I really liked the First
Presidency message for this month by President Uchtdorf, so I want to comment
on it. (My words in black, his in green.) It seems to me that one of President
Uchtdorf’s great strengths as an apostle is his exuberant enthusiasm and
hopefulness.
In ancient Rome, Janus was the god of
beginnings. He was often depicted with two faces—one looking back on the past,
the other looking forward to the future. Some languages name the month of
January after him because the beginning of the year was a time for reflection
as well as planning.
Thousands of years later, many cultures
throughout the world carry on a tradition of making resolutions for the new
year. Of course, making resolutions is easy—keeping them is a different thing
altogether.
One man who had made a long list of New Year’s
resolutions felt pretty good about his progress. He thought to himself, “So
far, I’ve stuck to my diet, I haven’t lost my temper, I’ve kept to my budget,
and I haven’t once complained about the neighbor’s dog. But today is January 2
and the alarm just went off and it’s time I got out of bed. It’s going to take
a miracle to keep my streak going.”
It’s SO TRUE!! For some reason when we start a new
resolution, it is pretty easy to do it for a day or two.. or three. But at some point the shiny wears off
and then it seems like a long, hard slog.
Or something comes up that gets in the way. Or we slack off our effort because we think we don’t need to
work as hard at it as we have.
There is something incredibly hopeful about a
fresh start. I suppose at one time or another we have all wanted to start again
with a clean slate.
I love getting a new computer with a clean hard
drive. For a time it works perfectly. But as the days and weeks pass by and
more and more programs get installed (some intentional, some not so
intentional), eventually the computer begins to stall, and things it used to do
quickly and efficiently become sluggish. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. Even
getting it to start can become a chore as the hard drive becomes cluttered with
miscellaneous chaos and electronic debris. There are times when the only
recourse is to reformat the computer and start over.
Human beings can likewise become cluttered with
fears, doubts, and burdensome guilt. The mistakes we have made (both
intentional and unintentional) can weigh upon us until it may seem hard to do
what we know we should.
In the case of sin, there is a wonderful
reformatting process called repentance that allows us to clear our internal
hard drives of the clutter that burdens our hearts. The gospel, through the
miraculous and compassionate Atonement of Jesus Christ,
shows us the way to cleanse our souls of the stain of sin and once again become
new, pure, and as innocent as a child.
But sometimes other things slow us down and hold
us back, causing unproductive thoughts and actions that make it hard for us to
get started.
I’d say the experience with
computers is a very useful metaphor here. (And I'm not sure why I like it so much, but I do.)
Along with repentance, we
need grace (enabling power of God) to help us make it through life, but we
can’t have it without giving our total effort and commitment to it. And so often we would give that total
effort except we have fallen prey to destructive thought patterns that in some
way weaken us. I love that Elder
Uchtdorf teaches many principles (not just here but in other talks too) that
help us discover destructive thought patterns and helps us replace them with
helpful ones instead.
I have a lot of troubles
with doubts, fears, and perfectionism.
I feel like I’m always fighting it, so I appreciate principles that help
me escape those unproductive patterns.
Setting goals is a worthy endeavor. We know that
our Heavenly Father has goals because He has told us that His work and glory is
“to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39).
Our personal goals can bring out the best in us.
However, one of the things that derail our efforts in making and keeping
resolutions is procrastination. We sometimes delay starting, waiting for the right
moment to begin—the first day of a new year, the beginning of summer, when
we’re called as bishop or Relief Society president, after the kids get into
school, after we retire.
You don’t need an invitation before you start
moving in the direction of your righteous goals. You don’t need to wait for
permission to become the person you were designed to be. You don’t need to wait
to be invited to serve in the Church.
We can sometimes waste years of our lives
waiting to be chosen (see D&C 121:34–36). But that is a false premise.
You are already chosen!
I felt like this part really
spoke to me. Procrastination is
one of my problems, though I don’t actually say to myself, “I’ll do it
later.” My procrastination has
been in the form that Elder Uchtdorf has described above, the kind that wants to
wait for the “right moment” and the kind that feels like it needs permission to do or become or
start.
My procrastination has to do
with writing. I am a writer. So often I delay starting my writing
because I’m waiting for the right moment.
But what does the right moment look like and how will I know I’ve come
to it? I keep waiting for a moment
when I will feel inspired. It is
particularly insidious when it comes to working on this blog because I want to be inspired as I write about the
scriptures. The weird thing is, I’ve learned by
experience that inspiration happens more while I’m working on it and rather
than when I’m thinking about working
on it. So I just have to show up
and start studying and writing and then it comes.
