Secrets to Self-Confidence #2: You've Got Back Up

In a talk given at Brigham Young University on Sunday, January 3, 2010, Elder Neil L. Andersen said, "Your spiritual destiny will have obstacles, delays, and equipment malfunctions. There will be mistakes. You may wonder if you are going to make it. Don’t be discouraged! You will also have moments of hope and faith as doors open and obstacles are overcome. Continue, persist, above all, believe in Christ and learn to follow Him and His prophets; endure, as Nephi said, with a “brightness of hope” (2 Nephi 31:20). As you do, I promise you, one day you will hear your name. You will make it."

Even when things go terribly wrong and we feel like we can't do anything right, we have back up. I recently returned to Washington D.C. after being away for several weeks, and I decided to take the long way home from school on Tuesday by walking to the National Mall and through the National Gallery of Art. In addition to discovering that Childe Hassam is one of my favorite artists, I happened upon a series of allegorical paintings by Thomas Cole, depicting man's progression through this earthly life. Accompanying the paintings were Cole's own descriptions of what the different elements of each painting mean.

The third painting in the series is entitled, "The Voyage of Life: Manhood."



The text reads: "The demon forms are Suicide, Intemperance, and Murder, which are the temptations that beset men in their direst trouble. The upward and imploring look of the voyager shows his dependence on a superior power and that faith saves him from the destruction that seems inevitable."--Thomas Cole, 1840

Perhaps I have never been faced with the "direst trouble" because I have never felt inclined to commit suicide or murder, but I see Cole's point. When things get pretty rough, I sometimes wonder why I am here or why so-and-so who is making my life so difficult has to be where I am too! Intemperance is a much more common problem as I find myself frequently losing patience, struggling to keep my cool when dealing with abject incompetence, and the like. Too frequently I mutter frustrations, pound the steering wheel, or impolitely implore metro riders to "stand on the right, walk on the left" of the escalator. Letting such emotions spiral out of control leads to my own decline, but faith in that Superior Power, Jesus Christ, surely saves me, and you, from the otherwise inevitable destruction. (For a wonderful discussion of temperance, click here.)

I love how Cole ends his allegory with the fourth painting, "The Voyage of Life: Old Age."



Cole describes, "The angelic Being, of whose presence until now the voyager has been unconscious, is revealed to him, and with a countenance beaming with joy, shows to his wondering gaze scenes such as mortal man has never yet seen." It is as if Cole knew of Moses' experience speaking with God in the Pearl of Great Price: "Wherefore, no man can behold all my works, except he behold all my glory; and no man can behold all my glory, and afterwards remain in the flesh on the earth." Moses 1:5.

We travel through this life facing disappointment and discouragement, blows to our self-confidence and bludgeoning to our strength, but we are not alone. We are never alone. We have better than back-up; we have the Atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. And if we endure faithfully in this life, I am confident that we will see, as Thomas Cole predicted, our Savior's "countenance beaming with joy" and "scenes such as mortal man has never yet seen."

Secrets to Self-Confidence #1

Maybe this will become a series of posts. As a precaution, I have numbered this post.

I was sitting on a plane thinking about confidence and self-esteem, and I realized that I'm usually most confident when I'm not thinking about myself. Isn't that interesting? That one of the keys to self-confidence is to think about anything but your SELF?

So, if you aren't going to think about yourself, what do you think about? Naturally, you can think about other people. But self-confidence requires that you think about other people in a certain way. You definitely cannot compare yourself to other people because if you are comparing, then you are still thinking about YOU.

You could think about ways to help other people, but you have to be careful here because taking this too far could again lead back to thinking about how YOU have so much to offer. And self-confidence is more about actually offering what you can to other people rather than thinking about how great it is that you have something to offer.

You could think about learning, growing, ideas, goals, and things of that nature. I think these are the thoughts that lead us to the greatest self-confidence. They also can lead us to serving others--acting rather than just thinking about others and having futile pity.

Elder Douglas Callister summed it up pretty well in an address he gave at BYU in 2006: "There are those who always speak of themselves, and they are either insecure or proud. There are those who always speak of others. They are usually very boring. There are those who speak of stirring ideas, compelling books, and inspiring doctrine. These are the few who make their mark in this world. The subjects discussed in heaven are not trifling or mundane. They are sublime beyond our most extended imagination. We will feel at home there if we are rehearsed on this earth in conversing about the refined and noble, clothing our expressions in well-measured words."

So there you have it, secret #1: Stop thinking about yourself and go do something useful. (Okay, maybe that's two secrets. Look for a later post on doing something useful.)

A New Favorite

I'm a particular fan of this Michael Buble song, I Just Haven't Met You Yet. It makes me think of those times like when I had to take Process Control and my best was B after B after B mixed in with an occasionally frequent failing grade on quizzes and I tried to tell myself that I'm still smart and capable of doing anything, or the times that one guy after another ends of being a jerk and I tell myself that of course I'm still awesome and someday someone will see it, or the times that I fail to get everything done in a day for the 31st day in a row and I try to tell myself I'm not completely incompetent, or the times that I have nothing to do on a Friday night and it's hard to remember the weekends I get invited to four parties in one night. For all those times, here's a song:

I'm Not Surprised
Not Everything Lasts
I've Broken My Heart So Many Times,
I Stop Keeping Track.
Talk Myself In
I Talk Myself Out
I Get All Worked Up
And Then I Let Myself Down.

