The Self Compass and Pope Francis on Faith

As a psychologist-theologian, I am observing today a heartfelt cry from Christians worldwide to draw close in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ. As Paul says, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4-6).

Perhaps this passionate desire for a faith-filled experience of God's love results from the combined world pressures of terrorism, financial collapses, global climate changes, and political uncertainties. What ever the cause, we are all saying to Jesus what the apostle Peter said to him. "Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life" (Peter 6:68).

I want to share with you some of Pope Francis' first apostolic letter “Lumen Fidei” (“The Light of Faith”). I do this with admiration for his spirit of pastoral care, and with the conviction that he is speaking on behalf of the Body of Christ, Catholics and Protestants alike:

Pope Francis

The light of faith is unique, since it is capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence. A light this powerful cannot come from ourselves but from a more primordial source: in a word, it must come from God.

Faith heralds the transforming power of belief in Jesus. Faith does not merely gaze at Jesus, but sees things as Jesus himself sees them, with his own eyes: it is a participation in his way of seeing.

We trust the architect who builds our home, the pharmacist who gives us medicine for healing, the lawyer who defends us in court. We also need somebody trustworthy and knowledgeable where God is concerned. Jesus, the Son of God, is the one who makes God known to us.

Faith makes us aware of a magnificent calling, the vocation of love. It assures us that this love is trustworthy and worth embracing, for it is based on God's faithfulness which is stronger than our every weakness.

To receive the transforming power of Jesus requires a personal transformation, a journey never completely finished in this life. But we can benefit from psychological and spiritual tools that help us move forward. One of these is the Self Compass. The Self Compass helps us renew our personal conversion to Jesus and cooperate with the Holy Spirit in guiding our daily lives.

This Vatican endorsed model for personality transformation is based on Christ's personality and lets the radical new reality of his resurrection shape our personalities. By applying the Self Compass growth tool, your life can be purified and transformed during this Year of Faith.

The Self Compass

LOVE & ASSERTION

Faith is deeply connected to personality health. Faith helps to counter the corrosive effects of anxiety, depression, and anger. The Self Compass promotes personality health and thereby increases a person's faith. 

Love and Assertion are two complementary compass points within every person's Self Compass. What is the connection between faith and Love? In order to love God or another person, we must reach out to them. We must open our hearts. We must risk caring for them. This requires faith! I have counseled hundreds of people who suddenly received this insight and gasped: "Oh no, now I realize I've lived my whole life to be safely self-contained. I've been too afraid to ever really love anyone." 

To grow in Love requires the courage of Assertion. Mary risked trusting the Angel Gabriel's message to her. Though she no doubt felt some fear, and though she certainly didn't know how she could become the Mother of our Lord, she ended the conversation assertively: "May everything you have said about me come true" (Luke 1:38). Mary dared to assertively express faith in the God whom she loved and trusted. We can become more like Mary.

WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH

Spend a few concentrated moments today or tonight hungering and thirsting for Christ’s presence in your life. Don’t be afraid of any Weakness. Integrate your vulnerability and even self-doubts into your faith in God’s Strength. The Catechism says, “Only faith can embrace the mysterious ways of God’s almighty power. This faith glories in its weaknesses in order to draw to itself Christ’s power” (273). Out of Weakness we are made strong. This humble Strength is what God loves to foster in us. A rhythm between Weakness and Strength never makes us arrogant.  

The Self Compass helps you cooperate with grace, so that you may be transformed in Christ. To help your journey of faith this year, I'm including a link to God and Your Personality: Revised & Expanded Catholic Edition. You can imagine my humble gratitude when I was notified that this book has been added to the Vatican Library. 

Paul Cardinal Poupard of The Vatican has this to say: “God & Your Personality is no New Age influenced waffle clouded in a mystique of blurb, but a useful tool for all those who seek to address personality issues and quench their innate spiritual thirst with the living-water which truly satisfies.”

God and Your Personality

Getting the Job You Want Using The Self Compass

What I'm going to share with you unites the best of contemporary psychology with Christian spirituality on the topic of getting the job you want.

