Everything you need to know about happiness, healing and heavenly habits in right here, does that sound good to you?
The late Fr Daniel O’Leary’s The Habit trilogy is here to help us reach a better state of being. The author of The Happiness Habit, The Healing Habit and The Heavenly Habit, Daniel O’Leary successfully presents three readings in these books that can make us overall feel more satisfied with ourselves and our lives.
The Happiness Habit’s structure is very simple and at the same time incredibly accessible for a complete reading and full of pauses for reflection. The author himself suggests not to “rush the reading” as there is one lecture for each week of the year detailing the two different habits that can lead to the achievement of happiness: “Finding and loving your true self” & “Recognising and nourishing the heart of love in yourself and in all creation”.
Today I’ve chosen for you one reading from the first part of the book that encapsulates the nature of Daniel O’Leary’s work and the simplicity of it that can easily help people achieve contentment:
Learn how to grieve – and make room for a new beginning:
Some of your losses and bereavements are almost unbearable. It is important to mourn those losses, and to do it often. Give yourself permission to do this. […] Give voice to your own loss and anger. You weep now so as to make way for happiness later. The storms of loss make the trees of your soul grow deeper roots. In the middle of your night of grief a healing dawn will comfort your new day. […] Look in the mirror today; it will show you a whole and healthy person coming through the dark tunnel of grief.
Following the creative path of the author we come to the second book, published in 2016 and entitled The Healing Habit. This book represents and most of all addresses, the mindset of the reader with the aim of transforming it. From the author’s perspective the mind can be defined as the most powerful tool that man has, and it can be reborn and allow one to rediscover himself or herself. Since the mind also works through images, Daniel O’Leary decides to combine each short reading with an image that best captures the emotions aroused.
Practical, Daily Steps:
You cannot plan the success of all your efforts but you can plan how to cope with the failures. And not just cope with them but become deeper and wiser because of them. You can play the alchemist: turning the lead of your mistakes into the gold of wisdom. You can play the optimist: turning the stumbling blocks of your days into the stepping stones to your dreams. Or you can play the defeatist: and lose heart. You can change your destiny by changing your attitude. This is a wonderful ‘secret’; your mind will quickly make a habit of it.
Finally The Heavenly Habit completes the trilogy bringing us all down to earth: as the same author recalls: “this small book isn’t about Heaven; it is about Earth. Nor it is about angels, it is about mortals”. The topics and the reflections that the author proposes in this last work are distinguished by originality and impact, showing the reader how the mind must be open to change, so that by reconsidering and questioning ourselves we can grow and improve. Again, I’m happy to share a simple page of this wonderful book:
Over-cautious to risking
Were your parents over-cautious? Do you always care- fully observe the rules? Are you known for ‘playing it safe’? […]. If your motto is carpe diem, the desire to live life to the hilt, then there will be many mistakes, but a deeper satisfaction and sense of fulfilment. If you do not risk failure, and maybe even being ridiculed or humiliated, then you just cannot delight in discovery, or celebrate your own authority and authenticity. […] We become ill when we deny our deepest instinct. There is a force within us that needs to be always reaching for what is beyond us, to be for ever compelled to explore, to take the risk of discovering what’s over the next mountain.
If you are curious to find out more about yourself and how to change your life with a simple read, I am happy to inform you that all three works by Daniel O’Leary are available to purchase via our website.