Transformative Leadership Through Spirituality
3rd Annual International Women's Leadership Conference
Women with No Limits
August 29, 2006 - Hawaii, U.S.A.

INTRODUCTION

It is a great honor for me to be invited by her Excellency, the Governor of Hawaii, Madam Linda Lingle, to share with you some ideas and reflections on the topic WOMEN WITH NO LIMITS, during this International Women Leadership Conference. The invitation indicated that I share some of my own personal struggles towards women’s advancement and spirituality in education.

The outline of this paper is to reflect on my own personal herstory as the basis of my living commitments reflecting my two enduring and consuming advocacies that guide my everyday life:

a)    Promoting women’s advancement and leadership--redirecting women’s organizations

b)    Cultivating spirituality in women’s education—managing the women university’s challenges and ongoing educational crises 

Brief Personal Background

A crisis of identity

I am the eldest of the third generation of a family dynasty involved in women’s education for almost 87 years now.  My grandmother was one of the seven founders of The Philippine Women’s University, which pioneered in women’s education in the Philippines and in Asia.    The PWU was established in response to the passage of the Jones Law, in preparation for the training of women leaders to meet the requirements of the new Republic.  My grandmother came from a family of achievers who played significant roles during the Filipino revolution while my grandfather was one of the seven wise men who drafted the 1935 Constitution of the Philippines.

My father died at the early age of 31 and so my mother who was a housewife had to work to support her four children.  My grandparents and my aunt, a former senator of the Republic of the Philippines, became our surrogate parents. Their values and commitments to life were internalized and became our guideposts.  When I was a child, my home environment was also my learning environment:  we were constantly being educated by my grandparents with Do’s and Don’ts.  My extended family composed of my mother and surrogate parents were very strict and imposed a lot of restrictions that were frustrating because of the increasing demands they made on me.  I was always being compared to my aunt, what I should become and how I should grow up.  I was not too happy with myself because I felt that the expectations were greater than what I could possibly deliver.

This was because my home and my school environments were one.  At times, I was considered very “different” by my peers because I always felt compelled to work to be the BEST.  I could not understand myself; why I had this kind of motivation to work harder.  It became second nature to me to always strive for more, far beyond normal expectations, as compared to my own peers, who seemed carefree and relaxed.  I didn’t feel good unless I was achieving.  My friends did not seem as motivated as I was; they took life the way it was and were happy to enjoy life ordinarily.  In my family, we were all single-minded in our professional performance.

Of course we had normal emotions but somehow these were overlooked in fashioning our life goals and directions.  I was full of anxiety that I would not be able to live up to what was expected of me.  The task to succeed was always self-imposed, but whenever I did succeed in any undertaking, it seemed that my family simply took this for granted.  I don’t recall having happy moments in my childhood.  It was always working and achieving.  I couldn’t get out of the school’s hold on my personality.  Likewise, I couldn’t also leave out the influences of the home, where my mother advocated a kind of socialization that women were not expected to work at a career but had to remain home to care for the children.

Thus, early on in my growing-up years, these ongoing conflicts between home and work were already quite evident in my professional life.  It became more pronounced when I got married at the age of nineteen.  Looking back today, it was only toward the end of my doctoral studies, after studying the over time effects of schooling, its socialization impact on society that I began to recognize why I had that strong compulsion, almost an obsession, to strive for academic excellence and the pursuit of perfection.

After I had achieved my Ph. D. from Stanford University, I felt that I had climbed the mountain of my impossible dream.  Finally, I was proud of myself because I succeeded in achieving and reaching my own personal goal.  I began to appreciate myself.  I felt comfortable with myself.  I really learned to love myself after achieving my own personal goals.  I realized that you cannot give to others unless you learned to love yourself first.

My Personal Losses: Acknowledging our powerlessness

I have four children—three boys and one girl.  Today I am a proud grandmother of 12 grandchildren.  I became a widow at age 45.  The greatest pain I had experienced was the loss of my second son, who also had cancer just like his Dad; my son died at the early age of 37, leaving three kids.

