Have you heard of Jim Rohn?
He was a writer and speaker in the personal development industry who died in 2009.
I don’t think he was Catholic, or a catechist, but his ideas are sometimes evangelizing for me in odd ways.
He talks about achieving success in business, wealth and life, but his ideas inspire in me insights about the human side of the spirituality–acquiring virtue.
Virtue is essentially spiritual personal development and is the foundation for the Holy Spirit to operate in a soul.
I want to share an insight I got recently from a Jim Rohn quote.
Jim Rohn and the accelerated learning process
Pity the man who has a favorite restaurant, but not a favorite author. He’s picked out a favorite place to feed his body, but he doesn’t have a favorite place to feed his mind!
Why would this be? Have you heard about the accelerated learning curve? From birth, up until the time we are about eighteen, our learning curve is dramatic, and our capacity to learn during this period is just staggering. We learn a tremendous amount very fast. We learn language, culture, history, science, mathematics… everything!
For some people, the accelerated learning process will continue on. But for most, it levels off when they get their first job. If there are no more exams to take, if there’s no demand to get out paper and pencil, why read any more books? Of course, you will learn some things through experience. Just getting out there – sometimes doing it wrong and sometimes doing it right – you will learn.
Can you imagine what would happen if you kept up an accelerated learning curve the rest of your life? Can you imagine what you could learn to do, the skills you could develop, the capacities you could have? Here’s what I’m asking you to do: be that unusual person who keeps up his learning curve and develops an appetite for always trying to find good ideas.
Jim Rohn
I would say–pity the man who has a favorite restaurant but not a favorite spiritual author! He has a place to feed his body but not his soul!
It takes an adult understanding to live faith
Rohn says most of us stop learning in our everyday lives. How much more true is that of the Faith? How much more could we accomplish if we didn’t give up our spiritual learning after childhood?
Most people stop learning and growing in faith after Confirmation. That’s because they’re not being pushed anymore. But there is so much more!
I see it all the time when Cradle Catholics accompany a friend or spouse through RCIA. They haven’t thought seriously Catholicism since they were 13. All they have is a child’s understanding so it doesn’t seem important i their adult lives.
However, when they get an adult understanding, everything changes. A light goes on. They see a new way to think and act. They find a new power to deal with problems, stress, suffering and disappointment. They find new life!
The power of ideas
I’m asking you to take Rohn’s advice on a spiritual level. Be that “unusual person” who keeps the spiritual “learning curve” going for the rest of your life.
Find good spiritual ideas! Good spiritual ideas come from spiritually influential people. You get exposure to these great people through great books.
Books generate ideas, ideas generate thinking, thinking changes attitude, and changed attitudes lead to changed lives. To be a great catechist, you need to be a holy person. And, holiness only comes from a willingness to change your life.
Catechetical takeaway
Invest some time in reading good books from influential people. If you’re reading about faith and spirituality, I would recommend reading solid Catholic authors at first. That way you don’t get confused about what the Church really teaches.
However, you should mix it up as well. They don’t have to all be Catholic! I get inspiration and great ideas from Jim Rohn. Great ideas come from the convergence of different thought and disciplines.
Get those good spiritual ideas and transmit them into your classroom. It will inject your teaching with a new life and vitality.
Where do your great ideas come from? Do you have any favorite Catholic or non-Catholic inspirational authors?
Surely one of the simplest ways to keep one’s faith on the learning curve is to be a catechist.
I explain to my 6th graders every year about the importance of having a faith knowledge appropriate to one’s age. I don’t think they really understand it yet, but hope that they’ll remember it years from now.
You sure are right about that one! Being a catechist is a great way to grow in faith! It’s certainly worked for me.
That is a really good way to put it–faith knowledge appropriate to one’s age. Perhaps they don’t understand it but you said it. You can only hope they remember it. Sounds like you do a really great job! You really give those kids a good formation.
Oh…favorite authors. Generally I don’t get on with what I think of as inspirational authors, but I’ve found these Catholic writers to be indirectly inspiring: Fr. John Neuhaus, ++Chaput, Graham Greene, JF Powers, Walker Percy, WF Buckley, Malachi Martin, George Weigel, Hadley Arkes, and David Mills.
Also the non-Cats CS Lewis, Reinhold Niebuhr, Willa Cather, Gabriel Meilander, and weirdly, Umberto Eco and Sartre.
Your observation, “Great ideas come from the convergence of different thought and disciplines” is both pithy and spot on.
Wow! That really is a convergence! Quite a listing!
Father Michael Scanlan’s “What Does God Want” has to be one of the cleanest spiritual reads ever, a great first choice for anyone starting out on adult spiritual reading. Dr. Scott Hahn’s “A Father Who Keeps His Promises” is an awesome crash-course in typology. “Searching For and Maintaining Peace” is something I find myself praying through every few years, along with “The Soul of the Apostolate.” Ralph Martin’s talks on audio on Teresa of Avila always move me. “With God in Russia” by Fr. Walter Ciszek and “In the Shadow of His Wings” by Fr. Gereon Goldmann both rocked my world. And of course, the character Melanie in “Gone With the Wind” has to be the most moving character in American fiction.
It is a whole other ball of wax, but I suspect that part of the crisis in character and virtue in American society today stems from the loss of literacy. There is so much character-building and soul-searching in good children’s literature.
That’s a really good point you make about the crisis of virtue that is coming from kids not reading good literature. Character building is part of the classic literary formula isn’t it? It’s the hero’s journey. They are swept up in events that take them on a journey–sometimes physical but always moral, emotional or spiritual. They’re not the same when they arrive at the end. They’ve been changed by the experience. If it’s done well, it deals with some problem common to that age group, and thus teaches integrity, character and introspection. That is powerful!
Cool ideas! And, of course, I love those titles! Some of my favorites too. 😉
Huh…I really liked GWTW too, a terrific story that reads as though it were written last month.
I wonder how many people read it nowadays.
Well, in the south, every girl reads Gone With The Wind. Probably not the boys though. Our babysitter here in Illinois never read it. Maybe it’s a southern thing.