Talk in Sacrament

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!