Pathway Experiences

Our objectives for the family are a little complex, I think.  I have to find a way to improve my family relationships and have two goals to do so for two respective relationships.  I think any of my step siblings or my parents could work, so first I will call my mother once per week, preferably on Sunday. That will be goal one and it will end in one month.  for goal two, I will avoid saying anything that might sound less than respectful to or about my dad.  This will also last one month, so it should be checked a couple of months before father's day.  Since I already do this, making a goal of it is a way of keeping me from slipping up when he might be sensitive to it.  Also, I am usually so busy that my mother doesn't know when to call me, and I hardly know when I can call anyone beside my employment manager.  That's all for now.  I guess I will see if this is effective: Call Mother once per week, especially Sunday Avoid common or low speakin...

So, I learned about Managing money and some of the tools that there are to do so, provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Financial calculating tools are available on the Provident Living website and the instruction we were taught during the week was an opportunity to share experiences with each other.  Some of the other students considered their parents to be excellent examples of good financial management.  I consider my Dad to be excellent at penny pinching and saving overall, but he's not very good at investing wisely, so I didn't say much if anything in the class, so as to save him from a unknowingly suffering a moderate report on him.  Some of the stories were very impressive. When one student said they had been raised in comfort but did not know how to do anything to take care of themself, and then they had to learn all at once for their family, they commented that it was actually a disservice rather than nice that their teaching was ne...

I have often thought myself to be effective at finding what is truthful and reasonably trustworthy as a source of information.  I rely on inspiration and a gift of God to identify such things. It seems that there is an art or a skill to this that I have been taught to improve.  In college it is expected that I use and cite my sources.  Therefore, I need to improve my studying to use the standards I have been taught. I have been misled in the past, and usually by a decent source.  For this reason I intend to continue to rely on the gift of God to help me identify truth, yet it will be more effective the search Google Books and the local library than to use much on the internet, simply because it is difficult to cite and rely on the majority of opinions on the internet, on account of their incomplete background information.  It is important that, even if it is the internet, we should research and study for truth or we may not find it.

To be honest, Week 7 was overwhelmingly too busy for me and I couldn't keep up. It was of course my fault, but that easily leads into the insight I gain from the reading for the week. Following is something that caused me to wonder at the ways we define reward, punishment, good, and bad: 2 Nephi 24:10-16 10 All they shall speak and say unto thee: Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? 11 Thy pomp is brought down to the grave; the noise of thy viols is not heard; the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. 12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! Art thou cut down to the ground, which did weaken the nations! 13 For thou hast said in thy heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north; 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High. 15 Yet thou shalt be brought do...

When I was a missionary, I was taught the S.M.A.R.T. way of making goals and achieving them.  I probably learned much by what I was not doing when I began missionary service.  All that I did previously was honorable for my preparation, but missionary service exposed me to other people I had to work very close with and that was a more shocking and difficult endeavor than simply saying what was true about God and his work on the earth. I can't say I made the most use of SMART goal making when I was a missionary, but I did use it consistently because mostly the same principles were taught in Preach My Gospel , the missionary manual.  For this reason, I have understood it for years, but after my missionary service I used this art of goal making less and less and never more effectively.  When it was re-introduced for this class, I was pleased, but I realized that without a companion to do such things as I learn in this class with, they have much less meaning to me, beca...

I have discovered a major problem in my own and others goals. I understand that most goals are simple statements of intent, whether specific or not. While conversing and studying in the gathering.I realized that I had been doing one thing deficiently. I didn't have a true time limit.  No matter how silly it seems, time limits give us more for achieving our goals than they take away.  For the lost time and pressure spent on convenience, one gains the focus on just the time between now and the goal end period, and the ability to renew or re-evaluate the goal for the next week. Once, when I was a missionary, I used goals and a planner that had backcups and weekly time limits.  Ever since then I have neglected that detail I have found that I couldn't achieve my goals in the most satisfying ways.  So, when I was reminded of it in class I made it a point of focus  for me to fix that particular. Having a time-limit is part of the S.M.A.R.T. style of setting goals...

It seems that moral Agency is something the Lord really wants us to believe and understand. This week, I have learned how to consider agency from multiple perspectives to the point of reading and hearing language that sounds redundant, yet true. To me there is no question of moral agency, for we have far more power to direct our thoughts, feelings, and desires of the heart than we have exercised. The truth of the matter is that we can all be pure and wholesome, for what power over ourselves we do not have, we may have by faith, prayer and fasting. The main reason that comes to my mind that we do not exercise our agency as a people, that is to act rather than be acted upon, is that we are told and find it convenient to believe that certain aspects of ourselves are guided or controlled by forces that we have to choice to determine, such as who we fall in love with, and what hobbies or passions will overcome us, or whether we can stay away from some activity or behavioral addiction that...