Last updated on December 15th, 2024 at 10:41 pm
December 8, 2024
Here is the best thing I heard (What?), saw (Eye.), and read (Read.) this week, as well as the best idea (💡) I developed.
What?
followHim Podcast – Moroni 1-6 – Dr. Shalise Adams:
- [John Bytheway] “Sister Wendy Watson, before she was Wendy Watson Nelson, gave a talk called ‘Let Your Spirit Take the Lead,’ and this is what she said. They conducted an experiment with a group of women over two weeks. Here [were] the instructions. For five days in [their] morning prayers, they were told to pray with concerted effort for the Holy Ghost to be with them that day. And then throughout the day, as they encountered any difficult, tempting, or trying situation, they were to pray for and really picture the Spirit being right there with them. And then she said, ‘The experiences of these women blew us all away.’
“Among the results they experienced were – and there’s all these bullet points – an increased desire to de-junk their physical environments, a greatly reduced desire to watch TV, an increased desire to reach out to others and follow through on commitments, an increased ability to be kinder, gentler, and more patient, an increased desire to take care of their bodies by living the Lord’s law of health more fully, an increased ability to see how they could have handled situations better, [and] an increased focus and increased ability to desire to really study and learn.
“They found that old habits of backbiting, gossiping, and cynicalness fell away, a dramatic increase in their physical energy because energy-draining negative emotions were gone, and an unbelievable reduction in stress and profound changes in their conversations with others. That was ‘Let Your Spirit Take the Lead.’ It was a talk on CD that Deseret Book published in 2004. I thought: ‘You could hire personal success coaches and spend thousands of dollars and not get those results. Imagine the Holy Ghost really being with you and guiding you every day. Pray for it and picture him being with you and watch the changes that come.”
Eye.
“Can Work Make You Happy? Should It?” | Harvard Business Review | Arthur C. Brooks | February 20, 2024:
- “To get actual happiness from work, you need to seek two things, and really two things only. We call them ‘earned success’ and ‘service to others.’ Service to others is pretty self-explanatory, I can talk about that in a second. Earned success – not so much. That’s the opposite of what psychologists refer to as ‘learned helplessness,’ where nothing you do really matters, and so you kind of give up. It’s also associated with depression and loneliness in the workplace, etc., you don’t want learned helplessness, that’s for sure. You want earned success, where you feel like you’re creating value with your life, value with your work, value in the lives of other people through your work. And it’s being acknowledged and recognized. That’s how earned success works. That’s why it’s so critically important that people who are bosses, people who are managers, that they help other people to earn their success and they recognize the value that people are creating. That’s why meritocracy is so critically important for people to get actual joy from their work.
“The second is service to other people. You have to feel like your job matters to others and you’re lightening somebody else’s load. Then you’ll go to work with joy. It’s weird, the data are pretty clear that it doesn’t actually matter to a certain extent what the job is. … If you can build your work into something that’s meaningful to you because you’re truly earning your success and recognized for it, and you’re serving other people, and on top of that you’re doing something you’re really good at, work’s gonna bring you joy, 100% guaranteed.”
Read.
“How Can I Be Guided by the Spirit?” | Elder Dale G. Renlund | December 2024 For the Strength of Youth:
- “When we stumble, we repent. If we do not, we limit the ability of the Holy Ghost to say anything to us other than, ‘You need to repent!’ We are unlikely to receive any other revelation until we do.”
- “For me, revelation frequently comes in short, terse, imperative directives, such as ‘Go!,’ ‘Do!,’ and ‘Say!’ Or it may come as ideas, usually coupled with a nudge to act on those ideas. Such knowledge and understanding may be conveyed without words. Rarely does revelation come with clear explanations of why we should do something.”
- “Seeking the Spirit involves eliminating distractions. To receive personal revelation, we need to walk away from worldly noise. We do not receive revelation when we are angry, agitated, or frustrated, or even simply preoccupied. Rather, we create an environment that fosters feeling and recognizing the Spirit.”
- “Relying on the Spirit really means that we act in faith, trusting that God will lead and direct us and that the Holy Ghost will magnify our efforts. Learning to rely on the Holy Ghost means that we put our confidence and faith in Jesus Christ. We should rely on the Spirit rather than our own talents and abilities.”
- “One of the most common questions is, ‘How do I know whether the thought I have is my own or if it is from the Holy Ghost?’ This is a reasonable question. But perhaps a better question to pose to ourselves is this: ‘Should I act on this particular thought?’
“The prophet Mormon gave some criteria to determine whether we should act on a particular thought: it promotes believing in our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ; it promotes loving and serving Them; and it promotes doing good. If the thought meets these criteria, then does it really matter whether it was planted directly by the Holy Ghost in that exact moment or if the thought arose thanks to a lifetime of experiences and prior decisions? In reality, it does not.”
💡
Here’s an idea for a book series – “The Great Redistribution.” The United States made all citizens turn in all their wealth and it was evenly redistributed to each citizen. This book series would focus on the aftermath of that decision, and how the once wealthy would become wealthy once again in a surprisingly short period of time.