Change

‎"It's a simple solution...you change one thing, and suddenly you've changed everything."

~Rebecca Onie

The new year is a great time to find one thing to change, although I'm sure you're all perfect already, but if not, this is certainly an obtainable goal:)

Happy New Year, I hope 2011 is your year:)

There's Always Something You Can Do

A 'no excuses' quote:)

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

Theodore Roosevelt

Food for Thought

"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." 

-John Wooden

You Control Your Destiny

Elder Ballard:

"You control to a large degree your own destiny. You control your own life. Some of you might cop out by saying, “Well, Brother Ballard, you just don’t understand my environment. You just don’t understand my circumstances. You just don’t understand what kind of a father I have, or what kind of a mother I have, or what kind of a this or that.”

“No,” I would say to you, “put all of that in the back of your minds and bring forward to the front of your mind the worthy goals that you want to obtain. Then practice personal self-discipline.”

Benjamin N. Woodson had some good things to say about self-discipline:

“For my part, I have concluded that the quality which sets one man apart from another—the factor which lifts one man to every achievement to which he reasonably aspires while the other is caught in the slough of mediocrity for all the years of his life—is not talent, nor formal education, nor luck, nor intellectual brilliance, but is rather the successful man’s greater capacity for self-discipline.”

Mr. Woodson offers a great suggestion:

“All you need to do is this: Beginning this very day, stop doing some one thing you know you should not do.” After you have written this one thing down, stop doing it!

Some of you will have the necessary self-discipline and courage to do this. Others of you will just sit here and say, “Oh boy.” You won’t pay any attention to it, and so a month from now you will still be dragging behind you the same habit that is holding you back from being your best self.

A few of you will stop doing that one thing today. Why? Because you are going to write it down and then you are going to discipline yourself in such a way that you are going to take a problem out of your life."

(M. Russell Ballard, “Go for It!,” New Era, Mar 2004, 4)

Satan's Scheme

Satan called a worldwide convention. In his opening address to his evil angels, he said, "We can't keep the Christians from going to church. We can't keep them from reading their Bibles and knowing the truth. We can't even keep them from forming an intimate, abiding relationship experience in Christ. Once they gain that connection with Jesus, our power over them is broken.

So let them go to their churches; let them have their conservative lifestyles, but steal their time, so they can't gain that relationship with Jesus Christ.

This is what I want you to do, angels. Distract them from gaining hold of their Savior and maintaining that vital connection throughout their day!"

"How shall we do this?" shouted his angels.

"Keep them busy in the nonessentials of life and invent innumerable schemes to occupy their minds," he answered. Tempt them to spend, spend, spend, and borrow, borrow, borrow.

Persuade the wives to go to work for long hours and the husbands to work 6-7 days each week, 10-12 hours a day, so they can afford their empty lifestyles. Keep them from spending time with their children. As their family fragments, soon, their home will offer no escape from the pressures of work!"

Over-stimulate their minds so that they cannot hear that still, small voice. Entice them to play the radio or cassette player whenever they drive. To keep the TV, VCR, CD's and their PC's going constantly in their home and see to it that every store and restaurant in the world plays non-biblical music constantly. This will jam their minds and break that union with Christ."

"Fill the coffee tables with magazines and newspapers. Pound their minds with the news 24 hours a day. Invade their driving moments with billboards.

Flood their mailboxes with junk mail, mail order catalogs, sweepstakes, and every kind of newsletter and promotional offering free products, services and false hopes.

Keep skinny, beautiful models on the magazines so the husbands will believe that external beauty is what's important, and they'll become dissatisfied with their wives. That will fragment those families quickly!"

"Even in their recreation, let them be excessive. Have them return from their recreation exhausted, disquieted and unprepared for the coming week.

Don't let them go out in nature to reflect on God's wonders. Send them to amusement parks, sporting events, concerts and movies instead. Keep them busy, busy, busy!

And when they meet for spiritual fellowship, involve them in gossip and small talk so that they leave with troubled consciences and unsettled emotions." Go ahead, let them be involved in soul winning; but crowd their lives with so many good causes they have no time to seek power from Jesus.

Soon they will be working in their own strength, sacrificing their health and family for the good of the cause. It will work! It will work!"

