cultivating gratitude

The following expectations can be happiness killers:

• Life should be fair – It is not. Not at all. Bad things happen to good people all the time for no reason. Expecting you will never have to deal with hardship or difficulties and that you won’t cope when they come is denying the human experience.
• Everyone should like me – They won’t and don’t. Just as you don’t like everyone you know. Instead focus on earning the trust and respect of people you like.
• People should agree with me – Yours may not be the only right answer and being right is not always right. We tend to take others words and behaviour personally when often, it is about them not us. We expect them to think and act just like us and if they don’t, we feel hurt or angry.
• People understand what I am saying – Assumptions, like expectations, can be Happiness Killers. People won’t understand us just because we are talking. Genuinely listening to someone else with empathy creates understanding whilst projecting our own mental filters and world views onto others generates misunderstanding and hurt feelings.
• I must always do well – ‘If I do not attain these goals, if I fail to live up to my expectations, I am a miserable failure and deserve the worst’. This kind of thinking is the basis of self-denigration, self-hatred and compromised self-esteem. You are already enough and are intrinsically worthy irrespective of achievement.
• Things will make me happy – We are poor at predicting what will make us happy in the future. What makes you the happiest? This question from Buddha is difficult to answer. Winning lotto? Getting married? Buying a new car? This hedonic treadmill does not cause happiness as we adapt to our circumstances which become the new normal.
• I can change them – There is one person in this world you can truly change. Yourself and that takes a tremendous amount of effort. The only way that people change is through the desire and wherewithal to change themselves. We can’t and shouldn’t ‘fix’ others.

The antidote to expectations may be cultivating gratitude.

"Expectations – the real happiness killer". HumanPsychology. Accessed on Jan. 26, 2024

we celebrate our differences

Have you ever pondered on how the principle of respect for human dignity and equality is demonstrated through the simple way we dress in the house of the Lord? We all come to the temple united in one purpose and filled with the desire to be pure and holy in His holy presence. Dressed in white, all of us are received by the Lord Himself as His beloved children, men and women of God, progeny of Christ. We are privileged to perform the same ordinances, make the same covenants, commit ourselves to live higher and holier lives, and receive the same eternal promises. United in purpose, we see one another with new eyes, and in our oneness, we celebrate our differences as divine children of God.

Ulisses Soares

"Brothers and Sisters in Christ," General Conference October 2023

children of God

If we know "who" we are, esteeming ourselves as children of God, then we know the true identify of others, esteeming them. If ignorant, we are more likely to use them, abuse them, lie to them, or be blinded to their poverty. 

Neal A. Maxwell

Not My Will, but Thine by Neal A. Maxwell. 2008. Deseret Book. p. 90

When you face someone’s insults, hatred, whatever… look at his soul. Get inside him. Look at what sort of person he is. You’ll find you don’t need to strain to impress him. 

But you do have to wish him well. He’s your closest relative. The gods assist him just as they do you – by signs and dreams and every other way – to get the things he wants.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Modern Library. 2003. P.123, Book 9, #27. Also see The Internet Classics Archive | The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (mit.edu)

To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it, if you simply recognize that they’re human too, that they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you’ll both be dead before long. And, above all, that they haven’t really hurt you. They haven’t diminished your ability to choose. 

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Modern Library. 2003. P.88, Book 7, #22. Also see The Internet Classics Archive | The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (mit.edu)

When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one’s energy, that one’s modesty, another’s generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we’re practically showered with them.

It’s good to keep this in mind. 

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Modern Library. 2003. P.80, Book 6, #48. Also see The Internet Classics Archive | The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (mit.edu)

a little wisp of soul

A little wisp of soul carrying a corpse.

Epictetus

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Modern Library. 2003. P.46, Book 4, #41. Also see The Internet Classics Archive | The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (mit.edu)

Jesus: The Perfect Leader - Our potential

One of the great teachings of the Man of Galilee, the Lord Jesus Christ, was that you and I carry within us immense possibilities. In urging us to be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect, Jesus was not taunting us or teasing us. He was telling us a powerful truth about our possibilities and about our potential. It is a truth almost too stunning to contemplate. Jesus, who could not lie, sought to beckon us to move further along the pathway to perfection.

We are not yet perfect as Jesus was, but unless those about us can see us striving and improving, they will not be able to look to us for example, and they will see us as less than fully serious about the things to be done.

Each of us has more opportunities to do good and to be good than we ever use. These opportunities lie all around us. Whatever the size of our present circle of effective influence, if we were to improve our performance even a little bit, that circle would be enlarged. There are many individuals waiting to be touched and loved if we care enough to improve in our performance.

We must remember that those mortals we meet in parking lots, offices, elevators, and elsewhere are that portion of mankind God has given us to love and to serve. It will do us little good to speak of the general brotherhood of mankind if we cannot regard those who are all around us as our brothers and sisters. If our sample of humanity seems unglamorous or so very small, we need to remember the parable Jesus gave us in which he reminded us that greatness is not always a matter of size or scale, but of the quality of one’s life. If we do well with our talents and with the opportunities around us, this will not go unnoticed by God. And to those who do well with the opportunities given them, even more will be given!

