CHAPTER 8
If we wish to improve our circumstances and the world around us, the place to start is with changing ourselves.
1 Dale Carnegie once said, “If you are not in the process of becoming the person you want to be, you are automatically engaged in becoming the person you don’t want to be.”
2 If we would truly reform mankind, we must first reform ourselves. It was a wise man who observed that so often everyone meddles in everyone else’s matters instead of improving himself--and thus everything stays the same. The abundant life begins within and then moves outward to other individuals. If there is richness and righteousness in us, then we can make a difference in the lives of others, just as key individuals have influenced the lives of each of us for good and made us richer than we otherwise would have been.
3 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
4 President Theodore Roosevelt said, “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena” (Clifton Fadiman, ed., The American Treasury: 1455–1955, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1955, p. 689).
5 “The height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure is gauged by his self-abandonment. There is no other limitation in either direction. And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish a dominion over himself will have no dominion over others. He who masters himself shall be king. [Author unknown.]”
6 Any list of our present, personal indulgences is actually an index--but a reverse index to joys--joys we will not experience until we do deny ourselves certain things. Meanwhile, the absence of gross sins in our lives can lull us into slackness concerning seemingly small sins. The failure to visit and care for parents is a failure to honor one’s father and mother. In its lesser form, the lack of self-restraint causes unkind comments to a spouse, but in the extreme it can bring domestic abuse and even murder. The tendency to strike back whenever we are offended makes us brusque and rude, as if others were functions, not as brothers and sisters. Thus, excess of ego is like a spreading, toxic spill from which flow all the deadly sins (see Prov. 6:16–19). Young parents know how a mere half cup of spilled milk seems to cover half a kitchen floor. Small sins spread like that, too.
7 We must not let the things we can’t do keep us from doing the things we can do.
8 Let us remember, too, that greatness is not always a matter of the scale of one’s life, but of the quality of one’s life. True greatness is not always tied to the scope of our tasks, but to the quality of how we carry out our tasks whatever they are. In that attitude, let us give our time, ourselves, and our talents to the things that really matter now, things which will still matter a thousand years from now.
9 “I have learned I will not be judged for what happened to me, but I will be judged by how I let it affect my life. I am not to blame for what happened to me. I cannot change the past. But I can change the future. I have chosen to allow the Savior to heal me--and to teach my children what I have learned. The ripples in my pond will spread through future generations.”
10 In setting our goals, we might well ask ourselves the following questions, remembering our ultimate objective: What kind of person am I? What kind of person would I like to be? What am I doing to accomplish this, and what am I doing that is keeping me from being that kind of person? How can I overcome?
11 He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.
12 Perfection is our goal, but we all still have a long way to go to obtain perfection. Maintain your integrity and seek to live by the Spirit. Keep all the commandments, so that you will one day stand blameless before God. Give the Lord this year and every year your faith and loyalty, that he may look with pleasure upon what you have done.
13 You are well on the way to perfection when you acquire the attitude of “give and give” instead of “give and take.”
14 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:
15 God bless you to realize where you came from and the great privileges that are yours. If the veil were rolled back and you could see one glimpse of God’s great eternal plan concerning you and who you are, it would not be hard for you to love Him, keep His commandments, and live to be worthy of every blessing that he has had for you since before the foundations of the world were laid. And I pray the Lord to bless each one of you that you may never falter or fail.
16 Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves--to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life.
Younger Elder Brooksby
1-“The Word Is Commitment” by Marvin J. Ashton, October 1983 General Conference
2-The Abundant Life by Spencer W. Kimball, June 1979 Liahona
3-James 1:19-25
4-The Will Within by Thomas S. Monson, April 1987 General Conference
5-Cast Your Burden upon The Lord by Robert L. Simpson
6-“Deny Yourselves of All Ungodliness” by Neal A. Maxwell, April 1995 General Conference
7-Richard L. Evans, CR 4/50:105, Quotations, September 1978 Liahona
8-A Gift of Gratitude by Spencer W. Kimball, December 1977 Liahona
9-The Journey to Healing, April 1998 Liahona
10-Walking in Obedience to the Commandments by N. Eldon Tanner, September 1979 Liahona
11-Proverbs 25:28
12-Give the Lord Your Loyalty by Spencer W. Kimball, February 1981 Liahona
13-Quotations, September 1981 Liahona
14-Deuteronomy 30:19
15-Patriarchal Blessings by LeGrand Richards, September 1981 Liahona
16-2 Nephi 10:23
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