have the same goal

A Benedictine commentator of the IXth Century wrote quite rightly: “ Peter could not have denied the Saviour if he had stayed by His side”. The ancient writer does not say “if he had come back”, but, “if he had stayed by His side.” This time we understand. Indeed, Peter could have stayed by Jesus’ side, if he had not drawn his sword without orders to do so and, above all, if he had known how to watch and pray with the Saviour. He could then have accompanied Him to the end, confining himself to suffering in silence. Peter, who might have stayed, could no longer return to Jesus’ side, and that is the tragedy of his misadventure. Having abandoned Him in the beginning he could only follow Jesus afterwards at a long distance. At a distance, now quickening his step so as not to lose sight of them, now slowing up so as not to attract attention, all the time, waiting for an opportune moment to rejoin Him. But however short the distance that separated him from his Master, that gap was still too...

I recently heard an interview with a olympic biathlon Claire Egen - ski and shoot. And how crazy extreme the two sports are - one high adrenaline and one high focus.  And the strategy to switch gear is mental resilience and pacing. Halfway through the skiing, she learn the need to regulate breath, not be more fatigued, so that at the shooting range, she can focus better to shoot.  <life is about planning the next move> During shooting, the last shot is statistically the highest failure shot. Especially when you have been shooting consecutive wins. It's the mental gymnastic of not being distracted and the pressure to win. She shared she shot 17 wins and the last 3 shots, she missed. And she said there was a lot of self talk in her head, like "I must win", "it's just one more shot". She forgot to check the winds, having a steady trigger squeeze. <there's a need to focus on process rather than outcome. The outcome will distract you if you dont focu...

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more.

Brailsford had been hired to put British Cycling on a new trajectory. What made him different from previous coaches was his relentless commitment to a strategy that he referred to as “ the aggregation of marginal gains ,” which was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do. Brailsford said, “The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.” Brailsford and his coaches began by making small adjustments you might expect from a professional cycling team. They redesigned the bike seats to make them more comfortable and rubbed alcohol on the tires for a better grip. They asked riders to wear electrically heated overshorts to maintain ideal muscle temperature while riding and used biofeedback sensors to monitor how each athlete responded to a particular workout. The team tested va...

On the agony in garden What can we learn: Do not let us see things in a worse light for that would be to make the shadows even darker. Let us keep our outlook far-seeing and lucid. Whatever tomorrow holds for us and whatever worries trouble you above all, fathers of families, about the future of your sons, one certain duty, at least, is on you and on us all, that is, not to give in to discouragement.

His problem is that he is self centred in observing God's commandment. He has forgotten to love his neighbour with his wealth. 

To be loved by someone is a privilege. To be loved by God who loves us for eternity is an undeserving gift.

Temptation is hard to resist Spirit willing , flesh weak So that temptation may not lead us to sin, let us watch our weak points attentively, let us restrict ourselves to a programme of life which keeps us from the dangers of incoherence, and the tricks of fantasy, do not let us forgive our negligences, let us control severely the influences to which we are subjected. This is vigilance. 

All too often, we think that God works only through our better parts, yet most of his plans are realized in and despite our frailty. Thus Saint Paul could say: “To keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me: ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness’” (2 Cor 12:7-9).

In ancient Greece, the concept of arete was used to capture the idea of living up to one’s full potential and purpose. Arete was, in some sense, the earliest known incarnation of the modern self-improvement movement, encouraging the people to strive for continuous growth and excellence across a range of life areas, including relationships, intellectual pursuits, moral conduct, and more. The concept connects closely to eudaemonia, a state of flourishing happiness and fulfillment that is achieved only through seeking growth, meaning, purpose, and authenticity. The ancient Greek philosophers believed that through the pursuit of arete, the intentional life of growth and purpose, one can achieve a state of eudaemonic happiness.

Curiosity serves you in your early years as you learn about the world; a rapid ascent up the learning curve is what allows you to survive to reproductive age in the wild. But once you’ve figured out how your world works, that same curiosity is more likely to kill you in your later years if it pushes you to explore beyond the safety of your core routines.  A life without learning is a life devoid of the desire to search, explore, and learn and lacks the texture created by this desire. A life without curiosity is an empty life, a life of stasis, a life without wonder. Paraphrasing a friend on the topic, inside every eighty-year-old is a ten-year-old wondering, What the f*ck just happened? But the seeds of that sentiment are sown many years earlier. They are sown in your twenties and thirties when you stop pursuing any interests or hobbies outside your job. They are sown in your forties and fifties when you stop trying to understand the world and start saying, “That’s just the way it ...

 THE BIG QUESTION: WHO will be sitting in the front row at your funeral?  THE THREE PILLARS OF SOCIAL WEALTH: DEPTH: Connection to a small circle of people with deep, meaningful bonds BREADTH: Connection to a larger circle of people for support and belonging beyond the self, either through individual relationships or through community, religious, spiritual, or cultural infrastructure EARNED STATUS: The lasting respect, admiration, and trust of your peers that you receive on the basis of earned, not acquired, status symbols

Earned status is the great equalizer. It is the real respect, admiration, and trust received through hard-won treasures:  Free time  Loving relationships  Purposeful work, expertise, and wisdom Healthy mind and body  Hard-won financial success The richest people in the world cannot acquire these things in a day. If you don’t make a clear effort to create the space and prioritize effectively, each of these markers will prove elusive. The world’s richest people cannot build a loving relationship any faster than you. They cannot forge a healthy mind and body any faster than you

By seneca

The Imitation: We are all weak.. but be sure that none is weaker than yourself. You are the weakest. Had not been grace given to you, you will have fallen much more. And if this grace had been given to someone else, he will be so much more  holy

We can make ourselves holy in every situation in which God places us, and therefore we can do so in family life, looking after the home and the children, in our workshop or at our work-table. The Carthusian sanctifies himself in contemplation and St. Joseph became holy at his bench. The Carmelite in fasting and the mother in bringing well-being and joy to her home. Wherever God has placed you, in your home, your office, in your social circle, you have a fixed task to perform—it is not your neighbour’s, it is yours—and according to God’s intention, it ought to sanctify you if, there where you are, you live your Christianity to the full. Where God has put you, you are irreplaceable, you are given an apostolate that no one else but you can discharge. Do not look for another field of action, it is there that you will sanctify yourself by making your brethren holy.