Overcoming Challenges

Week 8:

Looking Back and Moving Forward

• More than 53,000 men, women, and children journeyed to the beautiful Hall of the Prophets in this very building to pay their last respects to this giant of the Lord, who now belongs to the ages.
• A sweet spirit of unity exists among the General Authorities. The Lord has declared, “If ye are not one ye are not mine.”¹
• Because of so many deaths in the area, there were no caskets available, at any price, in which to bury the deceased family members.
• Indifference, carelessness, selfishness, and sin all take their costly toll in human lives.
• Our youth, our precious youth, in particular, face temptations we can scarcely comprehend. The
• We feel surrounded by the pain of broken hearts, the disappointment of shattered dreams, and the despair of vanished hopes. We join in uttering the biblical plea “Is there no balm in Gilead?”⁶ We are inclined to view our own personal misfortunes through the distorted prism of pessimism. 
• Together we shall move forward doing His work.

However Long and Hard the Road

> ...keep a sense of humor, retain your marriage goal for the important commandment it is, and put your energies into becoming! Don’t spend your time walking on your lower lip about what is not. That just stretches the heck out of your lower jaw. Be excited about your chance to grow and develop and become.

> The Politics of Experience, R. D. Laing said, “What we think is less than what we know: What we know is less than what we love: What we love is so much less than what there is, and to this . . . extent, we are much less than what we are” 

> ...the feeling of being somebody comes from hard work and self-growth. Being in control of my life...

> The only limitations you have are those you set on yourselves. All of the tools and texts are here, right at your hand. But sometimes we cannot recognize the real purpose and significance of the moment which is ours to experience.

> ...a man or a women connected to the powers of heaven will learn to be an inheritor of those powers.

> As Christ was moving toward his crucifixion, he said, “Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again” (John 12:28). Some of the people there didn’t hear anything but a noise (they thought it thundered); others only heard words, and they thought an angel had spoken to him. Only a few heard the words as they were, and they knew God had spoken them!

> If you have oil in your lamps, you will find how often you get a chance to light them.

JEFFREY R. HOLLAND:

> ...Victory, however long and hard the road may be. Conquer we shall. Conquer we must!

> "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

> If your eyes are always on your shoe laces...it's easy to throw in the towel and stop the fight. But what if it was the fight of your life?...the fight FOR your life?...more precisely your eternal life.

> How do you get this glimpse of the future to help you go on? That my friends is the gift of the gospel...

>Why not just quit?....It was the fulfillment they knew to be ahead. No matter how faint or far away.

> ...to have seen it, and felt it, and believed it kept them from growing "weary in well-doing."

> These saints vowed victory, however long and hard the road.

> The Lord requires the heart and a willing mind if we are to eat the good of the land of Zion.

> The temple required 9,000 man hours of labor.

> Why did the saints fill in the foundation? Why do we? When we fear men more than God, we fill in our foundation. To get back to where we were, we have to undig our fears back to our original foundation.

>The best things in your life are worth finishing. "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?....please keep shaping and setting those stones that will make your accomplishment a grand and imposing spectacle."

> I pray that your life may be a monument to Jesus Christ, however long and hard the road may be.

David Carrington

*...embrace thinking backwards...solution then problem.

*...know who we are and what our brand is and consistently execute the brand.

You Can Do Anything

*...involve the Lord...

*...Not underestimating yourself and the Lord on what you can do...

The Five Whys

*Behind every technical problem there's a human problem that caused it.

*...if you don't figure out the human problems you will never learn and make progress.

*Basically ask why at least five times to figure out what the real problem is.

Naive Networking

11 Be nice to the gatekeepers too. Remember, executive assistants run most companies. They can be your most valuable source of information about a company or an entrepreneur. See them as a resource, not a barrier. 

12 Follow up. Always, always, always write a handwritten thank you note. Let the entrepreneur know how their advice or recommendation helped. Show them your gratitude by offering something unexpected. 

SUMMARY 

Entrepreneurs are busy. Every moment of their time already is committed. People who use social contrivances or relationships to gain access for meaningless meetings take time away from more important tasks. If you want to learn about an industry, read books or surf the internet for information. Interview line personnel who have more time and can give you a perspective on what working in an industry at an entry level is like. Save face-to-face meetings with entrepreneurs for that rare moment when there is something specific they can do, at a very low cost in time and effort, that will make a big difference to your life. Above all, remember that it’s not about you. People will help you if they sense that you are on an important mission to help others and have the character and drive to make a difference. You can demonstrate this by doing your homework up front, and always putting yourself in the shoes of the other person.