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Whatever challenge you’re facing in life, there’s a “superhabit” for it, says Andrew V. Abela, dean of the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America.
But what’s a superhabit? And what distinguishes it from a regular habit?
Abela explains in his new book Superhabits: The Universal System for a Successful Life that a superhabit is really another word for virtue. And virtues are about human excellence.
The founding dean of the Busch School of Business in Washington, D.C., Abela speaks to business leaders around the world about cultivating superhabits personally and in their organizations. Prior to his academic career, he was a brand manager at Procter & Gamble, management consultant with McKinsey & Company, and Managing Director at the Corporate Executive Board.
Abela holds an MBA from the Institute for Management Development in Switzerland and a Ph.D. from the Darden Business School at the University of Virginia. He and his wife, Kathleen, live in Great Falls, Virginia.
Abela spoke with Aleteia about his new book.
What is this book about, and why, in your opinion, is it important for people to read today?
Andrew V. Abela: The book is about virtue, virtue understood in the traditional sense of the virtues being specific habits of excellence that really underlie all of human achievements. And I think the reason this book is needed is because these virtues have been largely forgotten, in a number of ways.
We get the phrase “virtue-signaling,” you know, just showing off, pretending to be moral.
But in another direction, you have people who think of virtue just as abstractly another word for morality or goodness, that to say “Be virtuous” just means “Be good, be moral.” But it’s so much more than that. Every virtue is a specific habit of excellence, including all of human excellence, not just moral excellence.
So many of our problems in our society, whether it be division, whether it be anxiety and depression, whether it be declining productivity, you name it, at the root of that, in many cases, some virtue is missing.
How did you come up with the term “superhabits?”
Abela: Well, the working title for the book was “Virtue, an Owner’s Guide.” But the feedback I got was that people would just write it off, because they all think they know what virtue is. I wanted to emphasize first that a virtue is a habit, and second, that it’s not just any kind of habit.
One of the ironies is, despite the apparent loss of interest in virtue, there are pockets of resurgence of interest in very diverse directions. So in positive psychology, they’ve been studying different virtues for years, but they call them character strengths. There’s a resurgence of interest in the Stoic philosophers and the virtues that they focus on. There’s a huge interest in habits themselves, in books like Atomic Habits, selling in the millions of copies. So people understand or are attracted to the idea of habit as a way of growing.
And so what I wanted to do is point out, first, that virtues are habits. Everything we’re learning about habits applies to virtues. And then secondly, there’s this particular set of habits and virtues that are kind of like superpowers. By calling them superhabits, I emphasize that it is a superpower habit, not just any habit, because the way they differ is if you have the habit of making your bed, for example, that habit is good for making your bed. But if you have the habit of courage … so I talk to our students; we have a lot of football players in the business school. I say to them, the habit of courage that you cultivate on the football field you can use in a job interview or giving a presentation or in any other aspect of your life.
So the virtues, the superhabits, are different from regular habits in that they have a much wider scope.
We also know both from the ancient philosophers and also modern psychologies, that when you grow in the superhabits, when you grow in the virtues, you actually become happier and, in many cases, healthier as well, which is not true of making your bed or any other habits like that.
You’re the dean of a business school. What relationship does this all have to the world of business, or what can it offer to the world of business today?
Abela: When we founded the Busch School of Business 12 years ago, from the beginning, we said we wanted to be forming virtuous business people. Initially we did that in the way anyone else would do it, by hiring faculty who were role models, by mentoring the students. But as the years passed, we realized we wanted to get more explicit about this, and specifically, we wanted to give the students opportunities to practice specific virtues, to learn about the virtues, which they did already in their philosophy and theology classes, but then to practice their virtues as part of the curriculum.
So I started doing a lot more research and reading in this area to figure out how to make it all work, and the concept of superhabits really seemed to resonate, both with my faculty colleagues and with the students as well.
And it seems to be really working in terms of helping our students be better prepared for the workplace.
For business in general, I think the benefit of bringing more virtue into work is, for one, it makes the work more productive because employees are more orderly, more creative, more self disciplined, more friendly. These are all virtues. If they grow in each of those areas, they’re going to be more productive.
Also, because virtue makes you happier, we also have research that shows that happier employees are also more productive. They tend to stick around more and so on. So it’s a true win-win for business.
In addition, I haven’t even mentioned that it helps businesses avoid the problems that arise from risks that can be caused or from ethical infractions, because as the employees are growing in virtue, there’s going to be fewer chances of ethical infractions.
But it’s not just that. I don’t want to just focus on, “Oh, it will help your employees be more ethical.” It helps them be more productive overall, because virtue helps you flourish as a human being and become more effective in every dimension, not just the moral dimension.
When we hear the word habit, we think of good habits and bad habits, and we all have both. Is there a starting point for someone who knows he has a terrible habit, but feels he cannot overcome it, and he wants to overcome it?
Abela: Absolutely. And that’s very much the focus of the book. Virtue is a good habit, a bad habit is a vice. And so if you have a bad habit and you want to overcome it, the trick is to identify what is the opposing virtue? What are the opposing good habits?
For example, if the bad habit is procrastination, the opposing good habit is the virtue of orderliness. It’s the habit of doing the right thing at the right time, whereas procrastination is doing anything but the right thing at the right time. The way forward is to pick the smallest possible change – baby steps – and start practicing each day that little, tiny step until that tiny step becomes a habit. And then you can layer on another little step until that becomes a habit.
For example, with procrastination, a baby step might be each morning to write down what is the one small thing that I should accomplish today that may take me 15 minutes or half an hour, whatever. Write that down. And then when you’ve accomplished that, cross it off the list, which is very satisfying. It’s a simple thing.
Then when you do that, after several days, weeks, maybe that becomes a habit. And then the next thing you can do is, “Okay, how about I do a whole prioritized to-do list? Or maybe I’ll do two or three items today.” And then you just sort of ratchet up that way.
The key thing, though, is to pick something that’s so small that you will do it, that it’s doable. Because often when people try to change, they set up a big goal, and then they fall flat on their face, and it just makes it worse, because they think, “I’m a loser. I can’t do this.”
So you want to pick the smallest little thing. That becomes a habit, and then it becomes a platform for the next habit and so on.
As you pointed out, there’s much here about virtues and vices. It’s a subject that is very much at the heart of living a good Christian life. Is there perhaps a subtle desire on your part to convert readers or to spread the faith through this exposition of the virtues? Or what is it that you want readers to take away from it?
Abela: Well, I want them to fall in love with virtue, as I have done, and in many cases, that’s a pre-evangelization. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the faith spread so fast in ancient times, because the culture in ancient times was a culture that respected virtue. They didn’t always live virtuously, but certainly respected virtue. It’s easier, I think, for somebody to understand the faith and be attracted to it if one is already living a virtuous life, or at least aspiring to live a virtuous life.
But I did deliberately write the book in a way that it would be accessible to anybody. It doesn’t presume any faith background at all. So if one has a colleague or a friend or a sibling who’s not practicing the faith, you could give them this book without any kind of presuppositions, any assumptions, and they’re not going to immediately close the window on it.
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