Become the person you are called to become.

Meaning: trusting God and accepting what He has revealed.

Use when: confused, spiritually dry, or tempted to judge everything by feeling.

Practice: keep prayer and duty even without consolation; return to what is known rather than what is merely felt.

“I do not need to understand everything in order to remain faithful.”

Meaning: confident reliance on God’s help and promises without demanding a particular outcome.

Use when: discouraged, catastrophizing, or tempted to define yourself by failure.

Practice: take the next faithful step; refuse inaccurate “always/never” thinking.

“My present condition is not my final condition.”

Meaning: willing and acting for the genuine good of God, yourself, and other people.

Use when: another person becomes difficult, disappointing, or emotionally charged.

Practice: ask what genuinely serves their good; tell the truth without cruelty; respect freedom.

Meaning: seeing reality accurately and choosing the right action, at the right time, for the right reason.

Use when: uncertain or emotionally driven.

Practice: facts → interpretations → options → consequences → duties → values/virtues → action.

Meaning: giving God and other people what is actually due to them: truth, respect, rights, responsibilities, restitution, and appropriate boundaries.

Use when: another person’s rights, dignity, reputation, or legitimate expectations are involved.

Practice: keep agreements, make restitution, tell the truth, respect boundaries.

Meaning: staying with what is good even when it is frightening, painful, tiring, embarrassing, or inconvenient.

Use when: the right action is uncomfortable.

Practice: take the smallest courageous action; remain sober and faithful under discomfort.

Meaning: enjoying legitimate pleasures without being ruled by appetite, craving, comfort, stimulation, or compulsion.

Use when: appetite says “more” or “now.”

Practice: delay gratification; choose limits; enjoy good things without needing them to regulate you.

Meaning: truthful self-knowledge—neither superiority nor self-contempt.

Use when: criticized, defensive, superior, or craving recognition.

Practice: ask “What is true?”; admit error; receive correction.

Meaning: holding money, possessions, time, status, and attention with an open hand instead of grasping or using them for control.

Use when: possessions or money become identity, security, or control.

Practice: give appropriately, pay debts promptly, share time, and distinguish stewardship from possession.

Meaning: integrating sexuality with dignity, fidelity, consent, love, responsibility, and self-control rather than treating another person as gratification or validation.

Use when: attraction or loneliness starts reducing another person to a need or fantasy.

Practice: redirect fantasy, guard inputs, remember the whole person and their dignity.

Meaning: governing anger without becoming passive—strength under control, firm without cruelty.

Use when: angry, insulted, humiliated, or seeking revenge.

Practice: lower the voice, delay speech, set boundaries without humiliation or retaliation.

Meaning: willing another person’s good without treating their success, freedom, or attention as your loss.

Use when: comparison or jealousy makes another person’s good feel threatening.

Practice: congratulate, pray for them, speak well of them, refuse comparison.

Meaning: steady, responsible effort in duties that matter, even when motivation is low.

Use when: procrastinating, drifting, bored, or avoiding duty.

Practice: identify the next concrete task and begin before motivation arrives.

1. What happened?
2. What did my mind add?
3. What am I feeling?
4. What is the emotion protecting?
5. What evidence supports my interpretation?
6. What else could be true?
7. What is known / probable / possible / imagined?
8. What part belongs to me?
9. What virtue is required?
10. What is the next right action?

1. Stop unnecessary action.
2. Breathe and ground.
3. Name the emotion.
4. Ask what it is trying to tell me.
5. Separate feeling from command.
6. Choose the virtue.
7. Act deliberately.
8. Review after the wave passes.

1. Name the desire precisely.
2. Identify the genuine good inside it.
3. Give that good its proper rank.
4. Ask what I am demanding from it that belongs to God.
5. Test freedom: can I want it without needing it?
6. Practice non-satisfaction when appropriate.
7. Redirect rather than merely suppress.
8. Surrender.

Mine to govern: judgment, choice, words, effort, boundaries, habits.

Mine to influence: relationships, negotiations, work, health.

Not mine to control: past, others’ free choices, their private thoughts, many outcomes.

Act. Influence prudently. Surrender the rest.

1. Define the decision.
2. Identify facts and uncertainty.
3. Name competing goods.
4. Remove immoral options.
5. Examine motives.
6. Consult virtues and duties.
7. Consider consequences.
8. Seek wise counsel if needed.
9. Pray.
10. Decide with reasonable certainty.
11. Act.
12. Review later instead of compulsively reopening it.

1. Stop the behavior.
2. Tell the truth.
3. Own what is mine.
4. Identify the violated good.
5. Identify the missing virtue.
6. Repent/confess where appropriate.
7. Repair.
8. Learn.
9. Practice the contrary virtue.
10. Receive mercy.
11. Resume.

1. What do I actually want from this person?
2. Is the desire legitimate?
3. Am I respecting freedom?
4. What do I owe them?
5. What do they not owe me?
6. What does charity require?
7. Am I communicating or manipulating?
8. Can I tell truth without cruelty?
9. Can I set a boundary without hatred?
10. Can I allow their decision to remain theirs?