Tame Vices, Strengthen Virtues, Find True Joy

The entire year of 2020 put us through the wringer and tested our responses and reactions to the full spectrum of life issues all concentrated in one, long year. Having to deal with the strange new world in a global pandemic, with political and cultural outbreaks of different sorts, we’ve learned what we can and cannot do. That’s part but only part of a new book about a different sort of self knowledge, written before its authors could have imagined the dysphoria of the year that set back even their book’s production.

What we probably know best about ourselves is our tastes and preferences, likes and dislikes, favorite things and people. More honest, soul-searching people may go deeper and see in themselves tendencies toward weakness here and there, and lack of discipline in staying on task or schedule. That’s fine for self-directed workers in these strange times, or people keen on New Year’s resolutions or dieting or giving up smoking or any other behavior changing goals in any times. But infinitely better and more consequential when, beyond a gut check, going deeper is part of a daily examination of conscience, and even better if augmented by a spiritual audit, something most of us probably have not done before.

I learned more about it in the new book The WillPower Advantage: Building Habits for Lasting Happiness. Don’t think it’s another self-help book, it’s so much more than that. As authors Tom Peterson and Ryan Hanning clarify, it’s “neither pop-psychology nor watered-down Christianity, rather, it is a lifestyle reboot that can enable us to respond better to Christ’s call to follow Him.” I learned more in a conversation with Ryan Hanning In the Forum, especially hearing him explain the purpose behind the mission driven book and its goal: claiming lives, families, cities and culture for Christ. And consequently, finding real peace and joy, neither of which are found in other pursuits that ultimately, leave people unsatisfied and searching for more and ever more.

Reading the book involves engaging in a spiritual audit to know yourself better, particularly your temperament, your strengths and weaknesses, your vices and the necessary virtues you need to overcome “temptations and the compulsions that lead you to vice and steal your peace and joy”.

We tend to think it’s politics and social media that lead to bad behavior and rob us of peace and joy. It may be both, but it’s also a lot more. This is a truth and consequences engagement with our interior challenges in the choices we make, the results of our temperament. That’s innate, but the strengths and weaknesses associated with the four temperaments can be known, adjusted and disciplined. Which is what this extraordinary book and mission is about.

The timing for it could not have been better.