The sixteen year old version of myself barely resembles the current version. Back then I lived by the motto “everything sucks”¹, sported colorful unwashed hair, spent my time with various punk-rock bands, and went weeks without seeing my family. It was then that I learned how to find comfort in sleeping on somebody’s floor. I hated the system. I hated programs and all the hoops to jump through, which society told me were for my benefit, but for which no real value could be seen. That is why, when I tell you that routines are important, you can trust that I’m speaking from experience; experience gained in the school of hard knocks.
Continue reading Developing Routines → In the mid-1850s, a young German schoolteacher read a new book about an industrious and even heroic people with absurdly stupid beliefs. Unable, however, to believe that such good fruits could come from so bad a tree, he determined to investigate the Mormons for himself. In October 1855, Dr. Karl G. Maeser was baptized [...] When you do something, make sure it’s important, and do only that. Clear away everything else that might pull away your attention, which in the end is your most valuable tool. Leo Babauta | The Beauty and Effectiveness of Clearing Distractions If we know that, sometime soon, all our wealth will go toward maintaining our family in a foreign land, wouldn’t that change how we structure our debt, our past-times, and our lives? John C. | Elder Holland and the Adversity Gap: A Modesty Proposal  The earliest memories of my life were of living out in the desert in Newberry Springs, California. My father had built a small home which we began to live in before construction was complete. In fact, I still remember with vividness the absence of a bathroom. Our toilet was a tall yellow-handled shovel and a hole we’d find ourselves away from the house. Heaven help you if you found somebody’s previous latrine! I probably cannot understand the fullness of the kind of poverty we lived in, but I was aware at least we were “roughing it”. One day in particular sticks out in my mind: it was the day we got the encyclopedias.
Those books, of mythic proportion in my mind, must have been bought at great sacrifice. I still recollect the smell of the fresh, glossy, inky, pages. I would thumb through them for hours. That purchase began a tradition that trained me in a principal which has lasted a lifetime, and has been the source of innumerable blessings.
Continue reading Finding It Yourself → |
