Paisley: Hey, everybody Paisley imperfect here again with
another message. We're going to talk today about why people try
to improve themselves. I started thinking about all of those
things that we have discovered, all those different
characteristics that we can work on within ourselves, to help
make ourselves better to help make ourselves become the people
that we are able to become. And when I was looking again, when I
was trying to figure out where to start, I started thinking
about it. And I was like, Why? Why do people try to make
themselves better? I think I know what my reason is. But I
was curious as to why other people do it. Especially people
who may or may not know, their divine origin, right, as a child
of God, may or may not believe that.
And so I went into my search engine, and I just put in, why
do people try to improve themselves? And it sent me to
this article that basically had two reasons that it said I had
seven reasons. But they were all really just saying two things.
The first thing that they were saying is that people try to
improve themselves, because they're the only ones that can.
So we are trying to improve ourselves, because we're the
only ones that can improve ourselves. Okay. And then the
second reason that they gave was, or the second kind of
lumped together reason that the game was because life requires
it. So if that's, but is that really why people improve
themselves? And I'm honestly curious, I realized that the
tone of my voice doesn't necessarily sound curious. It
sounds more accusatory, that's just the way that things come
out of my mouth. But is that really? Is that really a reason
that people try to improve themselves? Like they, they
know, they're the only ones that can and so they just do it? Or
because life requires it? And so you're just kind of like, well,
I guess I better get better, because I kind of have to. That
doesn't to me. And if that works for you. Great. Cool. That is a
very simple reason. Go go with it. To me, it's a little those
two reasons are a little too simplified. They're a little,
they're not motivating to me. So I changed. And when I first got
that answer, and I was reading through it, I was like, really?
Is this really why people? Okay. Maybe I didn't ask the question
the right way. And so I went back to my search engine, and I
re asked the question, and I put in why do people care about
improving themselves, and I got a much better response.
I actually got five reasons why people care about improving
themselves. And I thought that these reasons were really good.
Two of them, number one, and number five, I think kind of
circle circle through each other kind of cycle back and forth.
But the first one is personal fulfilment. So people try to
improve themselves because they, because it's fulfilling, they
feel good. And when I thought about it that way, it was like,
Well, yeah, I mean, that's why people practice things like a
musical instrument or a sport, or something else. Whatever else
people do art. They practice their craft, because it's
fulfilling and when they get when they get better. They feel
good about it. I have this friend with a very interesting
talent. She is really good at cutting in on like a painting.
Like if you're painting your wall, she is really good at
cutting in on the between the wall and the ceiling. My brother
is also really good at that. So like just these random and she
practiced it and she practiced it when she was fixing up her
own house. She practiced this skill, and she now has this
skill. That is kind of random, but also very awesome if you
need somebody who can cut in between the wall and the
ceiling. So to improve yourself to help yourself get better, is
fulfilling. You can set a goal and you can accomplish that
goal. don't feel good about what you just accomplished.
The second reason is better relationships. And if you think
back or remember back to what we talked about on Tuesday, and
about how the relationships that we as women are building with
women of other faiths, and how important those relationships
are to the furthering of the gospel of Jesus Christ, to
improve yourself so that you can build better relationships helps
further that work even more, which goes into number five,
which we'll talk about in a second. But it says improving
oneself can lead to better relationships with others. When
people work on their communication skills, empathy,
emotional intelligence, all of those things, we learn to better
communicate and interact with other people. And we can
interact on levels that we maybe couldn't have before. And so
that personal improvement, helps us build stronger relationships
provide personal fulfillment.
The third reason is career advancement. Self improvement
can be a pathway to professional success, developing new skills,
gaining new knowledge, improving our overall skill set, or our
knowledge about certain things can help if if we are career
people, it can help further our career can help make us better
in our field. Cutting on the lives a little bit sharper.
The fourth reason that they had was health and well being some
of our goals are physical. And there's a lot there's a lot more
information out in the world now than there has been in the past
about a lot of things, but also about our health and our, our
wellness, about how when we improve ourselves, and we focus
on and we can feel ourselves like feel when we can recognize
anything, that's the word I'm looking for when it when we can
recognize how we really are feeling on the inside, and know
how to or learn how to harness those feelings. Some people call
it emotional intelligence, some people call it well being there
are a lot of different I think catchphrases for it. But it's
kind of that finding stillness that we were talking about
before being confident, humbly confident in who we are, which
I'm going to get to in a little bit.