I Tried So Very Hard Not To Loose It
I Came Up With A Million Excuses
I Thought I Thought Of Every Possibility

And I Know Someday That It'll All Turn Out
You'll Make Me Work So We Can Work To Work It Out
And I Promise You Kid That I'll Give So Much More Than I Get
I Just Haven't Met You Yet

Mmmmm ....

I Might Have To Wait
I'll Never Give Up
I Guess It's Half Timing
And The Other Half's Luck
Wherever You Are
Whenever It's Right
You Come Out Of Nowhere And Into My Life

And I Know That We Can Be So Amazing
And Baby Your Love Is Gonna Change Me
And Now I Can See Every Possibility

Mmmmm ......

And Somehow I Know That It Will All Turn Out
And You'll Make Me Work So We Can Work To Work It Out
And I Promise You Kid I'll Give So Much More Than I Get
I Just Haven't Met You Yet

They Say All's Fair
And In Love And War
But I Won't Need To Fight It
We'll Get It Right
And We'll Be United

And I Know That We Can Be So Amazing
And Being In Your Life Is Gonna Change Me
And Now I Can See Every Single Possibility

The Things We Say

My family has some really good quotes... at least they are funny to me and my family, so maybe only 25% of my readership will laugh. :)

"You just can't get good customer service here."--my 9-year-old brother

"I can't feel my eye!"--my 13-year-old sister

"You planned to use him as a weapon of mass disgustion among other things."--my 20-year-old sister, commenting on my plot of revenge against my 9-year-old brother's teacher. She (the teacher) is a complete idiot, gives too much homework, and told us at the last minute that my dad couldn't go on a field trip with my brother because Mrs. Wong was the "Chosen Parent Chaperone." Oh, and siblings (even adults in law school) are not allowed to go on field trips either. My brother had been talking to us about how excited he was for dad to go on that field trip every day for three months. So, what did I do to the woman who crushed my brother's hopes and dreams? I packed my brother's lunch and gave him a Fiber One bar. You know what they say about beans? Well Fiber One bars have the same effect, only stronger.

"You know, Meg, it's very typical for these lawyers to not get married until they're in their 30's."--Dad
"Honey, will you please stop before the whole family is in tears again?"--Mom

We have also watched a lot of quotable movies this holiday season (sometimes we have watched the same ones over and over and over again). Here is a matching quiz. See if you can match the quote to the movie title.

Quotes

1. A: I found the yellow cake. B: Of course you found the yellow cake; we're in a bakery. A: Not yellow cake cake, the radioactive kind. Although there is some yellow cake cake here too.

2. Give me a proper hug.

3. ALLLLLLLLLVVVVVVVIIIIIIINNNNNN! (This one's not that hard.)

4. A: N.Y. B: What's that? C: No way. B: That's N.W., you idiot.

5. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody but unbowed.

Movies

A. Sleepless in Seattle

B. The Blind Side

C. Get Smart

D. Invictus

E. Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Squeakel

Hey

I just sent a gchat to my sister. It said, "Hey." That was it. She responded, "Hi." That was it. A minute or two later I got this: "Why do people always do that? They text or gchat you to say hey or hi and then expect you to do all the work in the conversation." She continued to rant, pontificate, soliloquize, and I recommended she blog about her feelings. Only, she doesn't have a blog. So I decided to blog for her, and send her a text. It said, "Hey."

Poor President Obama

Today I read an article about President Obama having to work on vacation. (See it here.) Apparently, our nation's president didn't get to relax much over the Christmas holiday. And the Associate Press seems to think I should feel sorry for him. Well, I don't. Heaven forbid he earn his living. Here's what our family vacations were like growing up.

The road trip
Mom: Every one has to be quiet. Dad has a conference call.
Kids in back trying to sleep or do anything to pass the hours of driving to the tune of Dad checking voicemails, solving problems, and averting small disasters.

The cruise
Child #1: Where's Dad?
Mom: In the internet cafe.
Child #2: What's he doing?
Mom: Working.

The beach trip
Mom: Turn the TV down and close the door. Dad is on a conference call.
Child #3 or 4: When will he be done?
Mom: In a couple hours.
Downstairs...
Child # 3 or 4: Child #1 wake up! We want to play with you. Dad is working.

We had fabulous family vacations. We've seen amazing parts of the world and spent quality family time together. I use these examples merely to illustrate that there is no reason to feel sorry for a man who works or his family. How could we possibly expect the President or anyone else in charge of protecting and running a country, business, or organization not to be on call and available to deal with issues on an as needed basis? The implied tone of this article that anyone should feel sorry for the President of the United States because he had to deal with a terrorist plot over the Christmas holiday is simply ludicrous.