"Supposed to" the Greatest Robber of Joy

Do we do what we because because it brings us joy, fulfillment, and peace or do we do what we do because we think we must. Sometimes we think we must because it is what "good people do" or because "I have to do that so I can have this" or because of social constraint.

A few weeks ago I came to the conclusion that I should be my best self thinking that being my best self would automatically bring what I was hoping for into my life, but it didn't. So then I wondered if there were things I was supposed to be doing, what things had I left undone that were keeping what I wanted so far away. I felt like there was a checklist of things I needed to do in order to reach my goal. It reached a point where I forgot what my goal really was or why I had wanted it in the first place. My checklist grew and grew as my goal felt farther and farther away, I felt drained and overwhelmed trying to complete my list of things "I should do".

In the world I am just entering there are plenty of people who tell you how it "should be done" they point out all the old antiquated ways of doing things and talk about the "one thing you should do for success". What happens though when you sell your soul for that one thing, when you are in the search of trying to find the key that will bring you what you want, but you forget why you started in the first place. You forget that there is a lot of life between now and then and a lot can happen in a short amount of time.

Sometimes I get so caught up in the things I think "I should be doing" that I forget that I don't have to earn salvation, yes I need to be an actor, I am an agent unto myself, but what if sometimes Heavenly Father blesses us just because He wants to, that even as He wants us to be growing, engaging and progressing, He also wants us to have joy. Men are that they might have joy.

This life isn't just about working hard, checking the boxes, doing the things we are supposed to do. It is also about dreaming, standing in the light and soaking it in, and enjoying the good moments while they are here.

This last week I got so focused on what I felt I was lacking, looking for the next thing "I had to do" to reach my goal that I forgot how to enjoy the thing I was hoping for. I forgot to look forward with joy because I was so focused on how elusive it felt.

Life isn't about the stuff we should do, it isn't about us doing something because someone else is supposed to respond in a certain way. Life is about finding joy each day in who we are and in who we hope to become.

What to keep

This has been an insane week, a beautiful week, though still insane. As many of you are probably aware I have been creating a mentoring business the last few weeks and can I just say how it has rocked me to my core. For a long time I've worked an 8-5 job, working hard all day, coming home each night feeling as if I've been beaten up and reading books just as fast as I could get through them. Now even though I am busier than I have every been (working 8-5, having mentor appointments during my lunches, team calls every morning at 6, and trying to grow a website and online presence) I love my life and I'm not hiding in books anymore.

I've been on a journey trying to figure out what it is that I really want to help people to do. It is easy to say you want to help people, but hard to know how that really translates in the doing. How do I reach out to people, how do I explain what I want to do, caring so much about Heavenly Father, but not wanting to turn people away before they want to learn more, how to do it all?

And then to add to all those questions was this negative voice saying that no one liked me, that everyone else was awful and just spreading this nasty poison inside my mind. I knew I didn't want it there and I knew it wasn't serving me, but it seemed the harder I prayed the nastier the voice became. Finally I opened a word document and I just wrote out all the negativity in my mind and I got it all out. Only once I had acknowledged everything that was there and admitted to what I was feeling was I finally able to quiet that voice in my mind. So often when those things enter our mind we think we need to push them down, to bury them deep down and far away so that no one will ever know how awful we are. I assure you, you are not awful, you are just a mortal having a mortal experience, subject to all the nasty voices that come will mortality. We are not judged for the thoughts that pop into our heads, our destiny is determined by what we choose to do with them once they get there. Instead of burying them down deep inside of us where they can come up again and again every time that trigger comes up, instead what if we chose to really get rid of them, to put them on paper, on paper where no one else will see them?



I think sometimes we think if we get it out of us that will make it more real, it doesn't, by putting it on paper we actually recognize that those thoughts aren't ours and we don't want them, we recognize them for the lies we are and it is easier to not believe a lie, once you know it is a lie. So the next time those negative thoughts (about yourself or others) pop into your head, I encourage you to grab a piece of paper or a word document and write them all up, recognize what is really going on, then my personal favorite is to rip it up and chuck it in the garbage. Then find something good to tell yourself. Create the good, so there is less space for the bad to take root. Soon you'll find when bad things come in, you have more of the good to combat them with.  Happy writing, and happy being the one who chooses what stays in your brain. We have been told the lie that if we feel it, then we should say it. Instead if we feel it, we should write it, then we can determine what we want to say and what we want to throw away.