And then number five is a sense of purpose. So when we build
those relationships are as we are working to build those
relationships. And as we are experiencing personal
fulfillment, and remember how I said number five, and number one
kind of cycle through each other, we have a sense of
purpose and personal fulfillment, we have this sense
of purpose. And then when we accomplish that goal, it is very
fulfilling and rewarding.
There is one missing from here, that that is really my reason
and something that I did some searching for. And I found some
quotes, these are all going to come from the church's website,
different talks, three, actually. One of them is not a
talk, it's an article that's coming out in the July 2024
Liahona. If you don't have your physical copy yet, you can get
it online, I'll make sure that it's linked in the notes. But
it's called quotes for when you need to trust the Lord. So I'm
going to come back to that one here in a little bit. That's the
first one. The second one is called Give me a light that I
may tread safely into the unknown. And it comes from also
from the July 2020, for Liahona by Elder Patrick Kieran. And
then the third one comes from November 2019. Liahona. And it's
called knowing who you are and who you have always been by
sister do Sheri L. Dew. So I'm going to start here with a
couple of quotes. Because the stuff that she says in here, I,
I really just want to read the whole thing. I'm not going to do
that to you. But I mean, you can go read it yourself. I'll make
sure that the link is in the notes. It's not very long. She's
talking about how her she had her niece and her nieces friend
over they came over for a sleepover. And they were asking
her house she had become so confident because as a kid, she
said that she had absolutely no self confidence. And the first
thing that she says was that it wasn't until I began to
understand how the Lord felt about me that my feelings about
myself and my life slowly began to change. And that is kind of
that's the motivation for me. Improving myself.
I do not claim to know x exactly how the Lord feels about me, I
have a small glimpse of that every once in a while, I have a
small glimpse of that when I watch my daughters do something.
And I know that they're just trying so hard when I watched my
seven year old practice piano, and she's trying so hard, and
she wants it so bad. And I, and I watch her and I'm just like,
Yes, you got this, just keep trying, just keep trying. I get
small glimpses of, of how the Lord must feel about me. And
when I think about it that way, like I want the world for my
daughters, I want them to be able to be anything they want to
be, and be confident in their own skin, while helping others
and serving others. That's what I hope for them. I don't care
whether they do it as a writer or a surgeon or a site, like
what whatever they're going to do it as will be wonderful. I
just hope that they will know who they are, understand their
divine, origin, their divine nature, and be happy.
And so when I think about like, it wasn't until he began quoting
Sr, do again, it wasn't until I began to understand how the Lord
felt about me that my feelings about myself and my life slowly
began to change. So thinking about how the Lord feels about
me. Where do you even start with that? We? Hopefully, you have
felt his love in your life. And if you have felt his love in
your life, then you do kind of know how he feels about you. And
does that change your life? Does that change how you look at
things? Does that change how you do things.
And so she talks about how her and her knees and the friend
kind of went through the scriptures and talked about how,
how important it is to be able to feel and recognize and
understand the spirit when he is speaking to us. Because she says
it is the Spirit who reveals to us our identity, which isn't
just who we are, but who we have always been. And that when we
know, our lives take on a sense of purpose, so stunning that we
can never be the same again. So I go back to the original
question, why do we care about improving ourselves? For me?
Sure. It's fulfilling, it gives me a sense of purpose. It has
helped me in my career, and it helps me in a lot of different
things. But also, I want to do, I want to do the best I can. So
that I don't, I want to say this the right way, I I don't want to
disappoint my Father in heaven. Now, when I say that, I also say
that with the knowledge that I can repent of things that I do
wrong. And I say that with the knowledge that the knowledge of
a parent, right? When my daughter does something wrong,
yeah, I'm disappointed. But it doesn't make me love her any
less. And it helps me think of different and better ways to
teach her new things. So when I take those things, and put those
together, and if I think about my father in heaven as a loving
father, who wants the best for me, and wants to see me get
better. The disappointment doesn't feel. I just don't know
that disappointment is the right word. But I think you know where
I'm going with that.
