Catholic Coaching
Healing the Heart by Transforming the Mind
Resources
How we Think
I'll never forget the first time it sank in - that our thoughts determine our emotions, our emotions determine how we act, and we can CHOOSE the thoughts we think! This was incredible. This was the first glimpse of hope for me that I actually had some sort of sway over the emotional turbulence that I would describe as my life. Check out the lesson above, it is key to how I coach. The Model is the foundation of the mindset coaching practice and the way in which we start to initiate true transformation.
Metanoia Catholic Daily 7 Journal
The Metanoia Catholic Daily 7 Journal has changed my life and has the capacity to change yours. This is the greatest, most practical tool I have ever come across that has opened the door to my interior life and shown me what I could not uncover by myself. I love coaching people on the skill of this journal because there is so much to gain from going about it as intended. It's thorough, it takes time, but I guarantee you, it will always be time well spent.
Emotions
Emotions are good. Emotions have a purpose. God gifted them to us for a reason. But have you ever felt at the mercy of your own emotional tyrades? Emotions can be like toddlers: unpredictable, unreasonable, intolerable. Emotions have to be lovingly cultivated to be of use, sculpted, trained, conditioned, or they do run the show. They have the potential to be our greatest superpower and thus, can be the source of our greatest downfall.
The Power of Words
Have you ever been in a conversation with a friend and you know the gist of what they’re saying, but a little part in your mind goes, “was that the right word?”, and then the conversation keeps going. Words mean something. Words are on purpose. In fact, I wonder if you have ever thought about the fact that Jesus is referred to as “The Word.” I think because of this, and the power of “The Word” of God, there is a certain reverence in the meaning and history of a word. Words are holy ground.
The Battlefield of the Mind
Did you know that the evil one has access to your thoughts, memories and imagination? Not your soul, he can never make you choose something or do something against your will, but he can mess with your thoughts. Ever been so sure of a grand change for the better and then a day later, you start to waiver and feel silly for even considering yourself capable? That is a simple example of spiritual warfare - the battlefield of the mind is where the devil works to take us down. "You can't do that." "Who do you think you are?" "Everybody's judging you." These are not of God. The devil works most inconspicuously in sewing seeds of doubt in the mask of our own internal voice.
Identity: Who am I and why am I here?
We are each made in the image of God. St. Ambrose famously said, "Know oh beautiful soul that you are the image of God. Know that you are the glory of God." I was seeking to understand and embrace this truth myself when I stumbled across this quote and it has stayed with me. We each have this very life within us. We bear His image in the way we steward our intellect and our will. These two components of our psyche are in fact our Soul. It is His life within us that keeps our soul alive and we mirror him most when we use it to move toward Him. God gave us a mind with which to know and a heart with which to love Him. What are you using your heart to know and mind to love?
The Interior Life & Virtue
Virtue is the means to God. The virtues are the steps of the staircase to heaven. Virtue can sound off-putting, something only reserved for the knights and ladies of old, but to live a life of virtue is in fact something God lovingly calls each of us to because it only through the practice and engagement in the struggle for virtue that we enter into our path to sanctity. The virtuous struggle may be the most heroic and romantic love story ever told. The struggle for the created to return to their creator, in order to rest for eternity in the embrace of perfect love. The funny thing is, virtue does not have to be a struggle at all. To overcome vice is hard, but once nestled in virtue, it becomes something that is done easily, promptly and joyfully! Ever wonder why the saints were so gosh-darn peaceful?! It's because they mastered the struggle. Life doesn't have to be so hard. God wants it to be easy, swift and joyful, and virtue is how that can be true for you and me.
Happiness
The Catholic Church defines our supreme happiness as the Beatific Vision. Fancy words. Literally it means seeing God “face to face.” A simpler understanding of this intended end for which we have been created, is that God intends for us to be with him in heaven at the end of time, forever sharing in the eternal, loving embrace of the Trinity. So, whether you like it or not, you were created with this ultimate destiny in mind. It is written somewhere on your soul, so that you intuitively seek this very thing. There is something in the very fibers of your being that tingles with the desire to be happy, you cannot escape it. Often, however, we get confused over what will bring us true happiness. We forget where lies our greatest joy, or we think that something else will finally bring us the freedom and peace that all our hearts seek. But if that thing is not God, it will never fully fill that void and will leave us with an aching heart.