Are You As Happy As You Can Be? Take The Vision for You Spiritual Exercises
Three hour-long webinars with the Institute for Catholic Culture starting this Tuesdays, September 10-24th, 8 pm EST
I have been invited to do a series of three presentations on the discernment process presented in my book The Vision for You - How to Discover the Life You Were Made For starting this coming Tuesday by the Institute of Catholic Culture. This is open to everyone.
To register go to instituteofcatholicculture.org/talk/the-vision-for-you
Over thirty years ago, by chance, I met a man called David Birtwistle who asked me this question: are you as happy as you can be?
It was an easy one for me to answer, ‘No!’ Would you like that to change? ‘Yes.’ ‘Let me show you how’, David said.
This was how I was introduced to a program of prayer, meditation and good works that change my life. I still practice these exercises today. It is called The Vision for You.
When I met David, I was miserable and depressed about the direction my life was going. He told me that he could show me a way to feel better and have a new direction in life. I wanted to be an artist and live in America but was getting nowhere, but it ran deeper than that. My relationships were unfulfilling and superficial at best. I just didn’t know what to do to try to be happy, or what I really wanted in life and while others around me seemed to be moving forward with their lives, I had a sense that I was being left behind.
Several years later, as a result of following David’s simple directions, I became Artist-in-Residence at an American college in New Hampshire. But more than that it transformed my whole outlook in life. Where I used to be bitter, difficult to get on with and pessimistic I am now so much more optimistic and happy. This also led to my conversion. David was a Catholic who led me to the Faith and was my sponsor when I was received into the Church.
David died nine years after I met him, but he made me promise, in common with many others who benefitted from his help, to hand on to others what he had given to me. The great discovery made by those of us who benefitted from this process is that we have the freedom to choose. We can choose to be happy or to be miserable almost regardless of circumstances. This is what drove me to write the two books about the process The Vision for You - How to Discover the Life You Were Made For; and a condensed presentation of the same process The Vision for You - A Short Summary of the Spiritual Exercises & a Manual to Accompany Workshops.