My perspective as a theologian-psychologist and my lifelong work helping people find meaningful, God-inspired work, has taught me some priorities. If you take these principles one by one, and then see how they form a dynamic rhythm in your life, you'll be well on your way to job satisfaction.

First of all, take a look at the Self Compass itself, a powerful lens for understanding yourself, others, and God. Notice that Assertion and Love are connected to each other. This means that at certain times and places you need to exert yourself, take risks, stand up to opposition, and overcome personal obstacles (Assertion). At other times you need to comfort yourself, love yourself, forgive yourself, and be of service to others (Love).

 God fits into the Self Compass this way. You learn to call upon God and express your needs, hopes, and dreams for high job satisfaction to him. The Bible says it this way: “So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most” (Hebrews 14:16). So be assertive, not shy or vague, when asking God to bless you with perfect guidance that brings a great job into your life. By the same token, don't use God like a magic genie who is supposed perform what you command. God forbid! Rather, express ever-deepening love, adoration, and worship to God. Tell him often how much you love him!

What is set in motion with this complementary compass rhythm of Love and Assertion is assurance that He will faithfully guide your job searches, advances, and placements. You may have to work for a season in a job you don't care for, or endure a time of unemployment as gracefully as you can. But the bigger picture comes from God's personal promise to you: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).

Now how do you connect the Weakness and Strength compass points with getting the job you want. First, you humble yourself, getting rids of attitudes of narcissistic entitlement ("The world owes me a great job") or impatient annoyance ("I want a great job now!"). Start you job search on your knees in prayer. From that humbling of your heart before God, you can proceed with confidence. Make a good resume, network with other people, get ready for interviews, learn to take temporary "no's" in stride, strengthen your areas of weakness, and keep improving your strengths.

When you do get a job interview don't panic. Relax. God is in the details of your life. You can trust His guidance a job interview. Don't try to psyche out the interviewer or acts overly confident as though you know everything. Just be real about your job capabilities and skills sets, and how these interface with the job description. Realize that you can't control other people, nor can you make them judge you in a positive way. So what. If they don't want you it's their loss, and in the meantime, you've learned even more about how to speak spontaneously and sincerely in an interview.

 See the big picture. Believe in God. Know that because of Christ's sacrifice on the cross of your sins, God places extraordinary value on your life. He is a genius at guiding you, and He will move in all things to land you a job where you can keep finding and doing his will.

Starting in high school and up through the present day, I have worked in a chemistry lab as a test tube washer, a restaurant as a bus boy, for a highway crew cutting down brush with an axe, for NASA as a satellite tracker, as a college professor, a psychotherapist, and an author. Some of the jobs I hated and others I liked, but the career that God ultimately guided me into, that of being a theologian-psychologist for the Lord, has brought years of profound fulfillment alongside some very exasperating and exhausting work. Add to that the really hard job of parenting throughout the years, and I am in the same boat with you, trusting God to get me through this life and make sense of all the work I have to do!

Adding a little health psychology to the spirituality and practical steps I've just offered, I would say this:

• Learn from everything that happens to you
• Keep developing your mind through reading, taking courses, and refining your values for living
• Don't be a slouch at work, but rather find creative ways to do a competent job and to actually learn and do what your employer wants done
• Don't waste time griping and whining about anything; put this life energy into making things better or even articulating meaningful suggestions to your boss
• Don't take your work too seriously, as though it's your only reason for existence
• Realize that someday that job will be over and those tasks you performed long gone; so make personality development in Christ your deeper goal, since you can take the results of that everywhere, even to the grave

I hope you do well applying the Self Compass to illuminate and empower your quest for a job you really life. Here is my prayer for you:

“Dear Lord, help this reader to surrender their life to you fully, completely, and without reservation. You have greater wisdom than the two of us combined. So we ask you to use this wisdom along with your sovereign power to guide every aspect of a job search into a productive pathway to career fulfillment. In the name of your Son Jesus, Amen!”

