I recently spoke in sacrament meeting, and wanted to keep my talk documented somewhere so I could reference back to it at some point.
I was particularly moved by Elder Holland’s
talk in this past General Conference entitled “Be Ye Therefore Perfect-
Eventually.” This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, the concept of
“growth mindset”. Some of you might not be familiar with this concept, so I
will briefly describe it before moving on with Elder Holland’s talk. Researchers have known for some time
that the brain is like a muscle; that the more you use it the more it grows.
They’ve found that neural connections form and deepen most when we make
mistakes doing difficult tasks rather than repeatedly having success with easy
ones. What this means is that our intelligence is not fixed: and the best way
that we can grow our intelligence is to embrace tasks where we might struggle
and fail. Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University has been studying people’s
mindsets towards learning for decades. She has found that most people adhere to
one of two mindsets: fixed or growth. Fixed mindsets mistakenly believe that
people are either smart or not; that intelligence is fixed by genes. People
with growth mindsets correctly believe that capability and intelligence can be
grown through effort, struggle and failure. Dr. Dweck found that those with a
fixed mindset tended to focus their effort on tasks where they had a high
likelihood of success and avoided tasks where they may have had to struggle,
which limited their learning. People with a growth mindset, however, embraced
challenges, and understood that tenacity and effort could change their learning
outcomes.
Now,
lets dig in to the talk. In the scriptures, there are many commandments. Elder
Holland specifically mentions the commandments “ do not kill, commit adultery,
have impure thoughts, or be angry, do good to those who hate us.” The most
daunting commandment of all however: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your
Father…
in heaven is perfect.” A
careful study of the footnote in our scriptures to this verse teaches us that
the notion of being perfect means that we are “complete, finished, fully
developed.”
Elder Holland says quote “With that concluding imperative, we want to go back to bed
and pull the covers over our head. Such celestial goals seem beyond our reach.
Yet surely the Lord would never give us a commandment He knew we could not
keep. Let’s see where this quandary takes us.” End quote For some people, Satan has turned the ideals
and inspiration of the gospel into self-loathing and misery-making. Some might
think “ I bombed that Sunday school lesson, I am so embarrassed!” “ I only read
my scriptures once this week” or “I didn’t pray before I left this morning”… or my personal “I
didn’t do my visiting teaching this month, I am a failure in the Relief
Society”.
This next paragraph from Elder Holland is
powerful. Quote” What I now say in no way denies or diminishes
any commandment God has ever given us. I believe in His perfection, and I know
we are His spiritual sons and daughters with divine potential to become as He
is. I also know that, as children of God, we should not demean or vilify
ourselves, as if beating up on ourselves
is somehow going to make us the person God wants us to become. No! With a
willingness to repent and a desire for increased righteousness always in our
hearts, I would hope we could pursue personal improvement in a way that doesn’t
include getting ulcers or anorexia, feeling depressed or demolishing our
self-esteem. That is not what the Lord wants for us”4
Elder Holland reminds us that we are a fallen
people in a fallen world. We are in the telestial kingdom right now, and
Russell M Nelson taught here in mortality, perfection is still pending.
He goes on to say quote “Jesus did not intend
His sermon on this subject to be a verbal hammer for battering us about our
shortcomings. No, I believe He intended it to be a tribute to who and what God
the Eternal Father is and what we can achieve with him in eternity. In any case, I am grateful to know that in spite of my imperfections,
at least God is perfect—that at least He is, for example, able to love His enemies,
because too often, due to the “natural man”6and woman in us, you and I are sometimes that enemy. How
grateful I am that at least God can bless those who despitefully use Him
because, without wanting or intending to do so, we all despitefully
use Him sometimes. I am grateful that God is merciful and a peacemaker because
I need mercy and the world needs peace. Of course, when we speak of the
Father’s virtues we also speak of His Only Begotten Son, who lived and died
unto the same perfection.”
Elder
Holland moves forward by saying “one purpose of a scripture or commandment can
be to remind us just how magnificent “the measure of the stature of
the fullness of Christ”8 really
is, inspiring in us greater love and admiration for Him and a greater desire to
be like Him.
Moroni 10:32 says “Yea, come
unto Christ, and be perfected in him …Love God with all your might, mind and strength, then … by his grace ye may be perfect in
Christ.”9 Our
only hope for true perfection is in receiving it as a gift from heaven—we can’t “earn” it. Thus,
the grace of Christ offers us not only salvation from sorrow and sin and death
but also salvation from our own persistent self-criticism.
Elder Holland proceeds forward
with a parable. This parable took me a couple of times to wrap my head around,
so listen carefully because it’s a little long. “A servant was in debt to his king for the
amount of 10,000 talents. Hearing the servant’s plea for patience and mercy, “the
lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and … forgave … the debt.” But then that
same servant would not forgive a fellow servant who owed him 100 pence. On
hearing this, the king lamented to the one he had forgiven, “Shouldest not thou
also have had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee?” If the smaller,
unforgiven 100-pence debt were $100 today, then the 10,000-talent debt so
freely forgiven would have approached $1 billion—or more! As a personal
debt, that is an astronomical number—totally beyond our comprehension. For the purposes of this
parable, it is supposed to
be incomprehensible; it is supposed to
be beyond our ability to grasp, to say nothing of beyond our ability to repay.
