Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.103 - Dr. Andrew Abela: Atomic Habits Told You How, Aquinas Told You Which | Catholic University of America | Virtue Ethics | Catholic Business

Transcript

Ep.103 - Dr. Andrew Abela: Atomic Habits Told You How, Aquinas Told You Which | Catholic University of America | Virtue Ethics | Catholic Business · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

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  The general approach to building any habits, and therefore to
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  building any virtue, is to pick a bite sized piece, something
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  really simple that can do every day so that it becomes a habit.
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  This is Virtuous Leaders, the podcast for basic athletes who
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  will speak truth, do good or die trying.
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  Here's the show. You are the founding Dean of the
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  Bush School of Business at CUAI. Was wondering what can Thomas
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  Aquinas teach us about living a successful life?
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  How long do you have the the my particular focus in looking at
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  Aquinas has been on his treatise on the virtues.
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  And so living the virtues, living the habits of excellence
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  that they are, is at the heart I I think, of all human success,
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  both kind of internal success and external people who are
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  successful are successful because they are courageous,
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  disciplined, just wise, etcetera.
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  And these are all habits that we call virtues.
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  And so, yeah, he can teach us everything we need to know.
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  So what? Why?
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  Would you write a book about the virtues of Aquinas as opposed to
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  just encouraging people to read Aquinas?
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  He's not easy to read even in English, let alone in Latin,
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  partly because the way he writes, he's writing 750 years
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  ago. He has a style of writing that
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  takes a lot of effort. So for example, we have a weekly
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  reading group in the Bush school where we read Aquinas and.
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  And we'll read. It'll take us an hour to read
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  one article. Yeah, So.
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  So here the Zuma has broken up into many questions, hundreds of
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  questions. Each question has several
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  articles in the response, so we won't even get through one
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  question in an hour. It's because it's so packed, so
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  dense, that while it's certainly worth study and I encourage
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  people to go and read the original, I worry that most
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  people won't. And so I thought what I needed
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  to do was make something more accessible.
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  The other problem is the translation.
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  Many of the English words we use to translate his Latin terms
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  have shifted in meaning. So for example, when we say the
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  word prudence, we use the word prudence to translate prudencia,
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  the the virtue that he was talking about.
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  But when we think of the word prudence, it's kind of like be
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  like somebody who's overly cautious.
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  But but by prudencia he meant, and folks writing at the time
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  meant was the habit of, of practical wisdom, making wise
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  decisions. And so I wanted to make sure
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  that I would do a kind of better job translating another one
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  really evident 1 is the virtue of Patsy encia in Latin we
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  normally translate as patience. We say patience is a virtue.
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  But he did not mean by parciencia what we mean by
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  patience, what we mean by be patience.
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  Like don't be in a hurry, you know, but what he meant by
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  parciencia was his. His definition is endurance
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  through long sorrow. So things that are wearing you
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  down, making you sad, making you anxious, you keep moving ahead.
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  So I translate that as resilience because that's, I
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  think a much better word. It means today for us what Parsi
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  Ansia meant to him. The Virtuous Leaders audience is
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  based young Catholic parents or values aligned entrepreneurs, so
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  they're trying to combine living a virtuous life with the DV DS
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  of the day of the moment. What do they get out of reading
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  your book? So I do a number of things.
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  So in addition to this sort of translation effort of making
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  Aquinas very accessible, I also tie it in with the habits
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  literature. So there's a lot of books about
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  habits and the power of habits, really good ones like Atomic
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  Habits, for example. The problem with those books is
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  they tell you how to develop habits and they tell you nothing
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  about which ones. So in my book, I try to connect
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  with that literature and say, yeah, but the virtues are the
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  prime habits that we should all be developing.
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  Hence the Super habit. The the most important habits to
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  develop are are the virtues. And then the other thing I do is
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  I go through all of the contemporary scientific research
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  about the virtues of which there are thousands of studies, good
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  and bad, and in between. And I go through, I bring out
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  the best studies and I show what science where science is kind of
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  confirming what Aquinas told us 750 years ago.
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  And then the last thing I do is using both Aquinas's guidance
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  and the research, I turn it all into practical steps.
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  If somebody wants to grow in resilience, for example, or grow
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  in diligence or grow in any of these other virtues, I, I, I
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  kind of give them the kind of proven exercises, little things
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  you can do every day to grow in the different virtues.
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  And then I tie it all together. And maybe you've seen this in
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  the the Anatomy of Virtue, which is a diagram that comes with the
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  book. That is the logic that Aquinas
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  puts all the virtues together. I drew into a diagram to show
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  how all the virtues. It's a very impressive diagram
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  ends. I genuinely think one of the few
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  improvements that could be made to the SEMA.