How much better off you are

Wow the last two weeks have been a bit of a whirl wind. If you had asked me six weeks ago what the next year of my life would look like, I wouldn't have had any idea that I would be creating a website, starting a YouTube channel, hosting a Facebook group, having one on one mentoring appointments with clients, and spending an hour of writing every night, but that is exactly what I'm doing and it is amazing!!!

It is a wonderful thing to feel like every hour is being put to good use, I feel more alive and more connected to my life. Where just months before I felt like every day was speeding by and I wasn't sure how I was actually filling it, now I know, I have things I have accomplished, I have things I have learned, and I have joy each day because I know I am helping others find and live in their true selves. What a gift it is to help others and I ask you, what is a way that you can help others that no one else can do?
  What is it that makes you fully you? I think there is something we all have to offer, maybe it is playing a musical instrument that brings joy to others, maybe it is writing stories that bring smiles to many faces, maybe it is cleaning your home and making it a safe and restful place to be for all who enter, maybe it is driving a bus and helping others get where they need to go, maybe it is designing new inventions that bless lives, maybe it is being just the parent your child needs.



There are no little gifts, there are no insignificant offerings. In this world we live in Heavenly Father needs just what we have to offer, His children need just what we have to offer. Satan will tell us that our offering is insignificant, or that we aren't doing any good, that we are over looked and not needed. You tell him to go away, in fact any lie that he tells you turn around and believe the opposite. If he tells you that your offerings are too small, you tell yourself that you are helping many, if he tells you they are insignificant you believe they are significant. If he tells you what you do doesn't matter, than you know without a shadow of a doubt that they do matter. The adversary deals in lies and discouragement, if he can get you down and discouraged in your purpose then you aren't there to bless the lives of someone else. If you are feeling discouraged tonight I hope you'll write down the good that you do. I hope you'll take the time to write down on a piece of paper "I have done something good today:" and list the good you have done, it doesn't matter what it was, having done it means you have brought light into the world, light it needed and you gave so selflessly.

What can you do to bring the light for yourself? What can you do to be your bestest self? When you find yourself and who you want to be then others dig deep and find their best selves. It seems at times that we are in a competition of who can be the most disappointed, who has lost the most or struggling the most. It is important to mourn with those who mourn, it is also so powerful to seek the good in your life and help others see the good in others. By speaking positively and looking for the best we raise the vibration of our lives so that those who enter also want to seek the best.

I hope as you go into the world this week we bear a dream of what your best self is, maybe that dream feels very far away, maybe it feels unattainable. A thing is never attainable if you don't try, but when you do try and you get even one step closer, think of how much better off you are, than you were.

Those seeking Christ are invited to bring the Light

Tonight I'd like to share some of my thoughts about thoughts. I feel like I have covered this topic a lot lately, with multiple Facebook posts, a blog post about it months ago, and a video about it. Yet as I was pondering about my week, the many ups and downs I faced I realized a lot of those downs came because I chose to not take control of where my thoughts were going.



To lay the ground work I would encourage you to look at the post The Voice that Lies (found: https://ofchoicesandconsequences.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-voice-that-lies.html) which explains that there are three different voices in our minds, we need to learn how to recognize each one, where they are coming from and what they hope for us to feel. Once we understand that there are adversarial voices encouraging us to feel guilty, feel we are of little worth, feel that we can't do anything, then there is our voice, trying to figure out who we are, who we want to be and what to do in order to be that person, and then there is the voice of the Spirit which invites us to remember who we were and helps to direct in how to reach who we are to become.

