THE COURAGE TO COMMIT: Embrace the Radical Power of Sticking with Something

Review

**SECTION ONE — Bookstore recommendation** Most people do not lack ambition — they lack the ability to follow through once the initial excitement fades. *The Courage to Commit*, written by Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson and entrepreneur Andrew East, with journalist Jimmy Soni, takes that gap as its central problem. The book draws on the authors' own experience navigating high-stakes decisions — athletic careers, business ventures, marriage, and public life — to argue that commitment is a trainable skill, not a personality trait. The thesis is practical rather than philosophical: fear of the irreversible is the real obstacle, and the antidote is a deliberate set of mental habits that make follow-through possible. The intended reader is anyone who has talked themselves out of a decision they knew was right, whether in career, relationship, or personal growth. It reads as a candid account from two people who have made large bets in public and lived with the consequences, written for readers who want to do the same. **SECTION TWO — Catholic anthropological reading** - **Created**: The book's core assumption is that the human person is capable of rational self-governance — that we can deliberate, decide, and hold ourselves to a course of action. This tracks the CCMMP's account of the imago Dei as expressed in the intellect and will. The authors treat commitment as a specifically human act, one that requires the whole person: memory of past choices, reasoning about present circumstances, and foresight about future consequences. - **Fallen**: The book is most useful where it names the internal forces that sabotage commitment — catastrophizing, avoidance, the pull toward the comfortable and reversible. In Thomistic terms, these are expressions of the disordered passions: the irascible appetite recoiling from difficulty, and the concupiscible appetite clinging to security. The book does not use this language, but its diagnosis is accurate at the phenomenological level. - **Redeemed**: The authors' framing that commitment can be learned and practiced over time is implicitly a formation argument. The person is not fixed; habits are real and changeable. This sits within the Redeemed arc, though the book names no source of grace. For Catholic readers, the practical counsel here can be integrated into a broader account of cooperation with grace and the gradual ordering of the will toward genuine goods. - **Prudence (foresight and caution)**: The book trains two integral parts of prudence that Aquinas treats as essential for any virtuous act to succeed: foresight (anticipating what a commitment will actually require) and caution (identifying what can go wrong before it does). These are presented through practical exercises rather than philosophical argument, but the underlying structure is genuinely prudential. - **Justice (vows/commitment)**: The virtue most directly addressed is the keeping of commitments — what Aquinas places under justice as the virtue of fidelity to solemn promises. The book argues for treating personal commitments with something like the gravity traditionally reserved for vows, which is a notable convergence with Catholic moral anthropology even if the authors arrive there through athletic and entrepreneurial experience rather than theological reflection. **SECTION THREE — Conversation with the canon** Hayes[^1], in *Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life*, frames commitment not as a declaration of certainty about outcomes but as an ongoing orientation — building 'larger and larger patterns and habits of heading in the direction that you choose.'[^2] *The Courage to Commit* operates on the same axis: it argues that commitment precedes clarity, not the other way around, which is precisely the ACT insight that you do not wait until fear resolves before acting. Where Hayes grounds this in Relational Frame Theory and psychological flexibility, Johnson and East ground it in embodied experience and narrative, which makes the same argument accessible to readers who would not enter through a clinical door. Peterson[^3], in his lecture on Cain and Abel, identifies a related truth from the other side: that there are things a person must refuse regardless of consequence, because to do otherwise is to dissolve the self. The courage to commit and the courage to refuse are, on this reading, the same act of the will seen from opposite angles. ## References [^1]: Hayes, S. C. (2005). *Get out of your mind and into your life: The new Acceptance and Commitment Therapy*. New Harbinger. Introduction. [^2]: Hayes, S. C. (n.d.). ACT and RFT videos [DMU video lecture]. Transcript excerpt on commitment and direction. [^3]: Peterson, J. B. (n.d.). Cain and Abel [DMU video lecture]. Transcript excerpt on refusal and identity.

✓ Strengths

• ✓Frames commitment not as a feeling but as a deliberate act of the will, which aligns with the Thomistic account of fortitude and the virtue of keeping vows (justice-commitment) as a stable disposition rather than an emotional state.
• ✓The athlete-entrepreneur co-authorship grounds the argument in concrete, embodied experience — consistent with the CCMMP's insistence on the unity of body and soul, where physical discipline and personal decision-making are not separate domains.
• ✓Addresses the fear and avoidance that precede genuine commitment, mapping onto the Fallen condition of disordered passions (concupiscence of irascibility and concupiscence of timidity) that obstruct deliberate action.
• ✓The book's practical orientation toward planning, risk assessment, and follow-through trains the integral parts of prudence — foresight, caution, and preparedness — which Aquinas identifies as necessary for any virtuous act to reach its end.
• ✓By treating commitment as a learnable skill rather than an innate trait, the book implicitly supports the Redeemed arc: the person can be formed, habits can be cultivated, and growth is possible regardless of prior failures.

⚠ Considerations

• ⚠The book operates entirely within a secular achievement framework. Commitment is ordered toward personal goals and professional success, with no account of how the will ought to be ordered to God as its final end. Catholic readers should supplement with a theology of vocation.
• ⚠Without a robust account of suffering or failure as formative — rather than merely as obstacles to overcome — the book risks reinforcing a voluntarist anthropology in which the will is the whole story. The role of grace, dependence, and receptivity is absent.
• ⚠The co-author credentials (Olympic athlete and entrepreneur) may shape the book's implicit audience toward high-achievers, which could make its counsel feel inaccessible or even counterproductive for readers whose primary struggle is not motivation but disordered attachment or trauma.