Choices – the way forward.
Finding your way is a matter of choices and making the ones that you believe will bring you the most happiness.
So, I often work with young men who are just about to graduate high school and, for members of the church of jesus Christ of latter day saints, that means that they are getting ready to choose whether they will serve what we call a full time mission.
That means that they will spend 2 years away from family, away from girlfriends, away from college studies and sports and they will go out to a place they are assigned and share the gospel of jesus Christ with complete strangers, sometimes in a language that they will learn that they have no experience with.
When I was young boys went at 19 and girls at 21, now those ages are younger, boys can now go at 18 and girls
A lot of these boys are struggling with anxiety, with pornography, with knowing if they will be the missionary they need or want to be.
Just a note about my show notes. they are essentially the outline and notes that I use to do my podcast. I don't edit them once I finish the podcast, so they are here for you as is and to give you a little glimpse into my mind as I do the show. They aren't a word for word transcript.
Enjoy!
I had a conversation with someone just today about the choices that he is making and why he is holding back from moving forward with his life because of the overwhelming feelings that he has. He said to me, Its hard to find motivation to go to school when you don’t know why you are going.
Which lead him to feel overwhelmed and then led to various types of buffering and avoiding.
What I’m not saying is, just go because you should or because someone else says you should or because you think you are supposed to or some other external reason.
As I was talking with this young man the question I asked him was, why are you choosing to stay home?
That took him back a pace, because it wasn’t that he was actively choosing it, it was that he was not choosing anything.
Now, this wasn’t about him serving a mission but in a way it is the same conversation.
Inaction is a choice, but often we don’t think of it that way. we think of it in terms of not yet choosing.
But in reality we are choosing, we are choosing the status quo.
What is happening with this young man is that he feels stuck, overwhelmed and generally unhappy.
Some of you are thinking, yeah, because he isn’t choosing the right thing. He isn’t doing what is right and so he is not happy.
But think about what you are saying there. You are essentially saying that we don’t choose the thing that we are told we should do, go on a mission, go to college, then our happiness will be in jeopardy.
By that logic most of the world is simply unhappy and can’t have joy.
The real reason for this sense of overwhelm is his thoughts, what he is making his choice of inaction mean and his lack of ownership.
We already talked about his thought and his feeling. In the conversation he also told me that if he doesn’t go to school that will mean that he can’t get a good job and provide for his future family. That was what he was making it mean that he doesn’t have motivation.
But the flex point, the place where the rubber meets the road is the lack of ownership.
The truth is, regardless of whether he goes on a mission or goes to college or whatever, unless he decides the path he wants to take, he will stay unsatisfied and continue to choose thoughts that overwhelm and hold him stuck.
He didn’t go on a mission, not because he chose to do something else or chose to stay home, he didn’t go because he outlasted everyone else in the game of ‘when are you going to put your papers in’. he didn’t declare his choice, he simply chose inaction and the world passed him by.
Now he is in the same place with his schooling. Somewhere in him he... Support this podcast
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