"I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the technique of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential.
Some of you might cop out by saying, “Well, Brother Ballard, you just don’t understand my environment..."
“No,” I would say to you, “put all of that in the back of your minds and bring forward to the front of your mind the worthy goals that you want to obtain. Then practice personal self-discipline.”
Elder M. Russell Ballard then quotes Benjamin N. Woodson:
“All you need to do is this: Beginning this very day, stop doing some one thing you know you should not do.” After you have written this one thing down, stop doing it!
Now the second part of Mr. Woodson’s suggestion is this, “Start doing each day some one thing you know you should do!”
You must clear up problems and then not spend one more second worrying about it. Past problems are like a stream when you are standing on a bridge—the stream is rolling underneath you, and your problems have gone downstream. Regardless of how hard you try, you can’t change the past. What I want you to learn to do is look upstream. Watch for the things that are coming down the river of life that you can change and control. When you set a goal and commit yourself to the necessary self-discipline to reach that goal, you will eliminate most of the problems in your life.
Set clear and specific goals. Spend your energies doing those things that will make a difference. Then you can become what you think about. If you just have the simple faith that God is in His heaven and He is your Heavenly Father and He does know that you are here and He does love you—and that Jesus is the Christ, that He is your Savior, that He is your Redeemer, and that you love Him with all your heart and are going to do all you can to keep His commandments—then peace comes.
We cannot ignore keeping the commandments of God. We cannot excuse ourselves or rationalize or justify even the smallest things in our lives that we need to master. We must work to overcome them. We can become the masters of our own destinies by practicing self-discipline and by setting worthy goals that will lead to higher ground so that we can become what our Heavenly Father wants us to become."
This talk has really helped me get myself in gear and I just wanted to share!
AWESOME TALK!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
