Accept.

When happiness drifts just out of reach, there is always a culprit.  I identified one the other day.

Comparing.

Nothing new.  Or fancy.  Nothing novel or earth-shattering.  Just plain-old-caught-up-in-the-cycle-of-feeling-sorry-for-yourself-comparing.

And it's really hard to stop that downward spiral once it's started.

The trick is to flood those comparisons with a torrent of acceptances.  And while in theory, it's a revolutionary idea, I'm still working on the execution of something so simplistically simple.

In truth, we are all flawed and yet we all have glowing strengths as well.  So, instead of hi-jacking happiness with the comparison culprit, we need to accept ourselves just as we are.

Isn't that what our Father in Heaven does for us?  He accepts and loves us, and yet at the same time, inspires us onward, upward, and in a steady course set for the higher path?

So, on a notecard [which is absolutely the handiest and most essential note-taking tool in my opinion {but you may also substitute any scratch paper, sticky note, journal, or drawing pad...}] list out your strengths.  It might help to get a trusted loved one's opinion about what your core strengths are, seeing as we sometimes have a hard time identifying just what they are.

A Few from my List:
*Love of my Savior, the gospel, and all things spiritual
*Sincere desire to do and be good
*Forever Analytical, and prone to pondering and deep thinking
*Enthusiastic loving of my little children
*Brimming with creativity and passion for a host of hobbies/talents
*Love of reading and all good and inspiring books
*Photography

Next, take a second notecard and record a list of what you can accept about yourself.  This isn't an excuse list for our favorite sins or bad habits.  It's an honest look at who we are, and a sigh of relief for keeping that pesky perfectionism in check.  It doesn't mean we can't change or progress; it's simply way of taking a deep breath, saying, "This is who I am, and that's okay for now."  In all reality, every time I give myself permission to love myself as I am, I ALWAYS automatically want to try harder to be better.  And this is the beauty of acceptance.

A Few from my List:
~I accept that I don't (and can't) know everything about the future and that's okay.  Faith is key here.
~I accept that I am unconfident in just about everything...it's okay that I have a hard time in this area.  I will learn someday how to master this area because I am seeking.
~I accept that I am slow to decorate...The empty spaces overwhelm me, but I need to accept that I need time to find all the right pieces for all the right places.
~I accept my cooking...it's small and simple right now.  Everything is always homemade and healthy (and I think delicious)---but it's hardly a candidate for a table on the cover of Taste of Home.  And that's okay.  I have little ones now and so simplicity is the essence of everything we embrace.  It's all about Comfort Food and comforting hearts.
~I accept that I don't know yet if I'll have a large or a smallish family.  My physical, emotional, and financial capacity is yet to be determined and I'm okay with living life with my three little ones as if our family is complete.  And if the feeling comes that another little one needs to join us, I'll know.
~I accept that I have some health problems and probably always will.

Will you accept the challenge to accept yourself?

Keep your cards and read over them when you're happy, and even more when that comparison culprit comes sneaking around your quiet corners.

Feel the love of a loving Father, and allow yourself to love yourself.

Accept.

When happiness drifts just out of reach, there is always a culprit.  I identified one the other day.

Comparing.

Nothing new.  Or fancy.  Nothing novel or earth-shattering.  Just plain-old-caught-up-in-the-cycle-of-feeling-sorry-for-yourself-comparing.

And it's really hard to stop that downward spiral once it's started.

The trick is to flood those comparisons with a torrent of acceptances.  And while in theory, it's a revolutionary idea, I'm still working on the execution of something so simplistically simple.

In truth, we are all flawed and yet we all have glowing strengths as well.  So, instead of hi-jacking happiness with the comparison culprit, we need to accept ourselves just as we are.

Isn't that what our Father in Heaven does for us?  He accepts and loves us, and yet at the same time, inspires us onward, upward, and in a steady course set for the higher path?

So, on a notecard [which is absolutely the handiest and most essential note-taking tool in my opinion {but you may also substitute any scratch paper, sticky note, journal, or drawing pad...}] list out your strengths.  It might help to get a trusted loved one's opinion about what your core strengths are, seeing as we sometimes have a hard time identifying just what they are.