Each of us were sent to this earth for a purpose, with this purpose we were given tools and gifts to fulfill our mission in this life. As we work to discover and fulfill this purpose the adversary works to discourage us and his voice in our mind fills us with doubt and discouragement. I was definitely feeling a lot of doubt and discouragement this week. I was beginning to feel that I had misunderstood portions of the mission I thought I had received and feeling very low because other's agency was involved and I had hoped for a different response. For most of this week I let those thoughts wreak havoc in my mind, I tried to keep up my morning and evening thoughts, writing down the negative and trashing it and trying to count my blessings, but because I wasn't calling out the thoughts for what they were, lies from the adversary, I was still subject to their influence in my heart. On Friday as I was feeling very overwhelmed and second guessing every decision I had made of the last six weeks I realized that I hadn't invited the Savior into this battle. Last month I made it a goal to recite the Living Christ each day as I memorized it, since I have tried to say a paragraph or two so I could keep it fresh in my mind. As I have worked on this goal I have noticed the difference in my day when I recite it versus when I forget. Now I'm not saying you have to go out and memorize the Living Christ in 30 days, though I can bear witness that the Spirit that comes into your life is life changing, it invites the Savior into every aspect of our day and we begin to realize just how not alone we are. I testify that the Savior delights to be part of our lives and wants to be invited it. When we invite Him in, He immediately enters.

  As we get closer to living our purpose the adversary will get louder in his attempt to distract and dishearten us. I would encourage you to combat his voice by writing down the lies, make conscious effort to be aware of what is going on in your mind. What lies are showing up? What discouragement seems to be getting louder? Are there clouds hanging over your head that you don't know how they got there? Once you start seeing what is going on, you then claim control of what is on the stage of your mind. Then once you see what is going on, and you claim control, find a way, whichever way is most effective to you, whether hymns, declarations, reading your patriarchal blessing or asking Heavenly Father how he feels about you, that you invite Christ into your life and invite the good. In a world where darkness seems to be multiplying it is up to those who seek to follow Christ to bring the light. We must be in a place to feel the light if we are to share that light with others.

This morning I took my own advice and I wrote down the lies that had been floating through my head. What was interesting, once I had written and numbered them, I recognized them as the lies they were and it gave Heavenly Father space to disprove each and every one. As I went through my day, people that came into my life said things directly in opposition to what the adversary said. With the negative named and numbered, I was also able to feel love, and hope.

If you are struggling trying to find what to do next, if you are feeling discouraged that you will never make it, take a moment to write down the lies, then as you brush your teeth remind yourself that you are a child of God and no matter the choices or mistakes you've made, He still wants you because you are His child. His Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, came to earth because He loves you and He is coming again. I hope we can each take control of our thoughts so that when the Spirit directs us to serve, when the Spirit directs us to prepare, we can be ready. Because our Savior is at the door and He is coming quickly.

Who we want to be next

Tonight I was all set to talk about self-discipline, setting routines for ourselves and my efforts at setting a 30 day goal to establish a bedtime of 11. Now it has been an interesting experience in my efforts to figure out why I am not going to sleep at night. I realized this week that sleep hasn't been my friend, now I don't mean this in a I wake up a lot in the night sort of a way, but more as in I just put off going to sleep. So this week I ended up writing a letter to sleep and asking why it is that we seem to be on the outs so often. It was rather interesting seeing what I got back.


  I learned that there were many things in store for me to learn and become, but I needed to learn the self-mastery with sleep before I could learn those things. It was pointed out to me that Heavenly Father could have made bodies for us that didn't need sleep, but He needed us to learn what we could learn only through proper stewardship of our bodies.

  So I left that letter bound and determined to master self-discipline and self-mastery. I was going to get my body into submission and value that more than anything else. Enter yesterday and today... Last night I wanted to do some work in a couple different areas of my life, so that meant lots of journaling, then I knew I wanted/needed to do some work on a quilt, and start a new blog addressing some different ideas than just the ones I share each week. I also knew I needed quality time with my spouse and a friend working through some stress. Because of all those things my bedtime goals were a dream in the rear view mirror. At the same time I felt like I had still been doing what I needed to be doing.

