Both are below. And if what is actually wrong is that you cannot get out of bed rather than that you are not good enough, that is a different page — the Prayer for Depression — and it is not a moral failing.
Historical Context
It Is Not Something You Do Once
The Catechism calls it a second conversion and is explicit that it never finishes: “Christ’s call to conversion continues to resound in the lives of Christians. This second conversion is an uninterrupted task for the whole Church” (CCC 1428).
An uninterrupted task. Which reframes the whole thing usefully — you are not failing at a one-off project every time you slip. You are doing the ordinary work, which has no completion date. The same paragraph adds the part that takes the strain off: “This endeavor of conversion is not just a human work. It is the movement of a ‘contrite heart,’ drawn and moved by grace.”
A Prayer to Be a Better Person
Lord, I want to be better than I am,
and I have wanted it before and not managed it.
Make me honest about one thing today rather than vaguely sorry about everything.
Give me prudence, to see what is actually in front of me.
Give me justice, to give people their due even when it costs me.
Give me fortitude, to keep going when it stops being interesting.
Give me temperance, because I know exactly where I do not stop.
And give me the faith, hope and love that I cannot manufacture.
Begin again in me today.
Amen.
The Four Things You Are Actually Asking For
The vagueness is the enemy here, so it helps to know the list. Four virtues are called cardinal because everything else hangs on them: “prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance” (CCC 1805).
Prudence — seeing a situation as it is and knowing what to do about it. Not caution; clear sight.
Justice — giving each person what is genuinely owed them, including the people it is inconvenient to owe.
Fortitude — carrying on after the enthusiasm has gone, which is where most attempts at self-improvement die.
Temperance — the one nobody wants. It “moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods” and “ensures the will’s mastery over instincts” (CCC 1809). Most people reading this page already know which appetite they are here about. It is also the virtue behind being satisfied with what you have, which is why the old contentment page now points here.
Then there are three more that you cannot work up on your own — faith, hope and charity — which the Catechism says are “infused by God into the souls of the faithful” (CCC 1813). That distinction matters: four of the seven are trainable and three are asked for.
How to Examine Your Conscience
This is the method, and it takes five minutes at the end of the day. It is what the tradition offers instead of a resolution.
- Ask for light. A short prayer to see the day truthfully rather than defensively.
- Give thanks. Name two or three good things in the day. This is not padding — it stops the exercise turning into self-loathing, which is a failure mode, not humility.
- Walk through the day. Morning to evening. Where were you generous, and where were you not? Not a hunt for sins; a review.
- Pick one thing. One word said sharply, one thing avoided, one person used. Say sorry for that specifically, in plain words.
- Choose one thing for tomorrow. Small and nameable. “Be civil to that colleague,” not “be a better person.”
Done nightly this is worth more than any number of resolutions, and it is the practice behind the phrase “second conversion.” When something keeps turning up in step four week after week, that is what you take to Confession — and the Act of Contrition is the prayer for it.
Stevenson’s Prayer for Inward Happiness
Worth knowing where this one comes from, because it circulates everywhere unattributed. It is by Robert Louis Stevenson — the novelist, a Scottish Presbyterian rather than a Catholic — and it is usually called his Happiness Prayer.
Grant to us, O Lord, the royalty of inward happiness,
and the serenity which comes from living close to thee.
Daily renew in us the sense of joy,
and let the eternal spirit of the Father dwell in our souls and bodies,
filling every corner of our hearts with light and grace;
so that, bearing about with us the infection of good courage,
we may be diffusers of life,
and may meet all ills and cross accidents
with gallant and high-hearted happiness,
giving thee thanks always for all things.
Amen.
“The infection of good courage” is the phrase that earns its keep. It assumes goodness is communicable — that becoming a better person is not a private achievement but something other people catch off you.
A Prayer About One Particular Fault
Father, you know the thing I keep doing.
I have confessed it before and I will probably confess it again.
I am not asking to be impressive about it.
Take a little of its power today.
Let me notice the moment before, not only the moment after.
And when I fail, keep me from using the failure
as a reason to stop trying.
Amen.
Best Times for This Prayer
- At the end of the day, with the examination of conscience.
- Through Lent, and on Ash Wednesday.
- At New Year, instead of a resolution.
- The morning after you behaved badly and remember it clearly.
- Before Confession, when you are working out what to actually say.
- On a birthday, taking stock of the year.
Scripture Connection
“He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” — Micah 6:8
Micah is answering someone who has just offered escalating sacrifices — burnt offerings, thousands of rams, rivers of oil, finally his firstborn — in the hope that something will be enough. The answer strips it back to three ordinary things, and the middle one is the hardest to fake. It is the oldest and shortest answer in Scripture to the question this page is about, and it fits on a postcard.
Related prayers
If the thing you actually need is forgiveness rather than improvement, the Repentance Prayer has the Act of Contrition and explains what Confession requires. For a specific resentment you cannot put down, the Resentment Prayer is a fourteen-day practice.
The recovery tradition has worked this ground harder than almost anyone: see the Seventh Step Prayer, which asks for character defects to be removed, and the Tenth Step Prayer, which is a daily examination of conscience by another name. St Augustine wrote the most famous account of a conversion that took years longer than he wanted.