I, like the Lamanites, can be changed to become like Christ. I can choose to reframe or redefine events as either neutral or good, and feel either peace or joy in every circumstance. I was not meant to feel anger fear or sadness except in very rare and particular circumstances to save my life. I am capable of feeling either peace or joy in all others.
See Helaman 1 intro
He is there to be my example. Emotional control. To be in a body with a lizard brain, but never to be hijacked by it because I've learned to rewire automatic responses of anger fear and sadness to trigger peace and joy instead. It's a long road, but it can be done. At the end is exaltation. Only feeling what I want to feel because I control what circumstances mean, and my reaction will be what I have chosen.
See D&C 76:21
"Whenever you are stuck searching for the optimal plan, remember:
Getting started changes everything."
-James Clear
"Mental toughness is not skipping the days that are easy to skip."
Show up when no one is watching
Keep your eye on the ball
Do a little bit every day
- James Clear
Jesus never sees interruptions as distractions. He sees people. Even when you're on the outskirts of the path, He turns. He listens. He heals. He makes time for people who might be out of the path of His duty. And that is charity.
-Sr. Schmutzler
While missions are amazing opportunities for exponential spiritual, emotional, and personal growth, they do not define us.
-Sr. Schmutzler
Which begs the question, what does define me?
Thoughts to actions to habits to identity.
The purpose of a service mission is: "To help others come unto Christ by serving with loving kindness as the Savior would. To minister in His name to the one through the power of the Holy Ghost and to live as an example of faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, covenant-keeping with God, and enduring to the end."
The feeling that I'm being accused of a mistake that can't be corrected or undone.
"You blew it and you can't fix it, but I'm going to keep you here until you've talked your way out of it."
Actions become habits become identity.
Power helps me change my mind, which helps me change my actions.
Thoughts become actions become habits become identity
You need to have humility about the fact that your perception is distorted, right now. You simply cannot see the landscape of options in your life objectively. By default, you will ignore a path to your dreams if a personally perilous emotion—worthlessness, loneliness, imperfection—is along the way.
"If your goal is to actually change someone’s mind... then you should be operating in the conversation as if you’re talking to the hero of the story, who is basically good but has been misled."
This probably also applies when I'm talking to myself.
"You can make someone feel as if you’re not a villain mocking them, but rather, a sympathetic helper who can bring them new information."
"Entering into this perspective of non-superiority, briefly, is what allows us to actually be better, to temporarily see the ways we could really be kinder, more curious, more humble. It’s what empowers us to think daring thoughts like “maybe I’m the problem in this relationship.”"
"Hopefulness is not a neutral position. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like... keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so."
Ask for things.
Ask for things that feel unreasonable, to make sure your intuitions about what's reasonable are accurate.
Foster &Hicks
The nine choices are:
Faith is a belief - without guarantees - that if I do this thing, there will be a good outcome.
As I contemplate a choice, I will predict and envision an outcome.
I can choose what outcome to predict and envision.
And I am free to choose one that makes me feel happy, or at least peaceful.
This is the godlike power of spiritual time travel.
Mourning involves processing ,(reframing?) and moving past feelings of anger, sadness, and fear - the fear that sudden losses are normal, and that another loss will happen any second.
It's not about fasting causing hunger, it's suffering from a desire for something inaccessible. Emptiness, need, want, loss, absence. The goal is to transform the suffering. To learn how to be joyful - or at least peaceful - while feeling these hard things.
This self mastery makes me more like Him.
People won't remember what you said. They will remember how you made them feel.
-Maya Angelou (paraphrased)