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  Which, wow, that's a compliment indeed.
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  I would say yeah. OK.
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  Would you be open to doing a little practical exercise here?
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  Sure. OK, so let let's say prudence, a
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  virtue I admire quite a bit, not very sure how to grow in it.
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  What? What do I do?
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  So prudence practical wisdom, right?
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  The habit of making wise decisions.
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  The first thing that I recommend.
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  So prudence is one of the four cardinal virtues.
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  The big ones is look at Aquinas's structure.
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  So my diagram of his structure to see what are they call them.
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  The sub virtues or partial virtues that are you can treat
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  as virtues as themselves, but rather than trying to grow in a
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  cardinal virtue itself, pick one of the smaller ones.
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  So prudence, practical wisdom has 8, and they're grouped into
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  three areas. The first area is gathering
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  information that you need to make a decision.
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  The second area is reasoning through that information to draw
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  conclusions. And then the third area is
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  preparing those conclusions so that they'll be acted upon.
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  And So what you would do is you say, OK, in making decisions,
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  where am I? Where do I usually fall down?
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  And many people would say, for example, you know, I'm good at
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  making decisions. I'm really bad at implementing,
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  you know, and, and Aquinas will tell us that a decision that's
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  not acting on his was never really made, you know, in a
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  sense. So, so he has three virtues for
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  making sure that you're going to act on your decision.
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  And the first one is called foresight, which is the habit
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  of, of having, having and following goals.
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  If you don't have a clear set of goals in your decisions are, are
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  going to be kind of almost ran, you know, they have to be
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  aligned with your goals. So that's the first.
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  The second one is, is what I call alertness.
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  And it's basically the habit of having situational awareness
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  because if you're not constant exactly, exactly because if
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  you're not constantly scanning the environment to see what's
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  out there, what's going on, then your decisions aren't going to
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  be aligned with what's going on. And then the third one I, I
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  called preparedness, which is basically anticipating what
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  could go wrong, what could get in the way of successful
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  implementation of your decision and then preparing kind of
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  anticipating counter or coming up with some, some way of making
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  sure that that doesn't, doesn't get in your way.
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  So then, and then there's a, there's also a virtue for
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  reasoning we call reasoning, which is basically just kind of
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  the habit of logical thinking. And then there are 4 virtues for
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  gathering information as well. So, So what you would do is
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  you'd figure out which, where, where are my weakest.
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  And then that's the particular virtue I want to practice.
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  So let's say many people. Can we try Soleria?
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  Yeah, sure, sure. I've been told that I'm weak in
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  that so. Yeah.
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  So am I so helpful? I'm going to be but but it's the
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  general approach to building any habits and therefore the
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  building any virtue is to pick a bite sized piece, something
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  really simple that you can do every day so that it becomes a
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  habit. That's a the the if I summarize
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  all the the habit literature, James gear and Tomic habits does
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  a good job and make it even simpler.
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  Have to make it easy, make it obvious, make it reward.
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  OK, so so you make it easy as a bite size piece.
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  So let's say give me an example of the kinds of things that
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  you're making decisions about that you would want to improve
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  your situational awareness about.
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  Give me a give me. A business decisions because oh,
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  I, I work for myself, I'm a solopreneur.
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  I have great vision and aspirations, but it's really
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  hard to know today what am I supposed to do in order to get
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  to my goal. What without itself might be the
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  virtue of foresight as well. But but but, let's staying with
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  the situation. Awareness with alertness.
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  What industry are you in? Well, I'm a psychologist by
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  training, but my in my discretionary time I I work on
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  this podcast and public speaking with the idea of how do I
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  transform the world for good by helping those who helped the
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  most. Cool.
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  So you may want to. Something you might do, for
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  example, is you might put in the word virtue into a Google search
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  every morning, you know, and look at what news comes up so
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  that something happened in the last 24 hours that is relevant
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  to virtuous leaders, you know. But you, you want to make
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  something really simple that you can do in say 5 minutes and then
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  you want to kind of try to anchor it to something else that
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  you already do every day. So for example, might be OK the
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  first time I sit down at my desk each day, the 1st 5 minutes are
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  going to be scanning the environment to see what new
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  thing has come up that is relevant to my work.
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  And you do that every day. And, and if you need to, you
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  kind of celebrate the 5 minutes by giving yourself some kind of
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  reward. I'm not going to drink my first
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  cup of coffee until I've already done this search, for example.
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  But the key thing is something small that you can do every day
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  because after a few weeks at most, it will become a habit,
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  which means it will become instinctive.
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  You won't even have to think about it.