As a mother, I had to contend with shock and bitterness.  I must admit that like Naomi, I did feel that “the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me” (Ruth 1:20) for I was experiencing a greater pain of losing a part of me.  This ache was a very different kind of loss from what I had experienced when my husband died and also when I lost my mother.  It was the most unbearable reality to accept that the cancer had already progressed to the last stage with no available cure, and my son, Martin, was given only three months to live.  I felt totally powerless and abandoned, crying out for God’s intervention: “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Deep inside me, I knew I had to put my trust in the Lord, but the anguish and apprehension of losing my son made it more difficult to completely trust in Divine assistance and handing everything over to God.  During my daily Mass and visits to the Blessed Sacrament, I kept pleading for enlightenment.  My God, why have you done this to me? Wasn’t it enough that my only daughter had already suffered ovarian cancer while she was pregnant almost five years ago? You had already taken my husband, who died at the early age of 47, not to mention the endless financial difficulties I had to overcome as a widow in bringing up my four children, sending them to schools abroad for advanced masteral degree programs.

Learning to trust in Divine Assistance

In my feelings of aloneness, I felt strengthened with graces and the firm belief that through these crises, God was just testing us.  We asked for Martin to get BETTER and thanked GOD that Martin did not get BITTER over his illness, despite the hopelessness of getting cured. The anguish of losing my son was the beginning of a deeper prayer by being truly thankful to God during those agonizing moments.

In the eyes of God, my son Martin did get well.  I truly feel that Martin had lived his short life exceedingly well and learned through unbearable suffering and excruciating pain of cancer to embrace his cross.  But on the day of the funeral, there was an incomprehensible pain of losing a part of me, and I was holding on, not wanting Martin to be buried.  This time I had to cut with finality the umbilical cord of human attachment as I gave Martin back to God.  As I prayed for strength to LET GO, I remembered:  “your children are not your children. . . . they come through but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.  You may give them your love . . . you may house their bodies, but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow.” (Omar Khayam)

It was learning a prayer of total surrender and trusting God more.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit, I realized early on that my being a mother meant that I must assist my son Martin in his spiritual journey to accept God’s will with increased faith and fervor.  I also knew that my most important motherly mission was to ensure that Martin, with his wife Yvette’s participation, would embark on a spiritual journey, nourishment of Martin’s soul, the purification of his human frailties, and learning to trust God and accepting HIS WILL.

Growing in our spirituality; a new life with the Lord.

As I share these experiences with you, it is with the hope that through our respective agonizing life events, we see the different processes of loving obedience.  It can also mean our surrender to God’s will as the true embodiment of the real meaning of divine assistance; our capacity to let go, giving our agenda to God, acknowledging our powerlessness in the midst of crises, and opening our minds and hearts to the whole meaning of the mystery of death as the beginning of new life with the Lord.

May we constantly be reminded that carrying our daily crosses in our everyday life experiences are truly the sources of our conversion and transformation, where the beginning of a new life with the Lord can take place, so that a renewed sense of love and hope, growing in our spirituality may unfold in our everyday celebration of life eternal.

Learning to live our own lives effectively often provides the most powerful lessons on leadership.   Thus, the lessons gleaned from my personal herstory are as follows:

• The socialization effects of both home and school are very strong forces in charting one’s career path.  Too much pressure from parents can affect one’s image and educational directions in life of the youngsters.
   

•  We cannot give unless we have nourished the love we receive. If we cannot be leaders for ourselves, how can we be leaders for others?  And for others to trust us as leaders, they must know us; they must see our true selves. That means that we must know and be willing to reveal our true selves. 
   

• The value of suffering is that it can be an enriching source of purification provided we learn to discover that suffering by itself has its own sublime purpose and it can unlock the key to true happiness.  The call to holiness is a journey towards finding God’s presence in everyday events of our ordinary life.
   

• We can teach the value of self-knowledge and reflection in these everyday events of relations and happenings.  They motivate us to discover and describe our own “learning journeys” to find our own voices, to uncover our own answers, and to share our own Herstories with others.
   

• HERSTORIES are empowering on a personal level. As each woman tells herstory, she comes to understand herself—her struggles as a woman of her class/race/nationality, her weaknesses and her strengths that have brought about success and failures. Empowerment flows from self-realization and goads one to take hold of her future course.

• First, Herstories can serve to elicit personal experiences of discrimination, marginalization, and biases.  These can be of various types, but gender violence and biases are almost certain to be included.
   

• Second, the sharing of Herstories focused on gender violence and resolution of discrimination highlights the participatory nature of this methodology, which uncovers the emotional/affective experiences that have remained invisible. Enabled to gain some distance, they can give vent to their pent-up hidden emotional stresses.  Thus, this is a plus feature in pedagogy.
   

