Positive thinking is more about what we choose to focus on, despite what struggles we are facing....
One key to shifting my mindset and feeling better was to choose living with gratitude.
Instead of engaging in negative self-talk, I started actively looking for good things in my day...
I soon realized that practicing gratitude magnified my enjoyment of life. Try it! Being mindful of any goodness we experience multiplies its effect (see Doctrine and Covenants 78:19).
I collected good moments like pieces of treasure, and at the end of each day, I was always surprised by how blessed and thankful I felt. The hard parts of my life didn’t disappear, but they began to lose their sting.
We often get so caught up in what we can’t control that we forget everything we can control....
As I chose to focus on moments of joy, laughter, peace, and inspiration, I realized that I could choose to create more of them. The power was in me!
This can look like:
Participating in and planning fun activities.
Receiving a priesthood blessing.
Being in nature.
Standing in holy places.
Developing a new skill or hobby.
Reading a good book.
Serving others.
Spending time with people who uplift you.
Exercising.
Listening to and watching positive media....
My life has changed as I’ve chosen to change my thoughts. I’m more confident, kind, and joyful. I’m more open to trying new things and accepting opportunities. And I’m better at noticing the Lord’s hand in my life.
“Through a lifetime of service in this Church, I have learned that it really doesn’t matter where one serves. What the Lord cares about is how one serves.”
Life is like driving through a snowstorm—it helps to have a guide.
Illustrations by Michael J. Bingham
Some time ago, I felt impressed to embark on a road trip to visit family in Salt Lake City, an eight-hour drive from our home in Colorado. With little planning, I loaded up our three young daughters and began the trek. We left later in the day than was wise. My husband stayed behind due to prior commitments. It was an unseasonably warm October day both in Denver, where we lived, and in Salt Lake, so I grossly underestimated the wintry roads ahead as Interstate 80 crosses Wyoming.
We started our journey uneventfully, but temperatures dropped quickly as we gained elevation. I became nervous and full of doubt. Our van had new tires but no four-wheel drive. I hadn’t packed warm clothes or blankets. I was terribly unprepared for something to go wrong. I pulled over to check road conditions and decided to press forward, but a few hours later I was white-knuckle driving in the worst snowstorm of my life.
I laughed and sang with my kids so they wouldn’t sense my unease. I knew this stretch of interstate was no stranger to terrible weather-related accidents. Large snowflakes streaked past the windshield in heavy sheets and blurred my vision. I could hardly make out a landmark anywhere on the road.
I dreaded the occasional 18-wheeler throwing snow and slush across the windshield as it passed. I watched several vehicles slide off the road into ever-deepening snowbanks. I knew I was in trouble. The pressure I felt to keep my girls warm and safe weighed on me as we crept slowly along in the dark.
A Lifesaving Message
Suddenly, I felt my phone buzz with a notification.
I had been ignoring my messages to focus on the road but glanced down and saw that my brother, who I thought was home in Texas, had texted me: “We are passing through a bad blizzard in the middle of Wyoming.” I was surprised to learn that my brother and his wife were just a few miles ahead in the storm. They were en route to Idaho in a vehicle much safer than mine and well prepared for cold weather. Our intersection was no coincidence. The storm persisted, but I was not alone.
I called them. Relief washed over me as they talked me through the blizzard. At times, they didn’t have good news. At one point, fatigued from the tedious driving, I asked if the roads ahead had cleared up. “It’s pretty bad around mile marker 280,” my brother responded. “Take your time.”
Soon, I completely lost visibility and resorted to keeping my right front tire along the rumble strip on the side of the road. For many long minutes I continued forward, trusting only the sound of those vibrations to keep us safe on the road. Finally, the skies cleared, and I stopped for the night at a hotel, too exhausted to go on.
I never saw my brother and his wife, but I knew they were there. I didn’t realize how panicked I would have felt without their guidance until my kids were safe and warm in our hotel room. My brother’s knowledge of the specific path ahead gave me the perspective I needed to keep moving forward. Without him, my fear of the next snowy mountain pass might have left me highly reactive, and one anxious tap of the brakes could have sent us off the road.
Here I was, trying to make it to the safety and familiarity of my parents’ home, and my older brother showed up to trudge the path before me. How sad it would have been if I had driven this road never knowing that he was ahead and never accessing the peace available to me. Just as our Savior is there for us, my brother was there even when I couldn’t see him.