Okay, so she talks again about our spirits long for us to
remember the truth about who we are. Because the way we see
ourselves, our sense of identity affects everything we do. It
affects the very way we live our lives. So when we know who we
are, we live our lives differently than when we're
trying to figure that out. And she says, Can you imagine that
God who knew us perfectly, he knows us all perfectly reserved
us to come now, when the stakes would be higher in the
opposition more intense than ever, when he would need women
who would help raise and lead a chosen generation in the most
lethal spiritual environment. He picked me to do that. Can you
imagine that he chose us because he knew If we would be fearless
and building Zion, are we fearless? I don't know, I'm kind
of afraid of some things
noble and great, courageous and determined, faithful and
fearless. That is who you are. And that is who you have always
been. Understanding that truth can change your life because
there's knowledge periods of confidence that cannot be
duplicated any other way. It cannot be duplicated, it can be
imitated, but it cannot be duplicated. So understanding who
we are noble and great, courageous and determined,
faithful and fearless, being able to understand that that's
who we were before we came here. And using the Holy Ghost as our
guide to help us be those things here will help us to become the
best version of ourselves.
So for me, my the reason that I want to get better, and the
reason that I want to work on those things that we talked
about in a play to my sisters from President Nelson, the
reason that I want to work on those things is because I want
to become the person that he sees me being. Alright, so let's
go to these other quotes. You know what I need to log in, I
had to restart everything because my camera wasn't working
and all that fun stuff. So I'm going to sign in again really
quick here.
And then my highlights will show up, here we go. Okay. So he
talks about, we're looking at give me a light, that I may
tread into the unknown, safely into the unknown. That comes
from a poem, by the way, which he's got the text of in his
talk. But he talks about what the gospel promises us is that
if we are led by God with our hand in his, we will be guided
through life's tests and struggles and into his ever
increasing light. So yes, we search for self improvement, we
try to become better because we want to be the people that he
knows we can be. And he doesn't leave us to do that by
ourselves. He doesn't leave us to figure it out on our own, he
will take our hand and help lead us through that. And then he
asks that we serve other people. So leadership, and in
particular, public speaking did not come naturally. To him. He's
talking about King George King George the sixth. And how he
gave his great like famous speech. But he didn't start out
as a leader, he he had prolonged efforts, including overcoming
his stuttering speech impediment, so that he was able
to effectively serve His people.
He says, to lead others in the way that the Savior lead in the
way that he would have us lead is to serve them. So we've come
from why do we try to improve ourselves to serving others?
It's serving others, when you think about those other. When
you think about these five reasons, even the sixth reason
that I added on here, when you think about personal
fulfillment, better relationships, career
advancement, health and well being and sense of purpose,
every single one of those involves somebody else. Through
personal fulfillment, we feel we feel fulfilled, when we
accomplish a goal when we when we have a sense of purpose. And
that sense of purpose comes through our willingness and our
ability to reach out and help other people, better
relationships, helping other people, career advancement.
You're not going to get very far if you're trying to advance in
your career by yourself. And then our health and well being.
Yes, that takes our own focus. But we have so many others,
there are so many others out there experts in self help
experts in self regulation, experts in meditation, and all
these different ways to help us find that stillness to help us
take a breath and be okay with who we are. All of these things
have to do with other people.
So he's talking about serving others the way that our Savior
serve them. He quotes President iring. President iring said,
remember that you serve a Master who loves you, who knows you,
and who is all powerful, he loves you, He knows you and is
all powerful. And if we couple that with what we talked about a
little bit ago, how He will help us through this process. We
can't fail. He says he has created not demands for your
service, but opportunities for your growth. So think again,
about the fulfilment, personal fulfillment, and better
relationships, and the sense of purpose. And then when we put
that together, he has created not demands for your service,
but opportunities for your growth. So all of those things
that we think are, oh, this is so much work. It's an
opportunity for our growth.
And trust me, I do not think about things like that all the
time. I do not, these last couple of weeks have been
really, really hard. And I was not thinking about opportunities
for growth. I am getting to a better place.