I’ve also seen some of my
procrastination in the form of feeling like I need permission from
someone. One of the things I want
to do is write fiction, write fabulous novels. But I feel like I need permission! I don’t know who from.
Maybe it’s because I have this deep-down notion that writing fiction is
play, not real work. It makes me
think that just like you need mom to call the school to so you can go somewhere
else during school, I need someone to call the “work police” and tell them that
I have permission to write fiction for work instead of getting hired by someone
else. Maybe I need to write
myself out a permission slip. (I
eventually did this. It felt very
freeing.)
I like that President
Uchtdorf says our personal goals can bring out the best in us. (Of course, he makes the implicit
assumption that these goals are righteous.) When you consider the effort that goes into working toward
goals, you can see he’s right.
What else besides a goal makes you wrestle
with the natural man? Good
goals always involve repentance at
some level or stage. A good goal
that speaks to you fires your imagination, giving you vision. It
requires confidence and faith. It requires you to commit
and act courageously. It requires analysis of skills and leads to learning more skills.
It leads to problem-solving. It disciplines you and builds your perseverance. And even when we fail, we practice repentance and re-commitment if we try again.
At times in my life I have spent sleepless
nights grappling with issues, worries, or personal sorrows. But no matter how
dark the night, I am always encouraged by this thought: in the morning the sun
will rise.
With every new day, a new dawn comes—not only
for the earth but also for us. And with a new day comes a new start—a chance to
begin again.
This view of the new day as
the chance to begin trying again is a big thing that gives me hope. I’ve lived a few months when I was
depressed and felt that I had no hope of anything better. When I’ve struggled with a bad habit
for so long and failed so many times, it is easy to think that there is no hope
of change and that the future will get worse and worse and I should just give
up and drift as the current takes me.
I’ve learned to fight this by seeing each new day as a gift of a small
time that I can concentrate my efforts in. We learn from living the commandment of keeping the Sabbath
Holy that it is possible to make one day different from every other day of the
week, more focused on serving God.
So we can use that same principle during the week. Each new day we can try again to break
bad habits. Also, taking it one
day at a time helps me focus on the present moment rather than worrying
about the future.
Sometimes the thing that holds us
back is fear. We might be afraid that we won’t succeed, that we will succeed,
that we might be embarrassed, that success might change us, or that it might
change the people we love.
It’s usually not just one
fear, it is a network of fear, or a pyramid of fear, fears stacked on top of
each other. You have to pin down
the fear, drag it squealing out into the day, and then talk back to it before
you can kill it.
Another thing we need to remember when it comes
to setting goals is this: We almost certainly will fail—at least in the short
term. But rather than be discouraged, we can be empowered because this
understanding removes the pressure of being perfect right now. It acknowledges
from the beginning that at one time or another, we may fall short. Knowing this
up front takes away much of the surprise and discouragement of failure.
When we approach our goals this way, failure
doesn’t have to limit us. Remember, even if we fail to reach our ultimate,
desired destination right away, we will have made progress along the road that
will lead to it.
And that matters—it means a lot.
Even though we might fall short of our finish
line, just continuing the journey will make us greater than we were before.
Falling short and failure is
a not an end destination. It is
merely a stage in our progression.
When I apply this to myself
about my writing process, I can understand perfectly well that my first draft
is not going to be a masterpiece.
It’s going to be crud. But
I can learn from it and revise. My
first novel likewise is going to fall short as well, but I’ll learn from it and
revise it and my next novel will be better (although the first draft can be
crud all over again.) I can allow
myself to write badly at first so I can learn from it. (I suppose I’ll have to write myself a
permission slip for that too. ;-))
An old proverb says, “The best time to plant a
tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.”
There is something wonderful and hopeful about
the word now. There is something empowering about the fact that if we choose to
decide now, we can move forward at this very moment.
Now is the best time to start becoming the
person we eventually want to be—not only 20 years from now but also for all
eternity.
Sometimes it takes years for
us to figure out that we really want what’s good for us. And then we wish we’d started way
earlier. I’ve heard some converts
wishing they’d found the gospel earlier in life. I imagine we all have something like that.
At least the present moment
remains for making a beginning, right?
So what experiences have you
had in which you learned more from the process than you did from the outcome?
