But you can still own your life.  You can still take responsibility for yourself and the results you have in your life.  And today is the perfect opportunity to do just that because today is April Fool’s Day.  Now, I’ll admit social distancing and sequestering have radically changed the landscape.  But a change in landscape should never signal us to surrender positive energy.  Now more than ever we should be always up for fun.

Many people don’t associate staying at home with fun.  They think about going out to restaurants, stores, malls, parks, concert venues, and the like.  Many of us approach April Fool’s Day the same way, conjuring images of practical jokes played on people and often in front of other people.

But that was yesterday.  Today the landscape is different.  We need to practice social distancing and sequester ourselves in our homes as much as possible.  And those who refuse to change their thinking to match this new landscape will experience untold and unnecessary hardship.

Long time listeners to this program are familiar with these principles in relation to helping LDS singles find joy regardless of their circumstances.  For example, many singles who leave YSA land without getting married experience a difficult transition into SA world.  Some don’t even transition; they go inactive or leave the Church altogether.

That’s because their YSA thinking doesn’t match the new SA landscape, and they simply respond to their biological hardwiring which encourages them to maintain the status quo.  They keep thinking the same way, and that just leads them to leave.  But if these singes would change their thinking to match their new landscape, they could experience a greater amount of joy despite their circumstances.

We can begin to capture much of the joy we’ve been missing by owning our lives and looking for the opportunity amidst the obstacle.  I demonstrated that attitude this morning in my Daily Dose video.  Is it cheesy and silly?  Absolutely.  And that’s OK, because I refused to let my current situation keep me from having a spot of fun.

You too can refuse to allow your current situation to keep you from experiencing joy amidst adversity.  You can still celebrate April Fools Day.  Will it be the same?  Of course not.  But joy is still joy, no matter how it comes.

Presented with this knowledge, each of us now confronts this question: Will you own your life?  Or put another way, will you take responsibility for the results you experience in your life?  Will you refuse to allow your circumstances to dictate your attitude and perspective?

I choose to own my life.  My circumstances will be what they will be, but they will never dictate my choices.  I choose to live with intention, not on autopilot.  I choose to produce more than I consume, not just consume.  I choose phenomenal, not mediocre.  I choose life, not death.  I choose faith, not fear.  I choose hope, not despair.  I choose love, not hate.  I choose joy, not sorrow.

And so can you.  Decide today you will own your life.  Decide that no matter your circumstances you will be always up for fun.  Then follow through with that decision by taking advantage however you can of the moments for fun that come your way.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

We’re all unique enough that my list of needed changes will be different from yours, because my truth about why I’m single is probably different than yours.  We both need to face our own truth, but the actual steps we take to apply that shared principle may be quite different.

I can provide tools and teach you how to use them, but I can’t use them for you.  You must build your life.  And building your best life won’t happen until you own your life and accept that the change you need to make is not just one thing.

The memory of that phone conversation has stuck with me.  Maybe it’s because the question asked is a common one.  "OK, so what's the one thing I need to do in order to . . . . ?"  It seems like an intelligent question to ask, but I've got a serious problem with it.

You see, it's really not that intelligent at all.

Run with me for a moment.  The question assumes you need to change only one thing in order to transport your world into a new and higher dimension of existence.  Seriously, what sense does that make?  I know that’s what we all want, but it’s just not realistic.

Here’s real: I've got more imperfections than Swiss cheese has holes and certainly more than most people.  And the vast majority of people aren’t that far behind me.  We all have many ways in which we can improve.

Here’s a better question: What is everything I need to do to improve myself?  With that answer, you take a more holistic approach towards making needed changes in yourself.

Of course, the answer to that question will likely overwhelm; we’re all so imperfect that the list of needed changes is quite long.  I recall the experience I had taking notes during General Conference.  The resulting list of changes I obtained overwhelmed me to the point that I didn’t want to take any action.  Making any progress seemed hopeless.

That’s why you should ask yourself this best question: What one thing can I do today to improve myself?  The answer to that question won’t overwhelm because it’s just one thing.  At the same time, this question doesn’t assume you need to do only one thing to improve.  The approach is well balanced.

Of course, simply knowing what you must do won’t bring the results you seek in life.  Results come from one thing and one thing only, and that is action. You must do.

