The best part of Anthony DeStefano’s book, Thirty Days to Your New Life: A Guide to Transforming Yourself from Head to Soul is how he failed. Despite setting out to write a self-improvement book that included God, but without stepping on denominational toes, he couldn’t do it.
By Chapter 22, DeStefano admitted he had no choice but to bring out the Catholic faith as having the fullness for personal development. By then, he had already taken time for atheists in Chapter 15. “When it comes to deciding whether or not to have faith, the risk-reward ratio is all in God’s favor,” he wrote. “If you choose to deny God, you stand to lose everything. If you choose to believe in him, you stand to gain everything.” A reasoned explanation was also given and he recalled the Gospel story of a man who asked Jesus to heal his son suffering from a demonic possession. “But Jesus assured him, ‘If you believe, all things are possible’ to which the father responded: ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:23-24).
DeStefano starts the book by rebooting the illusion of transitory worldly happiness in order to shoot for something higher. “C.S. Lewis said that if you aim for the earth, you will not get it. But if you aim for Heaven, you’ll get Heaven and the earth thrown in too,” he wrote.
DeStefano’s daily regimen of encouragement cuts strings that tie our souls to bad habits such as complaining, ingratitude and sins of the tongue. His guided introspection also helps to focus on ways we might sacrifice peace of mind by failing to recognize God’s reassurance, “My grace is sufficient.”
The book covers health of mind, body and spirit, discerning God’s will for us, and the challenge of forgiving — coming clean with God and also the reward of forgiving others. We learn that the habit of gratitude for both natural blessings and supernatural ones is a game changer. “We can’t be happy unless we’re grateful to God for existence and all our many blessings,” DeStefano wrote.
Cultivating humility works in union with gratitude, according to him. “People who are prideful and arrogant are always angry because they feel that either their rights have been violated or they haven’t been given what they feel they’re entitled to,” he said. “They’re unhappy because they’re never satisfied with anything. By contrast, humble people always feel grateful for what they’ve already been given.”
And then comes Chapter 22, “The Fullness of Truth.” DeStefano confessed that his original idea of a book for a general audience would have been a waste of time since the market is flooded with them. “Personal development isn’t enough,” he said. “In order to be your best self, you need more than just self-help — you need God’s help too.” So, he included God. But that wasn’t enough. He added Christianity which teaches self-denial and self-detachment, different than Buddhism, by losing ourselves to be transformed in Christ. DeStefano had written other best-selling books that encompassed Christianity in general, but he realized this one had to go deeper.
According to him, from the historical, intellectual and spiritual heritages as well as the sacraments as channels of grace and assistance, no other belief system has all the resources to help us achieve self-mastery, self-renewal and self-transformation than the Catholic Church. His book could not compromise. For the fullness of truth, he explained, “you have to go to the Catholic Church — the Church that Jesus Christ Himself founded.”
DeStefano shared that history reveals the Catholic truth and scandals do not erase it and that scandals outside of the Church are far more rampant. Weak, sinful humanity is everywhere, including at the roots of the Church in the apostles, he noted, but the truth is the truth. He included explanations on the Catholic Church because, it “gives a person more tools, more weapons, more resources, more assistance, more grace, more power, more everything to turn his or her life around.”
Although organized religion is often criticized, DeStefano pointed out that disorganization does not have good outcomes. And regarding all the talk about a personal relationship with Jesus, he noted that at every Mass is the re-creation of the sacrifice that saved us — not a replay of it, but it becomes present to us. We can plug into this amazing power source, DeStefano explained, by receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist. “The Catholic Church teaches that the Eucharist is really and truly God. It is God-made man. It is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. It is not a symbol.”
Receiving Communion regularly is the height of personal development, DeStefano explained. “You’re going to become more like God,” he said. “You’re going to be lifted into a higher kind of life — a different way of life, a life that Christ described in the Gospels as ‘the Kingdom of Heaven.’ This is not only a life of increased virtue, but a life of great power — power to follow the Golden Rule, power to love your enemies, power to bring peace wherever there is strife, power to accomplish things that seem impossible; a life characterized by humility, truth, beauty, goodness, and countless miracles; an immortal life that continues beyond the grave into eternity in Heaven. Most importantly it is a life characterized by extraordinary closeness to God.”
Immortal combat, sainthood and getting through intense suffering finish up the book, ending with the writing of a code of personal conduct. DeStefano shares his own as an example. Ultimately, he summarizes that through embracing the fullness of faith, our life will be a success in this world and in the next.