Now I don't share these things to say look how much I have accomplished or look how amazing I am. I share these so I myself can see how differently my day turned out from what I thought it would be. And I'm sure we can all relate, we have our best laid plans, we try to set out our routines and establish our righteous desires and it can be discouraging at times to see them not play out as we hoped. We can sometimes feel we are failures when because of the situations of others our situations change. I hope it is in moments like those that instead of feeling a failure or thinking our efforts are for not, that instead we take heart that we like the Savior have succored those in need and have been about our Father's business.

  Our Heavenly Father is seeking for those who want to be about His business, who want to reach out to those whose hands hang down, to share a kind word and to be one with Him in His purpose. This sometimes means our best laid plans go to the way side. This sometimes means our human efforts may feel very puny and not near enough. Yet as a dear friend and I talked about tonight, we need to trust that when He calls He qualifies and magnifies efforts. When we are seeking to help those around us, to reach out to them, He will offer us direction, not only for those we can help, but also so we can magnify our efforts to make the most of the time we have. The Atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ can fill the gap from our efforts to His best outcomes.

   I testify that as we work to reach out to those with feeble knees and as we work to establish routines of righteousness in our lives that He can help us do both. As we put in our best efforts to progress and improve and to heed the voice of the Spirit we really can become all we hope to be. We can be a successful whoever it is we want to be and be His servant. Often the adversary preaches that it is one or the other. We either put all our effort into being successful and doing our thing or we submit wholly and completely to God and give ourselves up. I think that as we ask God first what He needs of us, we will then be surprised at how much He does for us to help us reach who we want to be next.

 

Christ will always be kind to us.

I've been struggling the last few months feeling that because of somethings missing in my life that life was unfair and that I deserved to be able to hold onto some things that weren't making me happy. I was informed two or three times that I needed to let it go, that life becomes what I look for. So I started looking for the good and tracking the successes that were coming. But it still wasn't enough, I felt like if I just let everything go and choose only to see the good, that there would be an injustice perpetuated in my life. Because if I just let things go, then there would still be underlying issues and I would just be burying what was really going on and it would come up again and again. I couldn't see how things would change if behavior stayed the same.

Then I realized behavior could change, mine. This week as I was sitting in the temple contemplating on a mistake I had made a year earlier and that still haunted me, wondering how in the world I could fix it, the Lord asked me, why are you still holding onto this? Why are you beating yourself up for something outside of your control? I created the world, I gave you direction, don't you think I can fix it in my way and my time? And I finally realized, though my behavior hasn't changed, I am still inclined to look before I leap and go head long into things, the Lord had forgiven me because I asked. He took care of it, even knowing I will make more mistakes in the future.

I have been wondering for the last few months why the Spirit felt so far away, why I felt so cut off from heaven. This week I finally realized it is because I had been holding onto my anger at perceived injustice and heaven cannot coincide with anger. When I felt how simply my Savior could forgive and make right my mistake, even knowing I would make another mistake and another. Feeling His love reach out to me, realizing that His sacrifice bridged the injustice I perpetrate everyday with my humanness I realized I didn't want to hold on to that anymore. And so I decided that perhaps looking at the good wasn't allowing injustice to go on in perpetuity, in seeking, counting and numbering the good I was allowing myself to become more like my Savior. I chose love, I chose the good, I chose to see with rose colored glasses and in doing so, guess what happened, reality became more rose colored. So much of what we get in this life is what we put into it in the first place. When I finally chose to let my anger go, I let the Spirit back into my life and the grudge I held onto melted away. Once that grudge was gone things began to change. Because I brought the positive, I got the positive. And I feel I should say things feel better now than they have in months. There is nothing to gain in anger.


Our Father in Heaven will never force us, He isn't one for ultimatums or shaming, but He will entice us, invite us, gently lead us to where we are our best selves. This has been a long journey in coming and I have a feeling there are many steps yet to take. But no matter how long the journey, knowing our Savior walks with us hopefully makes the journey a joy, not a terror. His mercy is endless and His hope for us is as bright today as it was in pre-earth life when He offered His life a sacrifice. I do know that His mercy is infinite and He longs to help us through the injustices of mortality. With Him we have an eternal advocate. I know He was the Great Jehovah of the Old Testament, the Messiah of the New and I know His Atonement for all of us is infinite, eternal, and always extended our way. Please be kind to yourself and to others, because I know Christ will always be kind to us.

