Daily Inspiration Quote by Saint Teresa

Obedience gets a bad rap in modern life because it smells like submission, bureaucracy, the hollow “because I said so.” Teresa of Avila turns it into a technology: a way of converting the impossible into the merely difficult. The line’s quiet audacity is that it treats obedience not as moral passivity but as leverage. When you stop negotiating with every impulse and fear, you free up attention and stamina. The “power” here is practical before it is pious.

The subtext is a diagnosis of the self as the main obstacle. Teresa, a reformer who founded convents, traveled relentlessly, and fought institutional suspicion, wasn’t writing from a cushioned corner of compliance. She’s describing how spiritual and communal discipline can cut through paralysis. Obedience collapses decision fatigue: once a rule of life is chosen (or accepted), the mind stops spinning on alternatives and starts acting. What seems “impossible” often isn’t a wall; it’s a swarm of internal objections.

Context matters. In 16th-century Catholic Spain, obedience was a pillar of monastic life and a theological virtue, but also a social language of hierarchy and surveillance. Teresa’s genius is to reclaim it as interior freedom: obedience as consent to a demanding path that outlasts mood. The phrase “making things easy” isn’t a promise of comfort; it’s an inversion of effort. The hard part is surrendering control. After that, the work can finally begin.