A Few from my List:
*Love of my Savior, the gospel, and all things spiritual
*Sincere desire to do and be good
*Forever Analytical, and prone to pondering and deep thinking
*Enthusiastic loving of my little children
*Brimming with creativity and passion for a host of hobbies/talents
*Love of reading and all good and inspiring books
*Photography

Next, take a second notecard and record a list of what you can accept about yourself.  This isn't an excuse list for our favorite sins or bad habits.  It's an honest look at who we are, and a sigh of relief for keeping that pesky perfectionism in check.  It doesn't mean we can't change or progress; it's simply way of taking a deep breath, saying, "This is who I am, and that's okay for now."  In all reality, every time I give myself permission to love myself as I am, I ALWAYS automatically want to try harder to be better.  And this is the beauty of acceptance.

A Few from my List:
~I accept that I don't (and can't) know everything about the future and that's okay.  Faith is key here.
~I accept that I am unconfident in just about everything...it's okay that I have a hard time in this area.  I will learn someday how to master this area because I am seeking.
~I accept that I am slow to decorate...The empty spaces overwhelm me, but I need to accept that I need time to find all the right pieces for all the right places.
~I accept my cooking...it's small and simple right now.  Everything is always homemade and healthy (and I think delicious)---but it's hardly a candidate for a table on the cover of Taste of Home.  And that's okay.  I have little ones now and so simplicity is the essence of everything we embrace.  It's all about Comfort Food and comforting hearts.
~I accept that I don't know yet if I'll have a large or a smallish family.  My physical, emotional, and financial capacity is yet to be determined and I'm okay with living life with my three little ones as if our family is complete.  And if the feeling comes that another little one needs to join us, I'll know.
~I accept that I have some health problems and probably always will.

Will you accept the challenge to accept yourself?

Keep your cards and read over them when you're happy, and even more when that comparison culprit comes sneaking around your quiet corners.

Feel the love of a loving Father, and allow yourself to love yourself.

A Friend to Help in our Happiness Quest

Today I wish to record the words of someone much wiser than me, who talks about happiness by following the guidance of the Spirit in a way I could only dream of.  From a past prophet who was born nearly 100 years ago, President Lorenzo Snow gives us one of the keys to happiness.....

"There is a way by which persons can keep their consciences clear before God and man, and that is to preserve within them the Spirit of God, which is the spirit of revelation to every man and woman.  It will reveal to them, even in the simplest of matters, what they shall do, by making suggestions to them.  We should try to learn the nature of this Spirit, that we may understand its suggestions, and then we will always be able to do right.  This is the grand privilege of every Latter-day Saint.  We know that it is our right to have the manifestations of the Spirit every day of our lives."

"From the time we receive the Gospel, go down into the waters of baptism and have hands laid upon us afterwards for the gift of the Holy Ghost, we have a friend, if we do not drive it from us by doing wrong.  That friend is the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, which partakes of the things of God and shows them unto us.  This is a grand means that the Lord has provided for us, that we may know the light, and not be groveling continually in the dark." 

 "The Lord has established certain constitutional desires and feelings in our bosoms, and it is so with all mankind, with the whole human family.  There are implanted and interwoven in their constitutions certain desires and capacities for enjoyment, desires for certain things that are in their nature calculated to promote our peace and well-being, that answer their feelings and promote their happiness, but how to obtain the gratification of those capacities and desires the world does not know nor understand, but he Lord has seen fit to put us in the channel and in the way of understanding those things by being faithful and walking in the light of the Holy Spirit and receiving truth."

 "It is the privilege of the Latter-day Saints to live in the Gospel in such a way that they will feel approved of God.  Of course, we do things sometimes that we are ashamed of when we come to a consider them, but we repent of them in our hearts and determine to do them no more.  That is all the Lord asks of us; and men and women who so live, live without condemnation.  They have righteousness and joy in the Holy Ghost."

"If we keep the light of the Spirit within us, we can so walk in the gospel that we can measurably enjoy peace and happiness in this world; and while we are traveling onward, striving for peace and happiness that lies in our path, in the distance, we shall have a peace of mind that none can enjoy but those who are filled with the Holy Spirit."