• Third, insights and learnings are facilitated among participants sharing their Herstories. They are able to objectify their emotional undercurrents of discrimination by sharing these with others; their awareness is expanded; and the whole experience of being able to objectify their unverbalized emotional underpinnings through their narration of herstories builds up toward self-empowerment.

• HERSTORIES have a transformative dimension on an individual, institutional, and macro level. Heroines of major historical events as well as of everyday events transform not only their lives but also the lives of others who take them as role models.

• HERSTORIES delineate the values and the coping skills that have guided women as they overcome obstacles of the patriarchal system, as well as the lessons learned in achieving success, thus enabling one to serve and care for others while providing leadership and wisdom which inspire action in others.

It is my hope that by retelling my own personal herstory, I can offer new insights, uncover new challenges and lead others to contribute more of their potentials. May this conference on WOMEN WITH NO LIMITS suggest to all of us that we can learn to examine our lives, reflect on our successes and failures and be in tune to the music of our own herstories.

We hope that looking at managerial challenges—how to manage ourselves first and foremost and then how to lead others in non-work settings—will make the lessons go down a little easier by allowing the routines and defenses we build up to handle the stresses of organizational life become more meaningful and significant.

CONTINUING A LEGACY

As eldest of the third generation, accepted presidency of the PWU; accepted presidency of the PWC of Davao

Three years have passed since my installation in February 2003 as the 8^th President of the Philippine Women’s University, the 4^th alumna to steer the helm of this university.  Subsequently, in July 2005, I also accepted the presidency of The Philippine Women’s College of Davao. 

Before we embarked on our journey, our first major task was to set our course.  We redefined the PWU Vision—A proactive, nurturing faith community rooted in spirituality, which develops transformative leadership to meet national and global challenges.  Thus have we articulated our enduring belief in a Supreme Being, whose Spirit guides our directions, and in whose Divine Providence we trust daily.  With Jesus and His Mother as models, we strive to reach out as servant leaders not only to each member of the PWU faith community of students, faculty, non-teaching personnel and administrators, but also to parents and alumni, institutional partners, and all our other stakeholders.     

Having agreed that we would continue to set our sights keeping faith with our founders’ vision of an educated citizenry, we restated in 2003 the PWU Mission—An enduring commitment to prepare the learner as a role model for useful citizenship through a holistic education which treasures cultural heritage and is imbued with the core values of personal integrity, family solidarity, community participation, and leadership in the profession.

Leadership in women’s education: PWU Vision / Mission

As a result of the appreciative inquiry process that we have started to apply this year, we in the university are Collectively Creating the University’s Future Today.  We are enhancing the PWU Vision statement to include continuing leadership in women’s education, as articulated by our seven founding mothers, who saw a need to prepare women not only as housewives but also as women leaders in their chosen profession and in the communities they serve.

Thus, as our founding mothers prepared Filipino women for useful women’s roles in the new republic of the twentieth century, the PWU today must gear up its entire educational program to respond to global needs, in keeping with its visionary role in the 21^st century.  We reaffirm this by maintaining the PWU’s leadership in women’s education as primordial; and responding to globalization by giving birth to transformative leaders within the perspective of gender education, which addresses both women and men. 

At this point, may I briefly explain how we at the Philippine Women’s University have become advocates of women advancement and empowerment, gender equality, gender mainstreaming, and of this methodology called “Herstories”. 

The PWU, now on its 87^th year of service in nation building through education, takes pride in being the first university for women in Asia founded by Asians.  Its founding mothers had the foresight to open this university for women to form them both as homemakers and useful citizens as the Philippines prepared for independence from American rule. 

Today, we are continuing to carry out the PWU’s vision and mission in the 21^st century in a global context, with focus on spirituality in education.  We believe that all efforts must be exerted for women and men to assume equal (though different) roles.  Indeed, we are living in a horribly troubled world, and all men and women of goodwill are called upon to build a culture of peace. 

When the National Centennial Commission (NCC) celebrated the Year of the Heroes in 1996, the invisibility of women in history was very pronounced. A group of concerned women leaders approached NCC Chairman Salvador H. Laurel and posed the question: How come the women are not represented as a cross-cutting sectoral group in the various committees of the Centennial celebration? 