The Self Compass and the Year of Faith

It has come to my attention that the Catholic Church has declared October 11, 2012 to November 24, 2013 as The Year of Faith. As a committed Christian and theologian-psychologist I applaud this emphasis. 

I believe The Year of Faith expresses the heartfelt cry of Christians worldwide to draw close to the Lord Jesus Christ in our modern day. As Paul says, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4-6).

When the Catechism of the Catholic Church first came out I read it cover to cover in a week. It is a profoundly spiritual, Scriptural, and psychologically sensitive work. Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, was a chief architect of the Catechism. 

I want to share with you one powerful paragraph from Pope Benedict's apostolic letter “Porta Fidei” that has introduced The Year of Faith. I do this with admiration for his spirit of pastoral care—and with the conviction that he is speaking on behalf of the Body of Christ, Catholics and Protestants alike:

“The Year of Faith is a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Savior of the world. In the mystery of his death and resurrection, God has revealed in its fullness the Love that saves and calls us to conversion of life through the forgiveness of sins (cf. Acts 5:31). For Saint Paul, this Love ushers us into a new life: “We were buried ... with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). Through faith, this new life shapes the whole of human existence according to the radical new reality of the resurrection. To the extent that he freely cooperates, man’s thoughts and affections, mentality and conduct are slowly purified and transformed, on a journey that is never completely finished in this life. “Faith working through love” (Gal 5:6) becomes a new criterion of understanding and action that changes the whole of man’s life” (cf. Rom 12:2; Col 3:9-10; Eph 4:20-29; 2 Cor 5:17).

As the Pope says, personal transformation “is a journey never completely finished in this life.” But we can benefit from psychological and spiritual tools that help us move forward. One of these is the Self Compass. The Self Compass helps us renew our personal conversion to Jesus and cooperate with the Holy Spirit in guiding our daily lives. 

This Vatican has endorsed the Compass Model for personality transformation because it is based on Christ's personality, and therefore supports "the radical new reality of his resurrection" in our personalities. By applying the Self Compass growth tool, your life can be "purified and transformed" during this Year of Faith.

LOVE & ASSERTION

Faith is deeply connected to personality health. Faith helps to counter the corrosive effects of anxiety, depression, and anger. The Self Compass promotes personality health and thereby increases a person's faith. 

Love and Assertion are two complementary compass points within every person's Self Compass. What is the connection between faith and Love? In order to love God or another person, we must reach out to them. We must open our hearts. We must risk caring for them. This requires faith! I have counseled hundreds of people who suddenly received this insight and gasped: "Oh no, now I realize I've lived my whole life to be safely self-contained. I've been too afraid to ever really love anyone." 

To grow in Love requires the courage of Assertion. Mary risked trusting the Angel Gabriel's message to her. Though she no doubt felt some fear, and though she certainly didn't know how she could become the Mother of our Lord, she ended the conversation assertively: "May everything you have said about me come true" (Luke 1:38). Mary dared to assertively express faith in the God whom she loved and trusted. We can become more like Mary.

WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH

Spend a few concentrated moments today or tonight hungering and thirsting for Christ’s presence in your life. Don’t be afraid of any Weakness. Integrate your vulnerability and even self-doubts into your faith in God’s Strength. The Catechism says, “Only faith can embrace the mysterious ways of God’s almighty power. This faith glories in its weaknesses in order to draw to itself Christ’s power” (273). Out of Weakness we are made strong. This humble Strength is what God loves to foster in us. A rhythm between Weakness and Strength never makes us arrogant.  

The Self Compass helps you cooperate with grace, so that in Pope Benedict's words, your "thoughts and affections, mentality and conduct are slowly purified and transformed." 

In case it might help your journey of faith this year, I'm including a link to God and Your Personality: The Newly Revised Catholic Edition. You can imagine my humble gratitude when Pope Benedict's personal theologian wrote and told me that this book had been added to his personal library. 