When you take action, you can begin to understand yourself better.  You can make better sense of the terrain of LDS singles life.  You open yourself to receiving the tools you need.  And action leads to a sense of progress that is truly liberating.  You may have a lot to do, but conquering the one thing you need to do today will give you confidence from knowing you’re on your way.  And that knowledge makes the journey so much more joyful.

Don’t wait to feel free.  Don’t wait to feel better about yourself and your life.  No matter how much you need to improve, we all need to practice what President Oakes has described as “the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.”  We make the journey to eternal glory one step at a time.

Never assume your list of needed improvements has only one item.  It’s not just one thing.  But take that understanding with you as you tackle the one thing you need to do today.  Doing so will help you walk by faith.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

Many don’t believe that.  They assume life is the collection of circumstances outside their control.  But that’s why many people aren’t all that happy.

Your focus determines your reality.  Because you can choose what you focus on, you can choose your reality.  True, most don’t choose their circumstances, but that never stopped anyone who lived joyfully from living joyfully.  These people lived their best life because they made different choices with the same circumstances.

Some of us should take a lesson from a farmer.  Farmers don’t choose their circumstances.  They have the soil and the water that’s available.  Their seeds for planting are whatever they are.  The weather will be whatever it will be.  So much of what’s needful for the harvest is outside their control.  Yet with hard work in what they can control, they produce bountiful harvests year after year.

In like manner, we haven’t chosen many of the circumstances of our lives.  What we have is what we have, and it’s often all we have.  But if we work hard in what we can control, we can produce harvests of truly joyful living year after year.  This is what I call your best life.

I can hear many of you now.  What exactly can we control?  Here’s my answer: Standards, attitude, approach.

It starts with standards.  You’ll never design your best life without knowing what’s acceptable and what’s not.  The best delineations between what you’ll tolerate and what you won’t are made after partnering with the Lord to get good with you.  Once you know and accept who you really are and what your personal ministry should be, you can best draw that line between what you’ll accept in your life and what you won’t.  The more clear you make that definition, the more able you’ll be to live the life you intend.

Once you know exactly what you want, you need resolve to do whatever it takes to get it (within the realm of covenant living, of course).  You need the attitude of the victor and not the victim.  That attitude will fire your imagination to design a life you’ll truly enjoy and pull you through to that fulfilling end when the road there gets tough.

Of course, attitude without action will never bring you achievement.  To live a life you design, you must take action.  Working smart as well as working hard requires attention to one’s approach.  Too often we think what we seek must come in one specific way.  But much of life is not path-dependent; there’s often more than one road leading to the top of the mountain.  And sometimes the road that’s best for us to travel is not the one we expect.

With these three elements in place — standards, attitude, and approach — you can decide what you want your life to be and feel the joy that comes from working to make it happen.  Usually that means taking small steps every single day to inch yourself closer to the life you dream.

That’s where many of us fall short.  We don’t do the little things everyday that can near us to our best life.  Then, after a larger block of time has passed, we can’t help but notice we’re left standing on the pier because our ship has long since sailed.

That’s where being clear about your standards, attitude, and approach holds its best value.  Once you’re crystal clear on those elements, what you need to do everyday will be obvious.  Performing those seemingly small and insignificant actions everyday will collect to create the very significant life you design for yourself.

So what are you waiting for?  Get clear, and then get going. None of this happens overnight.  But as you move closer to the life you design for yourself, you’ll feel the joy that comes from making progress.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

As I reflect back on my life, I can’t accurately pinpoint any one trigger that brought me a phenomenal attitude.  The change seems more a process than an event.  That said, I can identify some key elements in my transformation.

Without question, developing a more solid relationship with God has been pivotal.  You can’t have true joy in your life if you’re not good with you, which means you must know who you are.  And that requires knowing who your Heavenly Father is.

When you come to understand who you really are as His child, you’ll realize your power to choose your reality.  We do that when we select our thoughts, our self-talk, and our focus, because these produce our reality.  When I realized how these elements worked in me, I felt empowered to take control.  I could stop settling for mediocrity and start insisting on phenomenal.

That’s when a new attitude emerged within me.  I’ll no longer settle for anything less than a phenomenal life.  I won’t settle for giving anything less than my absolute best.  No longer will I accept failure or unhappiness or anything less than my best as my normal, and I’ll never give up on myself ever again.

I want phenomenal success.  I want phenomenal fulfillment, phenomenal results, and phenomenal relationships.  I want phenomenal for myself!