All Are Invited
Reflecting on this experience has deepened my testimony of many gospel truths. First, each and every one of God’s children on this earth is invited to walk with Jesus Christ in covenant relationship with Him. Just as I left late and prepared poorly for my trip, we may feel unqualified at times for the help only He can offer us. However, our inadequacy is not just OK; it’s expected. Do not allow the adversary to tell you otherwise.
As Paul said:
“I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
“Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:38–39).
In humility we can remember it is the Savior who qualifies us through His atoning sacrifice to walk with Him and receive His help. No efforts of our own would ever be enough without Him.
He Is Always There
I also learned that we are never as alone as we sometimes feel. The paths we are asked to walk in mortality can feel lonely. Our Heavenly Father doesn’t intend for us to always have blue skies. But in covenant relationship with the Savior, we can combat feelings of loneliness and despair. While our circumstances may not change and some trials may persist, Jesus Christ is always there and can enable us to find hope, peace, and joy even while we experience sorrow, disappointment, and pain. Just as I asked if the storm had passed and was told to stay the course, we may receive answers to be patient and vigilant amid the storms of life.
President Russell M. Nelson has made this emphatic promise:
“Jesus Christ extends [an] invitation to you today. I plead with you to come unto Him so that He can heal you! …
“Whatever questions or problems you have, the answer is always found in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. … Turn to Him! Follow Him!”
We can draw near to the Savior and increase our capacity to feel His presence through our commitment to daily prayer and scripture study, paying tithing, participating in sacred temple ordinances, honoring the Sabbath day, worshipping with other Saints, demonstrating our willingness to sacrifice and obey, and living the gospel in our daily lives. These regular acts of worship tether us to our Savior.
A Path of Protection
Lastly, I have reflected on the power of clinging to our covenants when the path forward is not clear. The rumble strip kept us safely on the road when I was unable to see. In an uncertain world and time, there remains a path of safety and peace. If I consider this rumble strip to represent the covenant path of my life, I can imagine critics mocking my “blind faith.” But my faith is not blind. I have never seen a rumble strip lead away from the road and wander into unknown terrain. My experience has taught me to use the strip to navigate through low visibility.
Similarly, the path set for us by the Savior through modern revelation is a path of protection. It requires constant, concentrated efforts to avoid deception and disorientation. Although the mists of darkness and diverse paths are real (see 1 Nephi 8:23–24, 31–32), we can find our way if we stay committed to Jesus Christ.
I believe that through these simple truths, we can keep our gaze focused on the Savior and receive His help. Bound to Him by covenant, we can accept our eternal potential, feel peace and joy knowing we are never alone, and find spiritual safety despite uncertain times.
President Henry B. Eyring, Second Counselor in the First Presidency, has taught us an important principle about seeing ourselves: “Those who do not see their weaknesses do not progress. Your awareness of your weakness is a blessing as it helps you remain humble and keeps you turning to the Savior. The Spirit not only comforts you, but He is also the agent by which the Atonement works a change in your very nature. Then weak things become strong.”
Think of a starving Esau sitting before a bowl of stew, contemplating whether he should trade his birthright for it to satisfy his very real hunger (see Gen. 25:29–34). Now imagine that he is always hungry and that he sits in front of that stew all day every day and that it follows him to every classroom, every meeting, every conference, and every social-media platform. That is our situation. We constantly face the powerful and corrosive temptation to trade away our covenantal birthright in order to satisfy our appetite for delicious—but never really satisfying—worldly approval.
While Esau handed over his whole birthright in a single moment of hunger, our temptation is usually to do it more gradually, one small choice at a time. We might do it with a wink or a roll of the eyes intended to show our skeptical peers that while we may be in the Church, we are not fully of the Church. We might do it when someone makes derisive comments about the proclamation on the family2 and we look at our shoes. Or when we receive prophetic encouragement to “root out racism” in the Church3 and we murmur along with our like-minded friends about Church leaders getting too “woke.”
Now let me take a moment to say, parenthetically, that I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking, “But Rick, it’s easy for you to say this—you’re already a nerd. You’re a professional nerd. Socially, you’ve got nothing to lose by standing up for the gospel!”
