Super Habits: The Universal System for a Successful Life
By Andrew V. Abela.
Sophia Institute Press, 2024.
Hardcover, 288 pages, $24.95
Reviewed by Paul D. Mueller.
If Thomas Aquinas were to write a book on virtue for business people in the twenty-first century, it might look a lot like Dr. Andrew Abela’s Super Habits: The Universal System for a Successful Life. Abela has written an accessible overview of Aquinas’s schematic of the cardinal virtues: temperance, courage, prudence, and justice, as well as more than a dozen subsidiary virtues. But far from being an academic treatment of the subject, Super Habits frames the virtues within existing business and management literature. Every virtue, it seems, contributes to better health, less stress, and greater satisfaction.
Abela refers to both the cardinal virtues and their many subsidiary virtues as “super habits” in order to tap into the popularity of recent books about the importance of habit formation. Unlike most of these books that focus on the “how” of habit formation, Super Habits focuses on the “what.” Abela argues that some habits, “super habits,” are far superior to ordinary habits like taking walks or brushing teeth and are available to everyone who is willing to practice them.
The book’s structure systematically presents and relates the super habits to one another. It moves from the super habits that relate to temperance, then to those of courage, prudence, and justice. He argues that these four cardinal virtues consist of many “sub” virtues.
The book begins with the super habit of “restraint,” a rebranding of temperance, which tends to be seriously undervalued in our modern culture that prizes desire and expression over everything else. But a little restraint can go a long way in improving most people’s lives.
Abela then offers six more chapters on super habits that build up one’s temperance: humility, diligence, “gentlefirmness,” forgiveness, orderliness, and eutrapelia. While some of these virtues are well-known, others are scarcely mentioned today. “Gentlefirmness,” for example, is Abela’s term to describe meekness. The problem with meekness, he argues, is that it has come to mean “weak” or “passive” in modern parlance. “Gentle firmness,” on the other hand, captures the historic idea of meekness meaning quietly living out one’s convictions in the face of pressure and persecution.
The value of meekness comes not from negating our emotion of anger, but from harnessing and redirecting it. This ties into an important theme in Super Habits, namely that virtue should educate, rather than reject, human emotions and passions. The virtues properly channel emotions in productive and flourishing directions. This can clearly be seen in another practically unknown virtue: eutrapelia.
This virtue involves “playing” or recreating well. Abela argues that eutrapelia is the mean between frivolity, “too much playfulness,” and mirthlessness, “the inability or unwillingness to relax.” He offers nice guide rails for how to practice eutrapelia when he adds that besides avoiding an excess or a deficiency of playfulness, we ought to make sure that the leisure we engage in does not work against any of the other super habits. For example, leisure activities that undermine restraint or cut against humility or generosity, would not be right.
Abela also describes a process modern psychologists describe as “upward,” “expansive,” or even “virtuous” cycles. As you practice a super habit, you get better at it, and it becomes easier to do. Practicing super habits brings ancillary benefits too in terms of better health, less stress, and greater happiness. The author repeatedly exhorts readers to develop super habits to improve their lives. He also regularly reminds the reader that these super habits mutually reinforce one another.
When shifting from temperance to courage, Abela describes several more subsidiary super habits: munificence, magnanimity, perseverance, and resilience. He says that the first two are “for dealing with challenges that can be overcome” and the latter two are “for those that must be endured.” While perseverance and resilience clearly contribute to living courageously, munificence didn’t seem to fit as well. There may be some courage involved in giving away large sums of money, but this hardly seems like a virtue most people need to practice as a means of developing courage.
Super Habits weaves real life stories and examples into each chapter. When it comes to courage, the author tells a remarkable story from World War II about a convoy to resupply the island of Malta. This critical island served as an enormous unsinkable aircraft carrier for allied planes in the Mediterranean. These allied planes significantly reduced how much support German and Italian forces in North Africa received. Yet the proximity of Malta to Sicily along with the prevalence of German submarines in the Mediterranean made it extremely difficult to keep the island supplied.
Abela describes the story of a major allied convoy to resupply Malta. The convoy was attacked day after day as it slowly made its way to Malta. The most important ship, an oil tanker called the USS Ohio, was hit repeatedly. The crew abandoned the ship twice, only to return when it miraculously remained afloat. The grit and determination of those involved is inspiring and a great picture of courage at work.
After discussing courage, the book turns to the super habit of prudence or practical wisdom. Abela spends a little time on the following subsidiary virtues: memory, judgment, teachability, creativity, reasoning, alertness, foresight, and preparedness. He weaves descriptions of each of these super habits into the story of Flight 1549 and Captain Sullenberger.
The chapter illuminates the complex background and decision-making Sullenberger exercised in landing his plane in the Hudson River just minutes after take-off. The account makes clear that this outcome was not the result of a moment of brilliance, but rather the result of how Sullenberger had lived his entire life up to that point and all the ways he cultivated practical wisdom over decades of experience.
Super Habits concludes by looking at justice and its attendant subsidiary virtues of: commutative justice, honesty, gratitude, correction, friendliness, generosity, compliance, respect, patriotism, religion, distributive justice, and reasonableness. The author gives only a cursory survey of these virtues—not much more than a mention really. The book gives a complete overview of each cardinal virtue to suggest a wide variety of avenues for self-improvement. Abela channels Aquinas rather than offering his own thoughts on the virtues.
Although Super Habits will not go down in history as a profound book, it is well-written and aimed at an important audience: the everyman and everywoman. Repackaging the virtues with modern business and self-help parlance as well as using modern illustrations has its benefits. The barebones approach gives readers something to start working with, but not much to reflect upon. The power of the book comes from its simplicity and accessibility. It makes a simple but compelling case for why everyone ought to cultivate virtue to live happy and successful lives.
Laying out a clear system of virtues also has significant value. The book includes a poster, “Anatomy of Virtue,” created by the author. While it may seem overwhelming at first glance, after reading Super Habits, the poster makes perfect sense and illustrates the system of virtue beautifully. One could even call it a road map to cultivating virtue. I may use it as such when teaching my own children about the “super habits” that lead to human flourishing.
Though one could quibble with a definition or a point of emphasis here and there, the overall book is quite unobjectionable. Business leaders, business students, and ordinary people could do a lot worse than picking up Super Habits as a guide for personal and business ethics.
Paul D. Mueller is a senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research as well as a research fellow and associate director of the Religious Liberty in the States project at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy. He taught economics at The King’s College in New York City. His academic and popular work has appeared in a large variety of publications. Dr. Mueller is also the author of Ten Years Later: Why the Conventional Wisdom about the 2008 Financial Crisis Is Still Wrong.
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