I can’t settle for anything less, because that’s giving up, and giving up is just plain flat out wrong.  God gave me my gifts and talents not only to better myself but to better the world.  When I refuse to let my light shine, others won’t have the improvement they might have had in their lives.

That’s why I insist on phenomenal in my life.  It’s not about me.  Giving up on myself and failing to achieve my potential means giving up on those who stand to benefit from that achievement.  But when I strive to move closer towards my greatness, I automatically provide positive influence to everyone around me.

And so I can’t accept mediocrity.  I’ll never be perfect, I’ll always fall flat on my face, but to quit trying to live my purpose, to fulfill my personal ministry, and to achieve greatness in my life is unacceptable.  There are just too many people who would suffer, most of whom I’ve never met and likely never will.  But it’s because of them I can’t accept anything less than my absolute best as my normal.  I will never settle for anything other than phenomenal.

I have only one life to live.  This is it for me.  I’ll never get another opportunity to live this life.  God gave my unique combination of gifts, opportunities, and personality to me and me only.  So this is it.  It’s do or die, greatness or bust, phenomenal or nothing.  I must make it happen.

And that’s another key element in my transformation.  The day I realized my life wouldn’t improve until I owned it was life changing.  All the energy I’d wasted wishing my circumstances were better I should have spent wishing I were better.  Instead of wishing for less problems, I should have wished for more skills.  Instead of wishing the result I wanted would just come to me, I should have been working to make it happen.

Of course, I struggle where everyone else struggles — with the natural man.  We’re all our own worst enemy.  But working hard is the cost of entry to anything worthwhile.  And so I put my shoulder to this wheel because I know people’s lives will suffer if I stop.

The best part is I’m not the only one.  What’s possible for me is possible for you.  If you want this transformation for you, you can have it.  Embrace true foundational principles, do the work you need to do, and you’ll improve your life.  And when you truly surrender yourself to that process, you too will have phenomenal.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

Last week we discussed how to find your useful passions and get busy making other people’s lives better.  Until you do, you’ll never see the results you want to see from adopting a personal ministry.

But that’s true in every arena of life.  If you want results, you must take action.  And isn’t that what we all really want?  No matter where we are in life or what we’ve been through, at the end of the day we all want results.

How do we get results?  Results come from one and only one thing: action.  Too many of us are sitting on the sidelines waiting for God to act so we can receive results when in actuality God is waiting for us to act by using the agency and the talents He gave us to deliver our results to ourselves.

We must act.  When we know what we want out of life, we need to get down on it and get busy going after it.  Only then will we have our best life.

Most people do nothing to effect the change they want.  When life throws them a curve — and life will always throw you a curve — most people complain.  They complain about how unfair it is, how disadvantaged they are, or how luck doesn’t favor them.  And the only thing they do in addition to complain is complain some more!

But where does that leave them?  It leaves them at the station because they never got on the train; they never took action.  And therefore, they didn’t get results.  Results don’t come without action.  So if you don’t take any action, you don’t get any results.

In addition, your focus determines your reality.  That’s why people who constantly complain can never rid their lives of the misery and depression that prompts them to complain about how miserable and depressed they are.  When you focus on the negative, your reality will be filled with negativity.  The way to change your reality is to change your focus.  To have a positive reality, take action to focus on the positive.

Now, I can hear some of you saying, “Yeah, well, I took action and I didn’t get results.”  Maybe you asked someone out and got rejected.  Maybe you applied for a job you didn’t get.  Maybe you tried to stick to a weight-loss diet and couldn’t resist eating that pizza.  Whatever it was, you saw what you wanted, you took action to get it, and you fell flat on your face.

It’s true that if you don’t take action, you don’t get results.  But perhaps it would be better to say if you don’t take any different action, you don’t get any different results.  Your results are always consistent with the action you take.  So when you want different results, you need to change it up and take different actions, ones consistent with the results you want.

Is your life the same as it was two years ago?  If so, it’s because last year you didn’t do anything different than you did the year before.  And next year will be just like last year unless you start doing something different.  The next two, five, or even ten years of your life will be just like the last two, five, or ten years unless you start doing something different.

And this is where most people get stuck.  They know they need to do something different.  They just don’t know what that something is.

Enter partnering with the Lord stage left.  When you partner with the Lord, He’ll show you what you need to change.  “And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things” (Moroni 10:5) — including the truth of the changes you need to make to move towards your best life.

In that effort, it’s best to look for the little things you need to change — the small habits you can practice every day that will move you in your desired direction.  After all, the big wins we want in life are just collections of the little wins accumulated consistently over time.

