21 September 2014

I guess my post today is going to be pretty simple. The last few months haven't been the easiest for me, but throughout the last few days I have had an overwhelming sense of gratitude for everything in my life. 

Gratitude is interesting to me. Immediately when I hear someone talk about gratitude, I almost always tune out. "Oh, they're just going to tell me to be more grateful" is what I always think. And, usually, I'm right. But recently I've learned a lot about gratitude and the positive influence it can have in our lives. 

I was introduced to the idea of being "grateful in any circumstances." It means that no matter what's going on, I can be grateful. It's easy to think, "one day I'll be happy (when I get a job, get married, or retire...etc), one day I'll be grateful for everything I have, but for now I'm just angry and stressed out." But I've learned that as I try to find the "silver-lining" in everything and look for the good, I have SO much to be grateful for. And it's made me so much happier. 

I'm so grateful for my good family. My parents and extended family have season tickets to the BYU football games, so I get to see them almost every weekend which is great. I'm grateful for the chance I have to talk to my family on the phone and to see them in person on a regular basis. When you can't directly communicate with your family for two years, you realize that in your life you have taken them for granted. I appreciate and love my family so much and am grateful that I can talk to them whenever I want now. 

I'm grateful to be here in school. School's hard, and it's not always fun. In fact most of the time it isn't super fun. But I'm grateful for the opportunity to be studying at a great university and for the chance to learn the valuable skills that will hopefully make me useful in the workforce some day. 

I'm grateful for my people in SoCal. You guys mean the world to me and have deeply impacted my life. I think about you on a daily basis and am grateful for things like Facebook that let us communicate and keep up with each other. 

Hope everyone has a great week!

**For more on where I got the idea of "grateful in any circumstances," you can check out:

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/04/grateful-in-any-circumstances?lang=eng

7 September 2014

I apologize in advance for how scattered my thoughts are today. As I started school this week and at BYU, I've thought a lot about life and the various approaches we sometimes take to overcome challenges. Also, anyone who knows me knows that yesterday was a great sports day...so I'll talk about that near the end.

All my life I've been very hard on my self. To say I'm a perfectionist would be an understatement. I'm not perfect (obviously), but my mentality is always that of improvement and hardly ever settles for my current ability to do something. This, in my opinion, can be both a strength and a weakness. It can motivate a person to be better and improve, or it can crush them and make them feel helpless. In my life I've experienced both sides of this, but I have tried my best to focus on the positive and use it to propel me to be better and improve in different areas of my life.

I have thought about this for years, and I really appreciated something that was reiterated to me today by a friend: One mistake or even a series of mistakes does not define a person and the potential they have. In addition, one mistake or error does not negate or cancel out the good things that people do in their lives.

Yet, for whatever reason, it seems so much easier to focus on the negative things that we do personally or we see others do. Why? Sometimes throughout the course of a day, even though we do lots of good things, we allow one mistake or one erroneous comment or one bad/negative thought to dominate our thoughts and crush our self-confidence.

You may think I'm writing this because of what happened last week with former BYU and Arizona Cardinal quarterback Max Hall and his arrest due to shoplifting and possession of cocaine. While this blog post wasn't written specifically to address that issue, I believe the same principles apply. People make mistakes. People sometimes do things that jeopardize their future and their family. However, there's no reason to pass premature judgement or label someone based on one thing or event. We don't know the details of people's lives and the "why's" behind their actions.

The God I believe in is extremely merciful. He loves us and He wants us to do well. When we mess up, however big or small the "mess up" may be, He still loves us. Of course, He wants us to succeed and do our best. But when we don't, I imagine Him helping us up, dusting us off, and lovingly telling us to try again.

I think one of the leaders of my Church, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, says it best. "...God loves us. He is good. He is our father. And he expects us to pray and trust and be believing and not give up and not panic and not retreat and not jump ship when something doesn't seem to be going just right. We stay in, we keep working, we keep believing, keep trusting following that same path, and we will live to fall in his arms and feel his embrace and hear him say, "I told you it'd be okay, I told you it'd be alright."

My goal over the next few weeks is focus on the positive in life and more patient with myself and others.

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I couldn't write this without mentioning how excited I am about the BYU football season so far. I have watched the Cougars all my life and have watched us beat big teams, but the win yesterday was unlike any I have ever seen. I think the Cougars are poised to make a good run this year, and barring injuries, this could be a special season.

I really appreciate the great feedback I received after starting my blog a couple of weeks ago. Please continue to tell me what you think so I can improve the blog.