Living After the Manner of Happiness: Goals

Alright y'all this is the last post for my series "Living After the Manner of Happiness."  I would like to think this blog series has been instructive and inspiring, but at the very least I hope it has been relatively interesting.  For this last post I will be talking about goals.

 

Why are goals important?  How does setting a goal and achieving it bring happiness into our lives?  I think this MormonAd illustrates the importance of goals quite well:

Goals give us purpose.  They give us something to work towards.  I feel immense satisfaction when I set a goal and I actually accomplish it.  I've decided that there's no faster way to become depressed than constantly feeling like a failure because you didn't achieve your goal.

 

One of my favorite quotes about goal setting is by Elder M. Russell Ballard. He said:

“I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.”



Each and every single one of us have so much potential.  There is so much we can accomplish in this life.  As we set goals and do everything we can to accomplish them, we can reach our full potential.  Our lives will be filled with happiness and satisfaction as we consistently and diligently do everything within our power to achieve our goals.

Our ultimate goal should be to live with our Heavenly Father again.  If we can keep this most important goal in our minds, the way we live our lives will be a reflection of this goal.  

Living After the Manner of Happiness: Endurance

One of my all time favorite scriptures is 2 Nephi 31:20.  It says, "Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life."

This scripture gives me such hope because our Heavenly Father tell us what we must do in order to have eternal life.  We must have faith, hope, and charity.  We need to feast upon the word of Christ.  And we need to endure to the end.

I have thought a lot about what it means to endure to the end.  Enduring to the end doesn't mean we just get through life.  It doesn't mean we just let things happen to us.  Endurance is much more proactive than that; enduring to the end is a lifestyle.  In fact, enduring to the end is essentially "living after the manner of happiness."

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said: "Enduring to the end is a process filling every minute of our life, every hour, every day, from sunrise to sunrise. It is accomplished through personal discipline following the commandments of God."

Enduring to the end is a pattern of progression.  As we continually exercise our faith, repent daily, make and keep covenants, and live worthily of the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost through our own personal worthiness, we are enduring to the end. 

We can find joy in our journey as we keep in mind that the finish line is eternal life with our Heavenly Father.  When we remember that this is our goal, we will do everything within our power to keep the commandments our Heavenly Father has given us, so that we might become "a good and faithful servant."

Living After the Manner of Happiness: Music

I love music.  Music somehow transcends the struggle we often feel in trying to verbally express our emotions. It can trigger memories of people and places and experiences.  I love it.  Music is so powerful.

President Benson said, "Inspiring music may fill the soul with heavenly thoughts, move one to righteous action, or speak peace to the soul."  I love the hymns of the Church.  One of my very favorite hymns is "Press Forward Saints."  I have a memory of singing that song one Sunday in Church when I was like 9 or so and just absolutely being filled with the Spirit, though at the time I didn't understand that what I was feeling was the Spirit.  I was just completely filled with feelings of hope and peace and happiness.

Because music can influence so strongly our thoughts and emotions we need to be careful of the music we choose to listen to.  This picture poses great questions we can ask ourselves in determining if the music we are listening to is uplifting:

 

Music can invite the Spirit more quickly than almost anything I know.   I am grateful for music and the joy and happiness it brings into my life.  And as we seek to listen to uplifting, inspiring music (and that doesn't just have to be Church music), I know we will experience more happiness and joy in our lives.

Living After the Manner of Happiness: Friends

Back in March I started a blog series called "Living After the Manner of Happiness."  When this series is finished, there will be 12 different posts that talk about ways we can each experience more happiness in our lives.  These 12 ideas are taken from a talk given by President Ezra Taft Benson called "Do Not Despair."

So far I have written about repentance, prayer, service, work, health, reading, blessing, and fasting, and my next topic is friends.

In President Benson's talk I mentioned above he said this about friends:

"The fellowship of true friends who can hear you out, share your joys, help carry your burdens, and correctly counsel you is priceless. ...Ideally, your family ought to be your closest friends. Most important, we should seek to become the friend of our Father in heaven and our brother Jesus the Christ.  What a boon to be in the company of those who edify you."

I feel so incredibly blessed to have the friends that I do.  In my moments of discouragement or in those times I'm feeling depressed, it has been my friends and family who have lifted my spirits.  My parents and my brothers and sisters are my closest friends and biggest supporters. 

 

I am beyond grateful for the friends I had growing up in Virginia.  The friends I made at BYU mean the world to me.  And I absolutely treasure and cherish the friendships I have made as I have served my mission here in Tennessee and Kentucky.

I can't help but think of this quote by Elder Neal A. Maxwell when I think about each one of my friends:  "One of the reasons we love each other in the kingdom is that our friendships are not friendships of initiation at all but are, instead, friendships of resumption!" 

My life has been filled with these "friendships of resumption" and it is so clear to me that our Heavenly Father puts us in each others' lives so that we can experience joy and happiness together, and help each other along the path that leads to eternal life with our Heavenly Father.