Life and the Pursuit of Whatever You Want

Recently, I was speaking with a friend about choosing your own happiness. The phrase "you choose your own happiness" is easier said than done. When my friend told me this phrase annoyed her, I had to agree. I thought if anyone said that to me face-to-face I'd probably punch them and say, "that makes me happy".

In all seriousness, though, choosing your own happiness can be done, but it is hard to do. With every choice, or action, there is a consequence, or reaction. The majority of the time the consequence is out of our control. Therefore, we may take the necessary actions to make ourselves happy, but its the consequences that have affected our environment including the people that can make us unhappy. It is not to say that every outcome from our actions is not good, but it needs to be recognized that we cannot always choose what happens to us even if we make our own (generally accepted standard of good)choices.

Now here comes the other part we can control (besides our actions): our reaction to the outcome. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said: "It is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself, that determines how your life's story will develop." Our reaction to adversity is very important because it is how we handle the consequences of our actions (or other adversity) that determines our happiness.

It probably seems like I should punch myself now, but I will add that controlling our reaction to adversity is hard. So when people say it so easily that we choose our own happiness, well it makes me a little annoyed. There is one more thing to this as well. Pursuing what we want, whatever it may be (I say this with the thought in my mind that everyone is trying to pursue something to the extent of a generally accepted standard of good), can make us happy.

I read an article on Yahoo! that spoke about a woman who was receiving an onslaught of threats and negative tweets because of an article she wrote about her dislike for young mothers. The link will be at the bottom of this post. Though I'd like to agree with some of the negative tweets, I have to say what does it matter? The woman who wrote the article and young mothers out there have all made a choice to live their lives how they want. If we have any right left it is that we choose to pursue whatever we would like to. So what good does it do anyone putting down on someone else's choices? From what I have seen it does not do any good.

So as far as my opinion goes, you have the right to pursue happiness, but please do not put down on someone else's path to happiness.

Link to Yahoo! article: http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/blogger-slams-motherhood--gets-death-threats--here-we-go-again--210630664.html

What It Means To Me

Adjusting Views will be my journal to help me catalog the events of my life this year. Though it may be of no concern to anyone what happens to me regularly (I lead a pretty uneventful life), it will help me keep track of my progress this year.

I realized, in 2013, some important things about myself. I was becoming a person I did not like and I was not living the life I had imagined for myself. This is not to say I started the year off that way nor that I did not have some good times during that year. However, as the year passed away and school became harder, I changed. I grew to feel like I was betrayed. I did what I could in the way of keeping the commandments and doing what my Heavenly
Father has asked of me, but by the end of the year my trials were only harder.

After a few road bumps, I have been able to sit back and make some interesting discoveries about myself.

• I have an intense desire to travel throughout my life.
• I have a low self-worth.
• I am hypocritical.
• I have trials that will last for my whole life. 

At the end of 2013, I could not believe that I had not been rewarded with having my trials gone away. I was not any happier at the end of the year than I was at the beginning. Some counseling from my bishop and a psychiatrist led me to scour my gospel library app and lds.org for some videos or scriptures that could help me with my feeling of betrayal and my lack of faith.

One particular video spoke about the atonement of how it can take our pain away, not just pain and sorrow from our own sins, but of the pain caused by someone else's sins. For me, though, I needed something more. I knew the pain I harbored would not go away fully. Then that is when I started to wonder why my Heavenly Father could not take this pain away if it plagued me so much. I had been praying and the word endure kept coming to mind. It was not until I went to dinner with a friend and talking to her about the word that I realized what Heavenly Father was trying to tell me.

And then I went to church today and a counselor in my stake presidency read a scripture that completed the message Heavenly Father was trying to give me. It reads: "Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life." (2 Nephi 31:20)

So, my unique trials may never go away, but if I endure it out and press forward, I will be rewarded.

I am adjusting my views this year of my life, my situation, and the world around me so that I can become closer to Christ and my Heavenly Father. I leave you with two quotes from two of my favorite leaders of the Church.

"It is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself, that determines how your life's story will develop." - President Dieter F. Uchtdorf

"Hope on. Journey on."- Elder Jeffrey R. Holland