That is because this isn’t a story about two servants arguing in the New
Testament. It is a story about us, the fallen human family—mortal debtors,
transgressors, and prisoners all. Every one of us is a debtor, and the verdict
was imprisonment for every one of us. And there we would all have remained were
it not for the grace of a King who sets us free because He loves us and is
“moved with compassion toward us.”11Jesus uses
an unfathomable measurement here because His Atonement is an unfathomable gift
given at an incomprehensible cost. That, it seems to me, is at least part of
the meaning behind Jesus’s charge to be perfect. We may not be able to
demonstrate yet the 10,000-talent perfection the Father and the Son have
achieved, but it is not too
much for Them to ask us to be a little more godlike in little things, that we
speak and act, love and forgive, repent and improve at least at the 100-pence
level of perfection, which it is clearly within our ability to do.”
Except for Jesus, there have been no flawless
performances on this earthly journey we are pursuing, so while in mortality,
let’s strive for steady improvement without obsessing over what behavioral
scientists call “toxic perfectionism”. I was intrigued by this term “toxic
perfectionism” and so I looked it up. A health magazine had several signs of
toxic perfectionism, which I thought was fascinating
Sign #1: Dichotomous
thinking. "Dichotomous
thinking" is the technical term, but it also means all-or-nothing thinking
or black-and-white thinking. it means believing that something is either
perfect or a complete failure.
Sign #2: Doubt. Folks
with perfectionism often doubt their own performance. Even if the
audience gives them a standing ovation, they worry they’ve tanked. And
doubts aren’t limited to big arenas—perfectionists can even worry about whether they phrased that
email the exact right way.
Sign #3: Equating worth and
achievement. This is self-explanatory. When a
perfectionist fails to live up to his or her own unattainable standards, they
think it makes them a bad person. “I did terrible at this, therefore, I
am terrible,” is a common refrain.
Sign #4: Procrastination. Perfectionists
rightfully worry they can never meet their own standards. Without any
wiggle room, any task becomes difficult and unpleasant, which means it gets put
off, and put off, and put off.
Sign #5: Abandoning projects. This
goes hand in hand with procrastination. Sometimes, perfectionists would
rather abandon ship than face the possibility of falling short.
Sign #6: Feeling
overwhelmed. Perfectionists often feel like a deer in the
headlights. Particularly for socially-prescribed perfectionists, the
prospect of having to perform to imagined standards, plus the prediction that
others will only shake their heads and yawn, makes tasks totally overwhelming.
Sign #7: Correcting others.
Other-oriented perfectionists in particular often try to revise
or improve others. Whether it’s their grammar, their clothing choices, or
their driving route, perfectionists always have a better way.
This article summarizes itself by saying “while it’s always good
to have high standards and work hard, you don’t have to be perfect. Even
better… once
you accept the fact that you’re not perfect, then you develop some confidence.”
There is nothing wrong with seeking to make yourself better… The “toxic” part of the
phrases comes in to play,
meaning it changes how you view yourself and changes how you interact with
people, and even how you approach your spirituality.
Like I said before, I teach second grade. I am
constantly teaching my students what growth mindset looks like. This means in
my classroom you will hear phrases like “ I can’t do this…YET.” or “I can do
hard things!” or “ Reflection is how you get out of the dip!” The dip is when
you feel so overwhelmed by a single emotion that you can’t move on or focus on
anything else and you feel hopeless. It’s exciting to see students work through
difficult tasks, rather than just give up because they made a mistake. ;;;;
I personally grew up with a “fixed mindset.” I
have been teaching the concept of growth mindset to my students for three years
now, and am only just now starting to directly apply it in my own brain and in
the way I look at myself. “ I can do hard things.” What does that look like in
your life? Is it in the way you speak with your spouse or children or even to
yourself? Does it mean you complete your visiting teaching or attending all
three hours of church meetings? Does it mean you raise your hand during Sunday
school for a comment or put a reminder by your bed to remember to pray every
night?
Growth mindset doesn’t mean that we get a get
out of jail free card when we make a mistake, and pretend like it never
happened. Growth mindset means that we push through a finish a difficult task,
whatever that looks like in our own lives. It means we reflect, and ask
ourselves how can we do better in the future. It also means that we don’t
obsess over the mistakes we make, but learn from them and hopefully not make
them again in the future.
I leave you with the main idea from Elder
Holland’s talk which is: “If we persevere, then
somewhere in eternity our refinement will be finished and complete.” I have a
testimony of this church, it has been my anchor when life got hard. I am
grateful to know that my family is eternal, and to know that my Heavenly Father
and big brother love me even in my weakest and most natural man moments. I have
a testimony of the Book of Mormon, it is the true word of Christ. I am so
grateful for all the hard things that Joseph Smith and the early saints did in
the early days of the church, it helps remind me that I can do hard things too.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Things that make me happy right now :]
- hosting family dinner on Sunday and having it be a success! the zucchini chicken casserole turned out pretty good
- finishing up fall break was quite eventful with Brandi being in town,the Luke Bryan concert, and the pumpkin rigotta (canoeing in pumpkins. its a thing)
- family in town visiting for said talks
- only 4 more Fridays until Thanksgiving! woot woot!