Love past the difference

      I'm sitting here tonight feeling just a wee bit sad I had a moment this week when I thought to myself "ooh I should write about that this week..." and now I'm trying to remember. Oh wait, I remember. This week I had the realize that we can be at war with people or we can love people. We may hear around us that being angry is our due, that when we are angry it is being "real" to share that emotion with everyone. Satan will tell us that if we don't share our anger that people won't know to do that again (yes I have actually heard this whispered in my ear this week). We live in a world that teaches us to give vent to our spleen (otherwise known as rage) and not to leave it bottled up inside us. While it is true that keeping that inside isn't healthy and isn't a good idea, I can tell you that venting it at people really doesn't get us anywhere either. Really being angry at other human beings hurts us because not only do we deal with our anger, we also deal with our remorse and sheepishness when we realize how much we have hurt the other person. As a final nail in the coffin of this lie, we've all gotten angry at someone only to be attacked back as the other person becomes defensive. There is a better answer...



    This better answer is love. Now this may seem like a very cliche answer and maybe even a bit empty for some of us. We bandy about the word love quite often and I think sometimes we miss or misunderstand what love is. I would invite you to think about a time in which you felt no judgement, no aggression, no attack. Think about a time when you felt like someone saw you for who you really are and appreciated you for who you are, looking past the imperfections, the impatience, the shortcomings and mistakes and you felt their unconditional love. I want you to reside in that memory for a moment and think about how you felt. I know in that moment I felt like I could change the world, that who I was was enough, I didn't have to try to be anyone else, I didn't have to try to be something I wasn't, I didn't have to fake it because who I was in that moment had made it. Now just think for a minute what could happen if you chose to see others like that all the time, if you could see them as the Savior sees them. The Savior that saw everyone of our lives, who knows how we tick, who has seen all the aspects of our lives that made us who we are. What if we loved that person who we feel like just doesn't get us and never will, the person who it sure feels like won't ever change and doesn't want us to understand them.
   Satan will whisper little lies about that person, little lies that slowly build until another person's character has totally warped and we can't see them for the child of God that they are. I would encourage you to call Satan's bluff, to look really look at the person, when we have those negative thoughts we generally try to push them to the side because we don't want to be rude, what if we really looked at them, wrote them down, saw them for what they were (lies from an outside source) then tore them up and threw them away. Then we could see the person beneath all the lies and get rid of the ultimatum mentality that if they don't change it's not worth it. Because it is worth it, once we get ride of the lies, then we can invite the Spirit to teach us to see with Christ's eyes, I promise that as you ask, He will help you.
    I also promise that as you begin to see others as Christ sees them, He can show you how He feels about you. Once the hate, anger, frustration, sadness, loneliness leave then there is room for greater perspective, there is room for kindness, there is room for love and there is the eyes' of Christ.
   I'm not saying I'm perfect at this, in fact I gained some additional insights as I wrote this, yet I do know that loving brings me and the other person closer to my Savior. Imagine for just a moment a wedge (like one used for cutting wood) at the top of every person's head and for every negative thought we send their way that wedge goes a bit deeper into them. I realize that current thought that it's only bad if it is coming out of our mouth (and that is bad), but think about how you feel when you dwell on those thoughts, eventually it eats away at you and I would posit it eats away at your relationship with that person and hurts that person. If you have ever heard of the rice experiment, then think of what happens when you label a person and have negative thoughts about them. So ask the Savior for His help to change those labels, to recognize the thoughts for where they came from and to ask to love. Imagine what could happen when we choose to love, when we choose to hope for the best for others, even those who seem so different then ourselves.
    As I was reminded of this week we aren't waiting for Zion to magically appear, we must create it in our lives, we must build it in preparation for the Second Coming of our Savior. I wonder if learning to love is the first step in having a people of one heart and one mind. One heart and one mind doesn't mean we'll always agree or there will always be unanimity, but I think it means that we choose to love past the difference, that we see others for who they are and we learn to just let things go. I hope to do better at this this week and I am excited to see how the Lord works in my mind and heart this week.