He says you can pray to Him with confidence and ask what would
you have me do next? If you listen humbly and with faith,
you will feel an answer. And you will, if you're wise and good
set about to do that which your master has commanded. And you
will leave the residue in his hands and he talks about residue
in the paragraph before that too. You will go and do your
best. And whatever you cannot fulfill, you leave the residue.
That's the residue what whatever you can't do. That's the residue
and you leave that in the Masters hands in our saviors,
hands and Jesus's hands. And then he takes that and make
something of that the real thing that I was looking for, and the
this is like the one thing that says it all.
It's also in this article and it's a it's a little section
header, it's the very bottom, and it says your Father in
heaven believes in you. Do you need more reason for personal
growth than your heavenly father believes in you. My dad said to
me once, and I am sure that this quote comes from somewhere
somehow my dad said to me once, of course, I love you the way
you are, I will always love you the way you are. I love you too
much to leave you that way. And I really believe that our
Heavenly Father loves us just the way we are. But he also
loves us too much to leave us this way. And he for sure isn't
going to help us get worse. That's what Satan does. He tries
to help us get worse.
Okay, and then there's this other article in July 2024, and
not the Ensign it's called the LIahona now. Sorry, little slip.
There's an article in here, quotes for when you need to
trust the Lord. And there are some good ones.
President Nelson God knows all and sees all in all of eternity.
No one will ever know you or care about you more than he
does. No one will ever be closer to you than he is. He
demonstrated his ultimate love when he sent his only begotten
Son to die for you to be your Savior and your Redeemer. Nobody
knows you better than he does. And he sent you here at this
time because you have a very specific and special purpose and
role to play. Play it. Nobody can do it the way that you can.
And then there's one from Elder Christofferson. I bear witness
that God the father lives that his son Jesus Christ is our
Redeemer and that the Holy Spirit is present with us. And
here's the real kicker, right? Their desire to help us is
undoubted. And their capacity to do so is infinite. All we need
is the desire to get better. Their desire to help us is
undoubted. And their capacity to do so is infinite. They're on
our side. All we have to do is try they will double our
efforts, they will increase our efforts they will help take up
the residue and help make something of what we left
behind.
I am excited to start working on some of these things. And I
promise that we're gonna get into them soon. I just wanted to
make sure I was covering my bases like what are these things
that we need to work on? Why are we working on them? We will
probably need to come back to our purpose at some point. But
right now I feel like we know what they are. We know why we're
doing this. And it can you can have your very own reason number
seven. If you do I would love to hear what it is. We have our
purpose As we have our list, now it's time to get started. And I
think I might start with happiness because in doing all
of this, I came across a quote from President Nelson created a
little sticky note and stuck it on my wall. It says Satan
delights in your misery. I don't know why I needed to see that
particular quote this week. I saw it yesterday. And as soon as
I saw it, I was like, he delights in my misery. He
totally does. I don't want to give him anything to delight in.
So it's time for me to get rid of the misery. I am not claiming
that you can just turn it on and off. That's not how it works.
Depression is a real thing. Anxiety is a real thing.
dysregulation is a real thing. These are real things that we
have to work through. We can still choose whether to be
miserable as we work through them. Or, and I found another
quote, I saw another quote, I posted it. I think we talked we
talked about it on Tuesday, that quote from SR ubank, that's
happiness isn'tisn't pasting a plastic smile on your face. It's
following in our Savior's footsteps. And I'm, I'm
paraphrasing, if you want to see the The full quote, you can
check the Instagram or you can check my Instagram or my
Facebook page, the real the, quote, the whole quote is there.
But sister Eubank talks about how happiness isn't just pasting
on a plastic smile and calling it a day. That's not happiness.
That's fake. She's talking about where happiness comes from. And
I think we might dive into that, because Satan delights in our
misery. And I think too many of us are miserable this these
days. And if you're anything like me, sometimes I just let
myself sit in it. And I have sat in it for long enough. It's time
to be it's time to serve others so I can find my own happiness.
I hope that you are having a good day. I hope that you're
having a great week. I hope you're enjoying your summer.
Depends, I guess on which half of the world you live in. I hope
that you are enjoying your month. Thank you for sticking
with me for hanging out here. And let's do this together.
Let's just keep going together. Thank you so much, everybody.