When you know what little habits you need to adopt every day, get down on it and stick with it.  Don’t wait for your blessings to appear magically.  Know the results you want, determine the actions you need to take to get those results, and then get down on it.  When you start to move in the direction of your goals and dreams, feeling that progress will invigorate you to do and be more.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

Most people settle for mediocre lives.  They become comfortable inside a status quo.  That’s human nature — establish a habit and then stay inside that “safe zone.”

Yet that safety lies well beneath the potential we all have to accomplish extraordinary achievements.  Greatness abounds in all of us because we’re all children of the greatest measure of greatness in the universe — our Heavenly Father.

Nevertheless, so many of us live every day beneath our potential it’s insane.  Instead of contributing goodness to others, we wander within ourselves.  Instead of spending time in service to others, we spend time in service to ourselves voraciously consuming content via the Internet, video games, movies, and other forms of entertainment.  Instead of taking control of our lives, we simply react as the waves of life toss us to and fro.

Too many of us are just standing on the sidelines of life waiting for extraordinary blessings.  That’s not the way life works.  To have your best life, you must skip the sidelines and get in the game of making other people’s lives better.

We all have talents we can leverage to improve others’ lives, and very often using these talents elicits passion within us — a passion for excellence, a passion to contribute, a passion to serve, and a passion to be the best we can be.

That passion becomes useful when it drives you to use your talents to fulfill a personal ministry bringing goodness to others.  Your useful passions can carry you beyond your troubles into a life of joy if you let them.  By adopting a personal ministry, you can transcend the challenges of LDS singles life and live your best life.

How do you find your useful passions?  Start by separating yourself from daily distractions to gain clarity of vision.  The temple is great here, but you should also have somewhere in your home where you can reflect without distraction.  Then look inside yourself and ask what you do the best with the least amount of effort.  Those are your talents.

How can you use those talents to bring goodness into the lives of others?  Which of those ways would you do even if it brought you no personal gain or benefit?  Those are your useful passions.  They will fuel you to carry out your personal ministry despite the obstacles in your way.  And when life overwhelms, postponing your efforts, your useful passions will always bring you back to sit at the table of contribution.

Surely the Lord wants you to make your contribution — one only you can make.  Only by following His example of making that unique contribution will you live your best life.  When you partner with Him, the Lord will help you discover your useful passions.  And once you know what you need to do, get busy.  Don’t let others wait for the blessings they’ll receive because of your contribution of goodness.

Throughout his career, my father has supervised others.  Often when inquiring after an undone task, he’s heard,“I haven’t got around to it yet.”  In response, my father would obtain small wooden discs and write the letters T-O-I-T on them.  Then whenever someone would tell him, “I haven’t got around to it yet,” my father would give that person one of his special wooden discs and say, “There’s your round ‘to-it.’  Now get to work!”

Once you’ve identified your personal ministry, turn it on and get to work.  “We all have work,” the hymn teaches. “Let no one shirk.  Put your shoulder to the wheel” (Hymns, #252).  When you allow your useful passions to drive your personal ministry, you can more easily find your life by losing it (see Matthew 10:39).

Of course, life has a way of distracting or sometimes outright knocking us off course, thereby obstructing our personal ministry and restricting our contribution.  When that happens, we’ve got to get back in the game.

Life will always present challenges.  That’s by design; it’s partly why we’re here.  But if you know who you are, if you’ve identified your useful passions, and if you have a personal ministry, then keep on keeping on that road of service.  Your contribution may not change the world, but it will mean the world to those whose lives you change for the better.  

Don’t just sit on the sidelines of life waiting for your best life to come to you.  Make your best life happen!  Skip the sidelines and find your useful passions that can fuel your own personal ministry.  When you lose yourself in that effort, you’ll find your best life, because you’ll become the best version of you that you can be.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

In the most recent General Conference, Elder Jack Gerard of the Seventy spoke of the importance of priorities in life.  His remarks, entitled “Now Is The Time,” encourage all of us to place our priorities upon what matters most in life — our relationship with our Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ.  Whether or not you have goals for the new year, now is the time to consider whether the priorities you really do have are the ones you really should have.

Elder Gerard begins with an account of chest pains he experienced while traveling.  After arriving at the airport, he sought help at a local hospital, wondering if he would reach his final destination.  A doctor ran multiple tests and then declared him safe to continue his travels.