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  You'll just be doing it. And then you could add on more
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  if you wanted to. If you think, OK, I need to look
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  broader, I need to spend 10 minutes reading the Wall Street
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  Journal or, or whatever it is you're just going to, you keep
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  adding. But the main point is to take a
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  bite at a time. OK, I'm, I'm generally surprised
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  that you approve of James Cleary's, James Cleary's
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  approach. I thought you would look down
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  upon it. No, no, no, no, no.
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  It's, it's grounded in social science.
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  So, so it's, it's, it's real stuff.
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  I say my biggest, my biggest problem with it, that's not
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  really a problem, it's just a shortfall is that he tells you
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  all about how to develop habits, but it says nothing about which
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  ones, you know, and, and, and So what I'm doing is I'm kind of
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  building on him. And, and so that's the reason I
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  called my book Super Habits, not the virtues or something like
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  that, is I wanted to emphasize that point about the fact that
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  the virtues are habits. And so basically, you know, read
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  James Clear by all means, and then read my book to see which
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  habits you should be focusing on.
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  OK, so perhaps now we can shift to your mission at CUA, which is
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  what? What do you hope to account?
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  If you had someone gave you a billion dollars, what would you
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  hope to accomplish? We're only about 110th of the
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  way there. We've raised about 100 million
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  so far. So so.
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  Not bad, but. Could use another 900.
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  So, so Catholic University of America is the Church's
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  university in the United States. Of the 200 and some university
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  colleges and universities in the United States, only one is owned
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  directly by the Catholic Church and that's us.
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  And so our board comprises of Cardinals, archbishops, bishops,
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  as well as lay people as well. The Bush School of Business is
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  the Business School within the Catholic University.
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  So we are the church's Business School, if you will, in, in the
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  United States. We're only 12 years old.
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  We, you know, we teach church management certainly, but that's
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  actually a very small part of our program.
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  Our main program is undergraduate and now MBA,
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  basically teaching people how to be successful in business while
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  growing as faithful Catholics without any compromise.
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  So when we first started, we thought, you know, we would be
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  doomed if we were we were branded as the sort of goody 2
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  shoes Business School. And so, so we have focused on
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  making sure that our students are very successful in terms of
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  their, their placement, their early years at work and so on.
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  And that and that has worked really well, not not least I
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  think because of the virtue focus.
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  So we really we pay a lot and the increasing amount of
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  attention even more in latter years on helping former students
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  in virtue and, and as a result, the employers are really happy
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  with our graduates. And so we have very high
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  placement, high 90s percent placement of our graduates.
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  And the employers keep coming back and saying we want more of
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  these students because they show up on time, they work hard,
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  they're respectful, you know that they, they are, they are
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  animated by, by virtue. And so they make for very
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  attractive employers. And I'm happy to say they make
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  lots of money too. So, so we had some really
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  successful students. I'd say we're only 12 years old,
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  but I have graduates. I have one graduate.
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  I just chatting with him yesterday is making over
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  $3,000,000 a year and he's only seven years out from our school.
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  You know, I have others making the two $300,000 a year, which
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  we think is really important. If it's a Business School, you
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  know that we want people to to be virtuous in business and make
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  lots of money because often times they meet their
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  sweetheart, you know, they get married, they want to raise a
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  family and maybe they want to raise it on one income so that
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  mom can be home with the kids in some cases.
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  In other cases they want to work, but we want to make make
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  that be a choice for them and not to be forced to have both
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  parents work for lack of money. You're clearly a very thoughtful
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  person. What?
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  What do you think Catholics in America need to do to transform
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  the culture for the good? What?
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  I'm persuaded by Chesterton's line.
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  And what's wrong with the world, You know his first answer was
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  me. And so we transform ourselves
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  first, we grow in virtue, we grow in holiness, and everything
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  else follows from that. I am convinced that that's the
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  the answer. It's the simple answer, but not
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  the easy answer, right? There's always such a temptation
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  to go fix things out there. The hardest things to fix is in
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  here. Yeah, no, that's true.
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  OK. Any anything else you want to
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  share with us, Professor Abella? On, on that.
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  I mean, in addition to fixing yourself then I think I'm very
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  encouraged by new, I'm seeing investment companies, private
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  equity companies, job search firms, schools like ours all
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  focusing on a Catholic or other Christian perspective on
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  business. I think that's really important.
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  And when we started the Business School 12 years ago, there was
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  very little of that around. And now things have really,
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  really taken off. And I think that's that's really
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  important, making it easier to bring your face into everything
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  you do, including in particular your work.
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  Well, thank you, Doctor Villa. Thanks for listening.
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  Please like, subscribe and share with your friends.
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  See you next time.