Upon realizing that without women, the record of a century of Filipinism would be half of our people’s story left untold, the NCC-Women Sector was formally created. Through the recommendation of NCC Chairman Laurel, then President Fidel V. Ramos appointed Dr. Helena Z Benitez as chairperson.  The PWU Development Institute for Women in Asia-Pacific (DIWA) served as secretariat, with yours truly as Director General of the NCC-Women Sector.

Having identified women’s invisibility in history as the root cause of present-day discrimination and oppression that continue to marginalize women’s contributions in the development process, the NCC-WS successfully undertook two major programs, namely, research and documentation of women’s role in Philippine history and nation building, and empowering women (and men) in the Filipino spirit.

In both these programs, the concept and methodology of Herstory were tried out and refined.  In the culminating activity, the International Congress on Women’s Role in History and Nation Building held in December 1998, the Herstory methodology was applied to various women’s issues and areas of concern in the Beijing Platform for Action. A thousand congress participants approved and signed the 1998 Manila Declaration to promote a global movement on Herstory to achieve gender equality and sustainable development.

It was at the UN CSW General Assembly Special Session, “Women 2000: Beijing Plus 5 Gender Equality, Peace, Development for the 21^st Century” that this speaker had the opportunity to bring up the concept of HERSTORIES:

“Through women-centered paradigms such as HERSTORIES (instead of only considering histories), it is possible to elicit the particular strengths of women which can be placed at the service of the family, community and nation. Women’s uniqueness and heroism have to be highlighted beyond gender equality. Women need not compete with men in order to achieve gender equality. Rather, making use of feminine qualities, women’s leadership should shine in new roles, create new rules for participation with men towards building a better, more humane, gender-balanced world.

Given the new challenges in the new millennium, men need to also learn more, understand and appreciate the feminine qualities or the spiritual dimension for sustainable development, like caring for others, instead of violence and aggression; healing and nurturing to bring about the culture of peace, rather than instigating war and conflict.

Women’s leadership in the new millennium should emphasize negotiating skills for conflict resolution and peacemaking. The global world needs all who can use their feminine qualities of mothering (mother earth), nurturing (motherland), and healing (mother church).

In the long run, the bottom line is still a full and satisfying life for all, and unless women themselves experience it, the child, the father, the elders, and all other members of the society will have difficulty experiencing it as well.”

Women’s leadership in the new millennium

One of the tenets guiding my presidential commitment is: New women’s leadership in the millennium is called for to transform society toward a culture of peace and sustainable development. . . . We enter a new phase that calls for spirituality in education—a feminine spirituality that represents the emergence of a new paradigm to integrate the academic, sociological and cultural world of the PWU community as the University strives for academic excellence and competitiveness in a borderless world.

“Women’s empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society, including participation in the decision-making process and access     to power, are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace.” 

  -         Beijing Declaration

“The world is also starting to grasp that there is no policy for progress more effective than the empowerment of women and girls. Study after study has taught us that no       other policy is as likely to raise economic productivity, or to reduce infant and   maternal mortality. No other policy is as sure to improve nutrition and promote health—including the prevention of HIV/AIDS.  No other policy is as powerful in increasing the chances for education for the next generation.  And I would also venture that no policy is more important in preventing conflict, or in achieving reconciliation after a conflict has ended.”

-          UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

At the 2005 World Summit, the Outcome Document declared that “progress for women is progress for all.”  Women’s rights are human rights.

Women can be equal to men—not through competing with men in the structure but by expressing their own virtues and uniqueness. The more important goal for the advancement of women is to change the values that matter in our society.

Thus, gender equality should be concerned not just with the rise in the status of women through quantitative gains, but rather with a far more fundamental change in the foundations and values of society and the evolution of a new reality.

Both the feminine and masculine principles of consciousness are necessary to create a more balanced society.  As we prepare to enter the third millennium, women dare dream that the 21^st century might mean a significant rebirth and renewal in the role of women.

Women’s colleges and universities, by improving access to education, directly contribute to the advancement of women.  It is assumed that such women’s colleges and universities also make a difference to the empowerment of women.  Academic institutions, particularly women’s universities, can and should play a leading and proactive role towards gender equity; they “act as a catalyst to bring attitudinal changes among men and women towards the goal of gender mainstreaming”. 

Through the Universities, particularly through the Women Studies Programs, it is our hope to secure change in attitudes about gender, mainly by increasing understanding and awareness of gender differences and their implications for policy considerations.

