Today I was blessed to have the chance to speak in sacrament meeting. These are always great opportunities to learn as well as to give service. In case you're interested I'll include the text from my talk preparation. I did go off script a little as I was blessed with a little more time than I initially planned for. Things went well and Heidi says I did a good job. Here's the talk:
Family Goals Talk
Introduction
My Brothers and Sisters ALOHA
Today I
have been asked to talk about a subject that is important to me and that is
family goals. Specifically, I am going to talk about three aspects of family
goals: First, why is setting family goals important. Second, how can we choose
what to have as our goals and Third, what can we do to keep from getting
discouraged with my family goals.
First, why should we care about setting family goals?
Heavenly Father sets goals. If it works for Him it will work
for us.
Recently
my wife was taught by Sister Knight, of the Greenfield ward, that Heavenly
Father is the best example of how to be a good parent. If we read in the
scriptures about how he treats his children, we can learn a lot about how to be
better parents.
In the
beginning, Heavenly Father held a family counsel (Abr 4:26) where he told his
children about His goals for us. He called it the Plan of Salvation. It is a set of family goals that if we follow
them will allow us to become like he is and allow us to be with our families
forever. When we heard about it those of us who are on Earth today shouted for
joy (job 38:7).
I’m a
firm believer in the power of setting goals. I have goals written in dry erase
marker on my bathroom window. I start almost every day reviewing my to do list
and prioritizing which goals are the most important for today. If we want to
get something done we need to start by deciding to do it.
Prioritizing
Perhaps
one of the most important reason to set goals is that we don’t have unlimited
time. When Heidi and I make our plan the hardest thing is often deciding what not to do. By setting goals we
prioritize what is most important.
How should we go about choosing our family goals?
Keep the Commandments
Thomas S. Monson, October 2015 General Conference
"I am confident that each of us has as his ultimate
goal life everlasting in the presence of our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus
Christ. It is imperative, therefore, for us to make choices throughout our
lives that will lead us to this great goal. “
When I was a missionary down in
Argentina there was an Elder from Texas who had a great expression. He said “goals
should be stars to steer ourselves by not sticks to beat ourselves with”. Think
about that as you are setting your goals. Ask yourself “Will this goal inspire
me to be my best self?”
As a family our most important goal
is to be the type of family that wants to be together forever. Whenever we find
ourselves doing something that gets in the way of that goal is a good time to
think about things to change.
We should pray for guidance
Visit the Temple
In October 2015 General Conference
Elder Larry Lawrence taught us to ask the Lord “What Lack I yet?” He will tell
us and if we act on what He tells us He will teach us more.
OK by now you may be thinking “Yeah, but setting family
goals is hard and when we don’t make progress I get discouraged, what then?”
Here are some simple things that you can try to up your
success rate:
Start Small
Have a fall back plan
Mark it on your calendar
Tell other people about your goal
Don’t be afraid to table a goal for a while with a plan to
visit it again later
Let’s
face it, setting and sticking to goals is hard. Many people refuse to make New
Year’s resolutions because it is so discouraging to make them and find that you
drop them after a few weeks. Fortunately, there are many things that we can do
to overcome this vicious cycle.
Start Small
Saint
Francis of Assisi has a great quote it goes:
Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly
you are doing the impossible.
Think of Alma 37:6-7 “behold I say unto you, that by small
and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many
instances doth confound the wise.
7 And the Lord God
doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very
small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of
many souls.
Nightly Scripture story
When my
wife and I started doing nightly scripture study with our children it did not
go well. Or kids were not interested in sitting still and listening. They
wanted to jump on the beds. We set a goal that we would read at least one
scripture every night as a family. We decided that if need be we could quote a
one. There were many nights when we quoted “Adam fell that men might be and men
are that they might have joy”. The interesting part is that while we had many
days when that was as far as we got there were many others where we read a
whole chapter. As time went on the percentage of one scripture days decreased
and now we routinely read a whole chapter.
Have a fall back plan
Elder
Andersen, when he came to train our local leaders, shared a similar plan his
family did. They had a goal to read a chapter a day in the book of Mormon. He
wife ended up memorizing a short chapter so that if they had a rough day she
could quote it and they could be consistent in keeping their goal. (3 Nephi 30
I’m fairly sure).
The idea here is that when you set
your goal you should have a plan for what you will do when you feel like quitting.
Heavenly Father does not expect us
to get there suddenly in one flurry of effort. (D&C 98:12) “For he will
give unto the faithful line upon line, precept upon precept”
Mark it on your calendar
There has
been research that shows that if you mark a specific time on your calendar you
are more likely to get it done.
Tell other people about your goal
Another
small but helpful thing that we can do is to let other people know about our
goals. This is especially important for family goals. Heavenly Father sends
prophets and many others to remind us about the plan of salvation. Telling our
kids and others about our goals helps with our kids because they know what we
expect of them. Telling others helps because they may ask us how our goal is
going. That can help us keep trying when times get tough.
Revisiting Goals/Not Dying in the Pool story
Two
summers ago we made a goal to teach our kids how to swim. Actually our real
goal was to teach the well enough that one of them fell in the would not die in
the pool. They could swim to the edge and climb back out. After practicing
close to 5 days a week by the end of summer our two oldest had achieved the
goal but our others had not. This might have seemed like a failure except that
not long after summer ended my second oldest did fall in the pool when she was
in the backyard by herself. Because of all our hard work nothing worse happened
than she got all wet. I don’t want to think about what would have happened had
we not had that goal in place. This past summer we revisited our “Not dying in
the pool” goal and two more of our children can now get out of the pool safely
on their own. The important thing here is to be grateful for the small
successes that you do have and don’t be discouraged that you still have a ways
to go. We still have two kids left who are not safe around pools and while that
is a scary thought I am so grateful that four of my kids are ready should they
happen to fall in.
Conclusion
In
conclusion let me recap the things that we have discussed. Heavenly Father sets
goals. He created a plan before he created the world. If that is the pattern
that works for the most powerful Being in the universe it will also work for
us. We should set goals that inspire us and be careful not to beat ourselves up
when we fall short. We should not be surprised when it gets hard to keep our
goals. In fact we should expect it and plan on it. Have a fall back plan for
what to do when things get hard and don’t be afraid to admit that you may need
to revisit some goals again later on.
Heavenly
Father loves you right now. Even before you set any goals. He will always love
you no matter how many times you fail. He will also help you to succeed and to
have the joy and happiness that He has promised if we learn to keep the
commandments. My invitation to you is that you make a plan, right now, to set a
family goal. If you already are doing this, great, if not find a time today to
start setting family goals. It can be simply that you want to be an eternal
family and that you will work together to make it happen.
I bare you my
testimony that Heavenly Father loves you and that peace and joy are found in
living the gospel. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
I did add in that the Savior taught in the New Testament "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt 5:48) in the book of Mormon he said it slightly differently "Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect." To me this suggests that the Savior did not consider Himself perfect until after He was resurrected. We learn in Luke 2:52 that "Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." I suggest that perhaps Matthew 5:48 means that we should become perfected in the way the Savior became perfect line upon line. We probably won't become perfect 10 things at a time. We'll do it one thing at a time.
This evening the stake had a fireside. Heavenly Father blessed us so that things went smoothly. There was a video that didn't download properly but Heavenly Father blessed me to be able to fix it without it being noticeable in the meeting.