It was quite a convention. The evil angels went eagerly to their assignments causing Christians everywhere to get more busy and more rushed, going here and there.

I guess the question is: Has the devil been successful at his scheme? You be the judge! Does "busy" mean:

B-eing

U-nder

S-atan's

Y-oke?

Goals

"To reach a goal you have never before attained, you must do things you have never before done."

--Richard G. Scott, "Finding the Way Back," Ensign, May 1990, 74

The 'W' Formula!

W ork
W ill
W in
W hen
W ishy
W ashy
W ishing
W on't

by Thomas S. Monson

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Happiness - Living in the Present

The final part of President Monson's talk from the May 2003 Ensign:

"Third, live in the present. Sometimes we let our thoughts of tomorrow take up too much of today. Daydreaming of the past and longing for the future may provide comfort but will not take the place of living in the present. This is the day of our opportunity, and we must grasp it.

Professor Harold Hill, in Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, cautioned: “You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you’ve collected a lot of empty yesterdays.”

There is no tomorrow to remember if we don’t do something today, and to live most fully today, we must do that which is of greatest importance. Let us not procrastinate those things which matter most.

I recently read the account of a man who, just after the passing of his wife, opened her dresser drawer and found there an item of clothing she had purchased when they visited the eastern part of the United States nine years earlier. She had not worn it but was saving it for a special occasion. Now, of course, that occasion would never come.

In relating the experience to a friend, the husband said, “Don’t save something only for a special occasion. Every day in your life is a special occasion.”

That friend later said those words changed her life. They helped her to cease putting off the things most important to her. Said she: “Now I spend more time with my family. I use crystal glasses every day. I’ll wear new clothes to go to the supermarket if I feel like it. The words ‘someday’ and ‘one day’ are fading from my vocabulary. Now I take the time to call my relatives and closest friends. I’ve called old friends to make peace over past quarrels. I tell my family members how much I love them. I try not to delay or postpone anything that could bring laughter and joy into our lives. And each morning, I say to myself that this could be a special day. Each day, each hour, each minute, is special.”

A wonderful example of this philosophy was shared by Arthur Gordon many years ago in a national magazine. He wrote:

“When I was around thirteen and my brother ten, Father had promised to take us to the circus. But at lunchtime there was a phone call; some urgent business required his attention downtown. We braced ourselves for disappointment. Then we heard him say [into the phone], ‘No, I won’t be down. It’ll have to wait.’

“When he came back to the table, Mother smiled. ‘The circus keeps coming back, you know,’ [she said].

“ ‘I know,’ said Father. ‘But childhood doesn’t.’ ”

One day, each of us will run out of tomorrows. Let us not put off what is most important.

Live in the present.

(to read the full talk, click here)

Happiness - Preparing for the Future

Part 2 of President Monson's talk from the May 2003 Ensign.

"Second, prepare for the future. We live in a changing world. Technology has altered nearly every aspect of our lives. We must cope with these advances—even these cataclysmic changes—in a world of which our forebears never dreamed.

Remember the promise of the Lord: “If ye are prepared ye shall not fear.” Fear is a deadly enemy of progress.

It is necessary to prepare and to plan so that we don’t fritter away our lives. Without a goal, there can be no real success. One of the best definitions of success I have ever heard goes something like this: Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. Someone has said the trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never crossing the goal line.

Years ago there was a romantic and fanciful ballad that contained the words, “Wishing will make it so / Just keep on wishing / And care will go.” I want to state here and now that wishing will not replace thorough preparation to meet the trials of life. Preparation is hard work but absolutely essential for our progress.

Our journey into the future will not be a smooth highway which stretches from here to eternity. Rather, there will be forks and turnings in the road, to say nothing of the unanticipated bumps. We must pray daily to a loving Heavenly Father, who wants each of us to succeed in life.

When Are You Going To Really Live?

