Above Yourself

I’m in the process of taking my life off of autopilot. My current mental mode is to live in the future, dreaming of what life might be like once it’s time for our little vacation, or what it could be like when I’m totally done with school. Only recently I realized that it’s so much better to live right now, and to enjoy everything I do. It really makes a difference, and I now look forward to work, play, and whatever. Life’s usually pretty fun (but don’t think that this doesn’t mean that I have ups and downs! We all get them.)

Start with goals.

Settings goals has been a key to enjoying life for me. I like to have goals in a few different categories, including financial, spiritual, personal, and education. In addition to your own goals for yourself, don’t forget family goals or any other type of goals that may apply to your situation. Think of different ways to improve yourself, and work consistently at these goals until they become habits. When I served as a missionary in Argentina, our mission president reminded us that “a goal that is not written down is a dream”. My problem had always been that I didn’t have goals, I had dreams. I wanted to dream about what the future would be like without doing anything now to change that.

Set good goals.

Good goals are SMART. This means that they are Specific, Measurable, Agreed upon, Realistic, and Time-based. These principles apply to all goals, not just personal ones.

Specific Goals

My wife and I are saving up for a new washer and dryer. Our goal is to buy one at the end of next month, but that’s not very specific. In our case we haven’t figured out exactly which one we want (that’s another goal), but once we do, we’ll specify what exactly we want, like “We will save money to buy the Whirlpool Duet Sport washer and dryer”.

Measurable Goals

When we started looking and washers and dryers, we realized that there was a huge price difference between all washers and dryers. Some were high-efficiency and others were top-loading. We want our goal to be measurable, so since we’re saving money for appliances, we want to add something measurable to our goal, such as “We will save $1500 to buy the Whirlpool Duet Sport washer and dryer”.

Agreed Upon Goals

Think of those around you when you make goals. If they are directly involved in the outcome, they should have some sort of say in your goal. In our case, my wife and I both have to agree upon the goal to buy a washer and dryer. This helps us both commit ourselves to saving money for this purpose.

Realistic Goals

If I wanted to buy a washer and dryer next week and hadn’t set aside any money at all for this, it wouldn’t be realistic. Make sure you don’t set yourself up for failure when you set your goals, because that takes all the enjoyment out of achieving it in the end.

Time-based Goals

Having a time-based goal means that you have a specific time in mind for when it should be completed. This way you can measure your progress at any point in time, and track yourself along the way toward this goal. For our goal, my wife and I can say “We will save $1500 by June 30th to buy the Whirlpool Duet Sport washer and dryer”. If the goal is a long way in sight (or even more than a week or so in the future), it’s often helpful to break up that task as well, and say “We will save $200 a week” or something similar, so we don’t end up trying to put together the money the last day of June and calling it saving.

After we have our SMART goals, we’ve got a good start, but we’ve completely left out the implementation. Remembering to address the five principles of SMART, however, will help us realize the interim steps we need to take on that way, and we can set up our own reflection time to track our progress and make sure we are working toward our goals. This process has helped me to enjoy the journey of achieving goals rather than just the end outcome.

Now that my morning schedule has changed, I’ve decided to set a goal to get up early in the morning so that I can go to the gym. My only problem is that my morning nemesis is the alarm clock. How can I get up early in the morning?

I’ve decided that my best way to do this was to inspire myself and reward myself with a more exciting gym workout. I’ve set up my mp3 player to download some new podcasts from IfYeArePrepared.org (I’ll talk more about this later) for me automatically, and I’m pretty excited because these daily podcasts have LDS conference talks and other inspirational messages that will help me start out the day well. Getting up early will also help me move other things to the morning, including my daily scripture reading. I’m pretty excited.

Steve Pavlina has told me how to get up right when my alarm goes off, and 43things has linked me to a community of people who are also trying to wake up early. In my experience, a sense of community is really helpful in achieving goals, especially ones like exercise and weight loss.

Every once in a while, I have the privilege to read something that echoes exactly what I have been thinking about a topic. Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to watch a two-part documentary by PBS on Mormonism. Many other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had that same privilege, and the church noted these commentaries in a release from the Church’s Newsroom that clarifies many of our basic beliefs. As a Mormon myself, this caused a lot of inward thinking about what exactly I believe.

I believe in God. I believe that he is our Heavenly Father and that he loves us very much. I’ve come to understand this at new depth recently since I’ve become a father myself. Our Heavenly Father truly cares for each of us and for our own well being, but he also understands that each of us need to grow up, just like my little girl needs chances to learn things for herself, even if it means falling down a few times.

I believe in Jesus Christ. I had the opportunity to serve the people of Argentina as a missionary for two years, and during those two years I gained an incredible sense of wonderment and awe for our Savior Jesus Christ. Although I could never express it fully in words, I believe that he loves us very much and that he died so that we can live again. He was resurrected so that we, too, can one day rise again after death. His sacrifice for us was immeasurable.

I believe in the Holy Ghost. Through the Holy Ghost we can receive a personal conviction of the gospel. This means that God loves me so much that he has given me a chance to find out his truths for myself. I can receive a witness for myself that is not based on the beliefs of others, but is rooted in my faith in Jesus Christ.

Although gospel truths certainly touch on many more subjects than these, all doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is founded on our belief in Jesus Christ:

Based on the scriptures, Joseph Smith declared: “The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it.”

Would you like to see more testimonies of members of the Mormon Church? You are also welcome to discuss it with me here, or you can learn more about Mormonism online.

In chatting with her friends, my wife recently discovered Freecycling at Freecycle.org. It’s a great concept, and especially useful for people at our stage in life when we’re about to move into a slightly larger place. Basically, you join a mailing list through the site and the people on that mailing list share the items with others who may need them before getting rid of them. In the few days since we’ve joined, we’ve seen messages every day for different things, and we’ve even received a nice, comfy couch for our new place!

Share and Share Alike

We occasionally accumulate our own “stuff” that we can’t always use, so it’s great to have a resource like this that we can go to share what we have as a community, which helps us all keep down the clutter in our lives. Freecycle.org has a large community, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that our small town not only has a list of its own, but a few hundred people subscribed are subscribed to the list.

We live in a time where we’re blessed to have access to God’s word through the scriptures. These holy books contain God’s word written by his prophets. Many of us have read some part of the scriptures before, but why should we read the scriptures on an ongoing basis? Elder Henry B. Eyring replied to that question in a discussion on scripture study:

The Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ, and we learn about Him in its pages. We know that it has great power. It has the power to change lives. It has the power to convert. If you read it with an open heart, you will know that it is the word of God and that it is true.

Through the Book of Mormon the Lord can also teach us about being with and serving people. This book reveals the will of the Lord for family life in a way that the other scriptures don’t even approach. I believe that is largely because of its interesting structure. It’s about families; it’s about people’s relationships. It starts with families, it ends with families, and we come to love these families.

Like any habit, daily scripture reading takes practice. To start, it’s best to decide on a time each day that you can read the scriptures. If you can make a habit of getting up early, beginning your day with scripture reading can have a profound effect on your life. Keep track of your progress and set goals, perhaps using the online tools at Readthescriptures.com. My wife and I are on a scripture-reading “team” that lets us keep track of each others’ reading, as well as to keep track of our family scripture reading.

Let us know of any tips you may have for daily scripture reading in the comments.