Paul Cardinal Poupard of The Vatican has this to say: “God & Your Personality is no New Age influenced waffle clouded in a mystique of blurb, but a useful tool for all those who seek to address personality issues and quench their innate spiritual thirst with the living-water which truly satisfies.”

 

GOD AND YOUR PERSONALITY

Conquer Public Speaking Fear with The Self Compass!

As a psychologist I've helped hundreds of people of all ages extinguish anxiety about speaking to groups, since speaking is an adult skill that enhances your mental health and increases your social pleasure.

It's not that hard. The four compass points of the Self Compass growth tool show the way.

 I will draw from each of these compass points in a quick tour around your Self Compass, a tour that will help you move away from:

the fear of public speaking

toward the pleasure of speaking success!

Both you and everyone you will ever speak to share a Love compass point of personality. Love is where you feel and express social interest, excitement, caring, and joy. When love is communicated, people light up with pleasure, whether they are eight or twenty-eight or eighty.

So in considering a public talk, lay fear aside long enough to care for the well-being of those whom you'll be addressing. Care about what concerns them, what worries them, what busy schedules they face, what personal adversity that are undergoing. Care enough to give them a few moments of your energy and experience that you have condensed into a talk, and care that they have a personal takeaway from your speech that they can apply to life.

Now just as the right amount of Love makes for a caring presentation, too much Love would make you a bore. You don't want to care so much about the audience that you need them to hang on every word, consider this the finest speech they've ever heard, or praise you to high heaven once you've finished. So while too much Love would contribute to speaking anxiety, just enough Love will contribute to conveying that you like them!

LOVE COMPASS POINT

Next on the Self Compass comes the Assertion compass point. Here you have a perfect right to express your viewpoint, feelings, knowledge, and expertise, regardless of what people think about it. In your Assertion you don't sit there worrying about what people might think. You think about how to find words and illustrations for what you know best — the very topic that you are presenting. Again, too much Assertion would make you come off with a chip on your shoulder, or too much argumentation and too little substance. But just the right amount of assertion will show that you have the courage of your convictions, and are willing to offer them to others.

ASSERTION COMPASS POINT

Now comes the Weakness compass point, the place where your social anxiety can serve a good purpose. A certain amount of anxiety is helpful to us when we prepare a speech. It keeps us mindful that we don't want to bore people, prattle on about nothing of consequence, or ramble without making clear points. In other words, anxiety keeps us humble, knowing that we cannot deliver a perfect speech, but a "good enough" speech will do fine.

WEAKNESS COMPASS POINT

Last we experience a dose of the Strength compass point both when we're practicing our speech behind closed doors, and then again while we are delivering. You can feel confident that your mind won't go blank, because you have notes right in front of you. You can feel adequate that you won't put your foot in your mouth, because you will carefully follow a well-edited outline. You can anticipate the achievement of success, picturing that as soon as you uttered your first sentence, your unconscious will help you carry out the speech you've prepared and rehearsed.

STRENGTH COMPASS POINT

Naturally, the first few times you put together these rhythmic compass elements in the direct encounter of a live speech, you have a few hems and haws, a jumpy transitions, just like everyone else in the world does. But before long, these balancing points of a healthy Self Compass will  empower you to deliver intriguing and informative speeches, no matter how much public speaking fear you used to have!

I know. In high school and college I couldn't raise my hand in class with turning bright red, and I couldn't speak in class without my mind going blank. But with the help of compass principles, this gradually turned around so that I've spoken to thousands of people in groups, and millions of people on radio and television programs. I don't even break a sweat, because long ago my unconscious replaced my old terror of public speaking with Love for my audience, Assertion in expressing my point of view, Weakness that reflects humility about my limitations, and Strength in anticipating the satisfaction of a successful speech that brings new friends into my life.

Don't worry. The Self Compass will work for you, too. Add a little dose of prayer for transformation inner weakness into strength — and you're on the road to speaking success. I'm absolutely sure of it!

For more about turning your fear of life and people 

into faith in your self, God, and others, read: 

FAITH BEYOND CHURCH WALLS:

FINDING FREEDOM IN CHRIST