The scriptures contain many marvelous case studies of leaders who, unlike Jesus, were not perfect but were still very effective. It would do us all much good if we were to read them—and read them often. We forget that the scriptures present us with centuries of experience in leadership, and, even more importantly, the fixed principles upon which real leadership must operate if it is to succeed. The scriptures are the handbook of instructions for the would-be leader.

  

  

Jesus: The Perfect Leader By President Spencer W. Kimball. From an address delivered to the Young Presidents organization, Sun Valley, Idaho, 15 January 1977. Ensign. August 1979.

gathers them into wholeness

It is occasionally said that man is naturally self-interested. But most men do not pursue their own interest. Instead they follow illusions, momentary desires, mutually conflicting wants. They are directed by whim rather than purpose and seek pleasure tather than perfection. The paradox is that man never gains control over his own mind and will until he surrenders them to something higher than himself. The beginning of true self-interest is self-forgetfulness, and the source of real freedom is humility before another. Only the disciple can learn discipline. Jesus has many admirers but few disciples. And yet the Father sent his Son to call all men to follow him. Christ’s life alone can give to man the higher pattern that he needs. Reaching all the scattered aspects of man’s being, Christ gathers them into wholeness.

The Lord’s Question: Thoughts on the Life of Response by Dennis Rasmussen. Brigham Young University Press. April 1985. Chapter Two, “Do Not I Fill Heaven and Earth?” p.21

the meaning of glory

From the work of man at its best I can learn the meaning of beauty, but only from the work of God can I learn the meaning of glory.

The Lord’s Question: Thoughts on the Life of Response by Dennis Rasmussen. Brigham Young University Press. April 1985. Chapter Two, “Do Not I Fill Heaven and Earth?” p.17

dignity

…The guards sought to deprive them of something that had sustained them even as all else had been lost: dignity. This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind… 

Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man’s soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. Random House. 2010. 496 pages.

anger is not sinful

…Anger is not sinful. It is a part of our humanity and reflects the anger experienced by God Himself. The apostle Paul stated it clearly when he said, “In your anger do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26). The challenge is not “Don’t get angry”; the challenge is not to sin when we are angry.

Anger: Handling a Powerful Emotion in a Healthy Way by Gary D. Chapman, 2007.

but men were expected to keep going

My guess is that the 1st Tank Battalion was relieved not because the men were “badly depleted and debilitated” – the official reason given – but because the machines were. Machines wore out or needed overhauling and maintenance, but men were expected to keep going. Tanks, amtracs, trucks, aircraft, and ships were considered valuable and difficult to replace way out in the Pacific. They were maintained carefully and not exposed needlessly to wear or destruction. Men, infantrymen in particular, were simple expected to keep going beyond the limits of human endurance until they got killed or wounded or dropped from exhaustion.


With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge. Presidio Press. 1981. p. 137

all faces are as old as the world

The head the face the human body these are all that exist for Picasso. I remember once we were walking and we saw a learned man sitting on a bench, before the war a learned man could be sitting on a bench, and Picasso said, look at that face, it is as old as the world, all faces are as old as the world.


Picasso by Gertrude Stein. Courier Dover Publications. 1984. p.13

the completion of our humanity

It is, however, not to the museum, or the lecture-room, or the drawing-school, but to the library, that we must go for the completion of our humanity. It is books that bear from age to age the intellectual wealth of the world.


Owen Meredith, The Book-lover's Enchiridion‎ by Alexander Ireland. 1884. Page 430

ought to be something more in terms of personal involvement

We live in an age of specialization. When I was a boy, many people had Model T Fords. Compared to modern cars, they were relatively simple mechanically. Many people were able to fix their own cars by grinding the valves, changing the rings on the pistons, putting in new brake bands, and using a generous supply of baling wire. Nowadays automobiles are so sophisticated that the average person knows very little about how to repair them. The mechanics of today use a computer to diagnose engine problems. I mention this example to encourage you young men to get training and education in order to keep up. Technical education is very important, and the same thing is true in fields of higher education. Any kind of skill requires specialized learning.

I do not care what vocation you choose to follow in life so long as it is honorable. How you provide for your family is your decision. Acquiring a skill is a good way to pay the bills, but there really ought to be something more in terms of personal involvement. Do not become so preoccupied with the material things of life that you lose the essence of your humanity. You may recall Dickens’s character Jacob Marley, who lamented his obsession with work when he exclaimed: “Business? … Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business.” Each of us ought to play some role in strengthening society, especially in doing the work of God.

I have learned that for those of us who hold the priesthood, the best formula for success is “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Success will not come immediately because it requires preparation and hard work. There really are no shortcuts to success.


James E. Faust, “Message to My Grandsons,” Ensign, May 2007, 54–56