The PWU vision and mission is to develop leaders—agents of change, people for transformative leadership. To do this, each of us needs to grow as a leader.

Spirituality is key to transformative leadership

Emerging spirituality is discovering our potentials and the meaning of our life. According to Sister Mary John Mananzan, this means ‘the best that we can become’ by developing and nurturing a kind of spirituality—a kind of “passionate and compassionate spirituality” to arrive at our full humanity.  Doing what’s right earns you the right to lead, and a good leader exudes “passionate and compassionate spirituality.”

Through these key elements of spirituality, we can assist ourselves to be the best we can become through faith in ourselves to become leaders of significance.

Gender equity and women’s empowerment should go in tandem to form a foundation for success and significance among individual women leaders.  In the context of the role of educational institutions, particularly women’s universities wishing to play a leading and proactive role towards developing and mainstreaming gender equity in today’s globalizing world, these concepts are key:  Success, Significance, Faith and Transformative Leadership.

SUCCESS:  Our university theme this year is “Collectively Creating the University’s Future Today” as we continue to pursue our investment in the nation’s most important resource—our young people, our students—in providing them institutional directions to achieve global competencies through spiritual renewal and transformation. Thus, over the past three years, the PWU has undertaken 12 accreditation visits of most of its academic programs, in response to the recommendations, so as to ensure the effective monitoring of student outcomes.  Today, from a Deregulated Status as of October 2003, as per CHED’s authority, we are moving with determination toward institutional accreditation to achieve Autonomous Status as a university.

In keeping with the PWU’s vision of continuing leadership in women’s education and transformative leadership to meet global challenges, we hope and pray that we can successfully embark on expanding our academic programs through a School of International Hospitality Management and an Academy of Culture, Arts and Music, Programs in Women’s Empowerment and Leadership, Women in Science and Technology, Sports Programs. We will develop new educational areas that relate more effectively to the needs of a globalizing economy—through a School of International Diplomacy, Integrative Health Care Programs, and Continuing Professional Development.

SIGNIFICANCE:  A Journey Towards the Best You Can Become.  Although success is sweet in itself, we must regard it primarily as a prelude to significance, which is a journey beyond ourselves in service to others.

I am taking this opportunity to share some insights from John Maxwell, who impressed me very much when I listened to him at a National Prayer breakfast meeting.

• It is not enough to achieve success either at the institutional or at the personal level. True, we have achieved some measurable success. But according to Maxwell, this personal or institutional success is not sufficient. We need to create an impact on the lives of others.

• Success is when I add value to Myself.  Significance is when I add value to Others.

• Any ordinary person can make a positive impact on the lives of others. The value we add to ourselves remains insignificant when we fail to offer ourselves at the service of God and fellowmen.

• What does it mean to have a Servant’s Heart, or to embody the quality of servanthood? The first mark of servanthood is the ability to put others ahead of yourself and your personal desires. It means intentionally being aware of other people’s needs, being available to help them, and learning to accept their desires as important. Great leaders see the need, seize the opportunity, and serve without expecting anything in return. Service is motivated by nothing else but love and concern for others.

• Our focus must be beyond ourselves. By giving, loving, serving, helping, encouraging, and adding value to others, we are living a useful life. That is significance.

• We truly value our gift of life by taking the “journey from success to significance”.   Too often we learn too late what is really important.

MY STYLE OF LEADERSHIP UNDER CRISIS

With God’s assistance and the steadfast support of the university community, the PWU continues to develop, improve, and upgrade both instructional facilities and human resources.  Reassessing our institutional strengths and weaknesses is an ongoing process to concretize our desire to keep abreast of international standards for educating world-class Filipino professionals.  This School Year’s thrust is focused on instituting more effective monitoring mechanisms and evaluation procedures.

Because we consider the PWU a living legacy, we try to inculcate the Philwomenian spirit so that working at the PWU goes beyond an ordinary commitment to a job.  Our daily work should help us grow in our spirituality. We may have succeeded to build a sense of a growing faith community but is this kind of spirituality rooted in our day-to-day relationship with others?

As teachers, are we able to ensure that the PWU’s core values and virtues are integrated in our subject matter, in daily teaching and work ethics? Are we making a difference in the lives of our students?