"We ought to understand--and I presume that we do generally--that the work which we have come into this life to perform cannot be done to the glory of God or to the satisfaction of ourselves merely by our own natural intelligence.  We are dependent upon the Spirit of the Lord to aid us and to manifest to us from time to time what is necessary for us to accomplish under the peculiar circumstances that may surround us." 

 "We should so live that we shall know that our course of life is acceptable to God.  We should understand the voice and whisperings of the Holy Spirit...No professing Latter-day Satin can enjoy any great degree of happiness unless he thus lives, and thus places himself under divine guidance."

"Make up your minds to live humbly and in such a way that you will always have the Spirit of the Lord to be your friend, to make such suggestions to you from time to time as shall be needed under the peculiar circumstances in which you may be placed..."

"We should endeavor, as far as possible, to forget all worldly matters which grieve and vex us, and fix our minds upon the Lord, having a sufficiency of His Holy Spirit that we may be enabled to receive such knowledge and suggestions as will help us in our onward path." 

A Friend to Help in our Happiness Quest

Today I wish to record the words of someone much wiser than me, who talks about happiness by following the guidance of the Spirit in a way I could only dream of.  From a past prophet who was born nearly 100 years ago, President Lorenzo Snow gives us one of the keys to happiness.....

"There is a way by which persons can keep their consciences clear before God and man, and that is to preserve within them the Spirit of God, which is the spirit of revelation to every man and woman.  It will reveal to them, even in the simplest of matters, what they shall do, by making suggestions to them.  We should try to learn the nature of this Spirit, that we may understand its suggestions, and then we will always be able to do right.  This is the grand privilege of every Latter-day Saint.  We know that it is our right to have the manifestations of the Spirit every day of our lives."

"From the time we receive the Gospel, go down into the waters of baptism and have hands laid upon us afterwards for the gift of the Holy Ghost, we have a friend, if we do not drive it from us by doing wrong.  That friend is the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, which partakes of the things of God and shows them unto us.  This is a grand means that the Lord has provided for us, that we may know the light, and not be groveling continually in the dark." 

 "The Lord has established certain constitutional desires and feelings in our bosoms, and it is so with all mankind, with the whole human family.  There are implanted and interwoven in their constitutions certain desires and capacities for enjoyment, desires for certain things that are in their nature calculated to promote our peace and well-being, that answer their feelings and promote their happiness, but how to obtain the gratification of those capacities and desires the world does not know nor understand, but he Lord has seen fit to put us in the channel and in the way of understanding those things by being faithful and walking in the light of the Holy Spirit and receiving truth."

 "It is the privilege of the Latter-day Saints to live in the Gospel in such a way that they will feel approved of God.  Of course, we do things sometimes that we are ashamed of when we come to a consider them, but we repent of them in our hearts and determine to do them no more.  That is all the Lord asks of us; and men and women who so live, live without condemnation.  They have righteousness and joy in the Holy Ghost."

"If we keep the light of the Spirit within us, we can so walk in the gospel that we can measurably enjoy peace and happiness in this world; and while we are traveling onward, striving for peace and happiness that lies in our path, in the distance, we shall have a peace of mind that none can enjoy but those who are filled with the Holy Spirit."

"We ought to understand--and I presume that we do generally--that the work which we have come into this life to perform cannot be done to the glory of God or to the satisfaction of ourselves merely by our own natural intelligence.  We are dependent upon the Spirit of the Lord to aid us and to manifest to us from time to time what is necessary for us to accomplish under the peculiar circumstances that may surround us." 

 "We should so live that we shall know that our course of life is acceptable to God.  We should understand the voice and whisperings of the Holy Spirit...No professing Latter-day Satin can enjoy any great degree of happiness unless he thus lives, and thus places himself under divine guidance."

"Make up your minds to live humbly and in such a way that you will always have the Spirit of the Lord to be your friend, to make such suggestions to you from time to time as shall be needed under the peculiar circumstances in which you may be placed..."

"We should endeavor, as far as possible, to forget all worldly matters which grieve and vex us, and fix our minds upon the Lord, having a sufficiency of His Holy Spirit that we may be enabled to receive such knowledge and suggestions as will help us in our onward path."