I read this somewhere (but I don't remember where) and copied it down. Hope you like it:

------------------------------------------

"I am discovering that many people want, above all else, to live life fully. But sometimes the past prohibits our living and enjoying life to the utmost in the present. A schoolteacher entered his room a few minutes early and noticed a mealworm laboriously crawling along the floor. It had somehow been injured. The back part of the worm was dead and dried up, but still attached to the front, living part by just a thin thread. As the teacher studied the strange sight of a poor worm pulling its dead half across the floor, a little girl ran in and noticed it there. Picking it up, she said, "Oh, Oscar, when are you going to lose that dead part so you can really live?" What a marvelous question for all of us! When are we going to lose that dead part so we can really live? When are we going to let go of past pain so we can live fully? When are we going to drop the baggage of needless guilt - guilt over things we have been forgiven for or need never have felt guilty for - so we can experience life? When are we going to let go of that past resentment so we can know peace? Have you been dragging something that is dead and gone around with you? Are you ready to "lose that dead part so you can really live"?

Alfred D. Souza said, "For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, and a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life."

So stop waiting until you finish school, until you go back to school, until you lose ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds, until you have kids, until your kids leave the house, until you start work, until you retire, until you get married, until you get divorced, until Friday night, until Sunday morning, until you get a new car or home, until your car or home is paid off , until spring, until summer, until fall, until winter, until you are off welfare, until the first or fifteenth, until your ship comes in or your song comes on, until you've had a drink, until you've sobered up, until you've got it all done, until you die, until you are born again to decide that there is no better time than right now to be happy......Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

Thought for the day: Work like you don't need money, love like you've never been hurt, and dance like no one's watching.

The Creation of Something of Substance or Beauty - Elder Uchtdorf

This video, created from a segment of Pres. Uchtdorf's talk at the last Women's Conference, is powerful and significant:

Magnifying Glass Goals

"When we set goals, we are in command. Clearly understood goals bring our lives into focus just as a magnifying glass focuses a beam of light into a burning point. Without goals, our efforts may be scattered and unproductive."

—Ezra Taft Benson-

Setting Ourselves Free

I love this little bit from the article by Elder Holland in March 2005's Ensign on Elder Uchtdorf:

"Elder Uchtdorf’s son, Guido, remembers a German phrase his father often used when there was a problem or a difficulty in their lives. “Man könnte sichdarüber ärgern, aber man ist nicht verpflichtet dazu,”he would say, which roughly translated means, “You could be upset about it, but you are not obligated to be.” Dieter Uchtdorf feels that with agency and self-control, with the gospel of Jesus Christ and power in the priesthood, no one has to be victimized by circumstance. Terrible things can happen—and they have happened in his life—but with our hand in the hand of God, we can still chart a course that will set us free, that will eventually bring triumph. It requires courage, patience, optimism, and faith in God, but things can come out right if we stay with the task and stay in control."

But...

Here's todays.....

These verses give an important message to us all:
“And it came to pass, that, as they went in the way,a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.
“And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.
“And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said,Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.
“Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead:but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.
“And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.
“And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.
(Luke 9:57 - 62)

Are we like these men - do we say, 'Lord, I will follow thee'? These men all said that, but when the time came for them to do it, in effect they said ‘But,let me just do this first, and then I’m all yours’.

Sometimes we may feel that living that gospel, really living the gospel, isn't convenient for us. We can have that attitude towards, home/visiting teaching & sharing acts of kindness - we can put it off. Sometimes it’s our scripture study, prayers or temple attendance. Sometimes it’s with overcoming our weaknesses and developing our true character.

Elder Russell M. Nelson said: "Our busy lives force us to focus on things we do from day to day. But the development of character comes only as we focus on who we really are. To establish and accomplish those greater goals, we do need heavenly help."
("Getting Where You Want to Go," New Era, May 2003)

Life is busy, and will ever be so. We need heavenly help, we need our Saviour. He will help us to focus on who we really are and accomplish the goals which are of real worth, but we must be focused on Him first. He knows us and loves us perfectly.

Purposeful Decisions

"It must not be expected that the road of life spreads itself in an unobstructed view before [you]... You must anticipate coming upon forks in the road. But you cannot hope to reach your desired journey’s end if you think aimlessly about whether to go east or west. You must make your decisions purposefully."

—President Thomas S. Monson, Ensign, May 1999

Vague Goals

"A vague goal is no goal at all. The Ten Commandments wouldn't be very impressive, for instance, if they weren't specific, but simply were couched in a phraseology such as 'thou shalt not be a bad person."

—Neal A. Maxwell-