Leaders who leave a legacy of succession create a leadership culture.  This is the challenge that confronts each educational institution today to move from institutional success to creating its significance in the global world. The most stable organizations have strong leaders at every level of the organization. The only way to develop such widespread leadership is to make developing leaders a part of the organization’s culture. 

Is this faith in people bringing out the best of their potentials so that they are able to emerge and be empowered as leaders, who can bring about change and transformation in the lives of others?  This is the greater challenge in the task of building a faith community.

The mere desire to grow and reach our potential isn’t enough to empower us to make a significant contribution to the world. Just remember: Success is a journey; Service is the Significance you have in your life.

Transformative leaders actively nurture their spiritual life. It is their passionate and compassionate spirituality that makes possible their journey from success to significance because they are able to practice servant leadership that transforms themselves and others.

Let us grow to our maximum potential and nurture the kind of spirituality that is self-affirming, empowering, and liberating, so that we can be the best we can become.  Let us start with ourselves. Have faith in yourself and in others. We have to believe we can all become leaders WHO can bring about the change we wish to see in the world. 

We need to have faith that we can overcome, to lead tomorrow, and learn today to become TRANSFORMATIVE leaders. 

We can make a difference in the lives of others through our growing spirituality. Only then can our personal or institutional success contribute to SIGNIFICANCE. 

Let us start today. Let us do something everyday to make ourselves better able to give, and take the journey of SUCCESS TO SIGNIFICANCE!

CLOSING REMARKS

How to become a transformed leader? A WOMAN WITH NO LIMITS.  Allow me to offer and share with you some of my OWN best practices.

Just remember:  To emerge as a transformative leader, one needs first to believe in one’s human potentials; second, you need to conceive it in your mind, what you would want to achieve, either for yourself or for others.  As long as you can’t imagine it, as long as you can’t see it, then it is not going to happen to you.  Our own doubts, our apprehensions, our lack of courage, our own wrong thinking can keep us from God’s best.

That is why the THIRD step to living our full potentials is to enlarge our vision of ourselves, of the work environment, of our own family’s growth and potential. To LIVE OUR BEST LIFE NOW, WE MUST START LOOKING AT LIFE THROUGH THE EYES OF FAITH, SEEING OURSELVES DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY. This means you all need to make room for expanding your own thinking, and GOD will bring those things to pass. Our own defeatist attitude, our own limited views of thinking, will prevent good things from happening in our common destiny. God will not pour fresh, creative ideas and blessings into old negative attitudes.

Fourth, seeing these impossible things through the eyes of faith.  Thus, the key is to believe and to let the seed take root so that it can grow.  Just remember, with God, all things are possible. Of course it is not going to happen by our own power. God said it’s going to be by HIS SPIRIT.  The power of the Most High will come upon us and cause these things to happen. With God on our side, we cannot possibly lose.  He can make a way when it looks as though there is no way.

I believe that in GODs time, HE will overturn our common adversities, against all odds, and bring about our collective vision.. God can do anything, if you believe firmly and passionately.  Please do not try to limit God by our own limitations in our own thinking. God works by faith.  Make room in your own thinking and then you will start experiencing some of HIS supernatural blessings.  YOU MUST FIRST  BELIEVE, THEN YOU WILL RECEIVE.  Maybe you have been waiting for GOD to make a move, but GOD is waiting for you to stretch your faith and expand your trust.  However, many times we find ourselves afraid to dream the impossible things.

Lastly, if you want to be successful, you must follow your dreams.  Just be mindful that your life from now on will follow your expectations.  What you will expect is what you will get.  If you dwell on positive thoughts, your life will move in that direction.  If you continually think negative thoughts, doubting that your own dreams will be fulfilled, you can expect defeat and failure in actualizing your dreams. YOU NEED TO CHANGE YOUR THINKING BEFORE YOU CAN EVER CHANGE YOUR LIVING.  In other words, have what your faith expects.  This implies that even when your situation looks  bleak, when you are tempted to be discouraged or depressed, you must encourage yourself by praying.  God, I know that You are in control and even though this looks impossible, I know and I believe that today could be the day that things will turn around.

So my dear friends, be passionate to fulfill your commitments.  Even if it does not seem possible, it is better to keep on trying because this mindset can also hold you together against all odds.  Try not to waver, pursue it totally and put your complete trust in GOD.  Once you give up nothing else will hold you together.
 

Thank you and good day.

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