And, honestly, I have to concede the point: I am a middle-aged, bow-tie-wearing, banjo-playing librarian; for me, the Ship of Coolness sailed a very long time ago. With no real hipness to safeguard, maybe I have less skin in this game than most of you.
But even if I am the wrong messenger, the message is still true. We can’t keep our covenants with a wink.
Real Choices and False Choices
When it comes to the restored gospel, the chasm between what is true and what it is socially and academically acceptable to believe is just too wide for us to be able to stand with one foot on each side. Christ was either physically resurrected or He wasn’t; the Book of Mormon can’t simultaneously be a genuine record of God’s dealings with real, ancient people and a 19th-century invention of Joseph Smith; Russell M. Nelson can’t simultaneously be a true prophet called of God and someone who is merely revered as a moral and organizational leader by members of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Three Reasons We Teach Others about the First Vision
By Mark A. Mathews
Seminaries and Institutes
1. The First Vision lays the foundation of all that we believe.
One reason we teach the First Vision early in our missionary lessons is that it quickly introduces our unique belief that God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, speak today through modern revelation to living prophets. So much of what we believe grows out of that basic doctrine. Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles shared an experience he had that beautifully illustrates this point:
“My wife and I once visited a university in Athens, Greece. As part of that visit, we were taken on a sightseeing tour. While we were actually inside the Parthenon, our hostess, a graduate student in archaeology, said, ‘Next, I would like to take you to my favorite coffee house in all of Athens.’
“My wife said that we would love to go with her, but she said, ‘Please don’t be offended if we don’t drink the coffee.’
“Our hostess asked, ‘You don’t drink coffee?’
“‘No,’ we answered.
“‘Why not?’ she asked.
“As I was formulating a response, my wife said, ‘The short answer is this: In 1820, a young man by the name of Joseph Smith went into a grove in upstate New York to pray. He wanted to know which church he should join. There he saw God, our Heavenly Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ. Joseph was told he should join none of the churches. But he was told that through him, the Church Jesus had established while He was on the earth would be restored. The restoration would be through a process of revelation. And it is through revelation that we know that we shouldn’t drink coffee. My husband will now explain it to you further.’
“How do we really explain ourselves? How do we explain anything that we do or believe if we do not go back to the Sacred Grove and establish the principle of revelation, that God reveals His will to prophets in this day and age? We obey because we have understood through the Holy Ghost something of eternal import. The reason you and I observe the Word of Wisdom, obey the law of chastity, and keep other commandments is because of revelation.”
This story shows why sharing the First Vision with others lays a foundation to help them understand all of our other beliefs and teachings. So much of what we believe that is unique and interesting to others comes from modern revelation, beginning with the First Vision....
The story of my wife’s friend reminds us of another reason we should strive to share the First Vision at every opportunity—it brings the Spirit.
The Blessings of 1836 and the Difficulties of 1837
By Matthew J. Grow
Church History Department
The Lessons of 1836–37
Why remember the tragedy of 1837 and not just the triumph of 1836? Because, of course, the two can never be separated. It is such in our own lives. God grants all of us periods of spiritual blessings, times when He speaks to our souls and leads us by the hand along the covenant path. He grants us periods of stability, times in which we have enough and to spare, times in which our families are healthy and happy, times in which our friends are close at hand and commune with us. We all live through times that are like 1836.
But God never promised that we would only experience 1836. For each of us, 1837 comes. It comes with economic instability, when we worry about where money will come from. It comes with personal instability, when our families suffer from sudden illnesses, chronic diseases, depression, or anxiety. It comes with social instability, when our friends drift away or betray us.
If we don’t remember our own 1836 experiences—our own times in which we have felt the Lord’s hands in our lives—1837 might bring spiritual instability. It can tempt us to say, “This isn’t worth it.” It can tempt us to say, “God doesn’t love me.” It can tempt us to say, “Joseph Smith wasn’t a prophet” or “President Nelson isn’t a prophet of God.” It can tempt us to say, “The covenant path is not for me.”
But if we do the spiritual work of remembering and dwelling spiritually in 1836 even as we experience the trials of 1837, we can still be grounded in our faith in Jesus Christ, we can still know that God loves us, and we can still know that the Restoration of the gospel and Church of Jesus Christ is real and that the Lord leads His Church through His chosen servants.