Elder Gerard returned to the airport and resumed his journey.  As the plane approached his final destination, Elder Gerard learned an ambulance would be waiting to take him to the hospital.  The doctor had misdiagnosed his condition, which was much more serious than previously supposed.

After he learned the new diagnosis and that not many patients survive that condition, Elder Gerard’s perspective suddenly shifted.  He described his experience with these words:

Indeed, now is the time to consider our direction.  Stephen Covey often used the analogy of a ladder when speaking about priorities.  He described a man who exerted much effort to climb a ladder leaning against a wall.  When he got to the top, what he saw behind the wall made one truth painfully obvious; his ladder was leaning against the wrong wall.

It should sound silly to talk about priorities after many of us have made our goals, because priorities rightfully come before goals.  We need to establish our direction before we establish what we want to accomplish.  Otherwise, we’ll likely find the ladder we climb has been leaning against the wrong wall.

Daily life in our modern world contains so many distractions we can spend our lives wandering aimlessly without any sense of direction or purpose.  We need to take time to reflect upon our direction.  Unless we do, we’ll easily become “like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed” (James 1:6).

Do the things of greatest eternal importance have the highest priority in your life?  If not, it’s never too late to start again.  Now is the time to consider your direction.

Elder Gerard reminds us that

It’s so easy to coast and let the waves of day-to-day living just wash over us!  But that complacency will never deliver your best life.  You get your best life by living intentionally, and living with intention requires awareness of what you’re doing and more importantly why.  That means having priorities and a plan of action that supports those priorities.

How else do we ensure our ladder is not leaning against the wrong wall?  Priorities determine direction, and direction determines destination.

During his remarks, Elder Gerard asked this very practical question: “How do we rise above the distractions of this world and stay fixed on the vision of eternity before us?”  He then extolled Christ as the standard by which to judge what’s best and declared “understanding our divine origins is essential to our eternal progress and can free us from the distractions of this life.”

Ultimately, the best way to know what our real priorities should be is to evaluate ourselves and our lives without distraction.  That’s where temple attendance can be so refreshing.  In the house of the Lord, we can separate ourselves from the distractions of the world.  Remembering our divine origins and why we’re here can bring clarity to an otherwise muddled view.

If you wonder whether your ladder is leaning against the wrong wall, now is the time to consider what changes you need to make.  If you didn’t make any goals for the new year, then by default you decided to let the waves of life carry you where they may.  Now is the time for you to own your life and establish the priorities that will determine your direction and ultimately your destination.  When you do, you’ll find yourself moving forward more confidently.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

This has been called the age of the knowledge worker.  The great heroes of the age are all intellectual giants.  We elevate those with superior intellect to the top of the mountain and then stand at the base looking up in awe and admiration.

That's why I know it sounds amazing.  How can we be hardwired not to think?  Well, for most of what we do, automation just makes sense.

Have you ever had to use your brain all day?  Remember how your head ached?  Why would your brain hurt if it was doing what it’s designed to do?  It wouldn’t.  Your head aches because it spent too much time operating outside its intended design.

Understanding how you’re designed to work can help you live your best life more easily, avoiding the frustration that attends life.  It all starts by understanding that you’re hardwired not to think.

Imagine what life would be like if you had to think about every breath you took in order to breathe. You wouldn't have time for anything else. So yes, automation has its benefits.

But automation also has its detriments.  Automating means doing that for everything.  We’re designed to operate out of a set of instructions.  And that set of instructions is habit.

Because most of what we do is automated and the instructions for that automation are our habits, we act out of habit for most of what we do.  And here’s the kicker: That means we do what we do without really thinking about it.

Notice our design is just to follow instructions.  There’s no evaluation of the instructions in the operational design.  We’re hardwired to follow a set of instructions, not pick and choose which instructions to follow.

This scenario sets the stage for much frustration in life.  We’ll follow the instructions in habit regardless of the effect those instructions have upon us.  Thus, many go through life experiencing failure after failure when they’re simply acting out of less effective instructions encoded in their habits.  Those who aren’t self aware enough to realize what’s happening will just keep doing what they do without thinking about it.

In many ways, we really are our own worst obstacle.

But it doesn't have to be that way.  The same process that produces a negative effect can produce a positive one.  You just need to replace the less effective instruction with more effective instruction.  You need to adopt a better habit.

This is more than just quitting a bad habit.  When all you do is quit a habit, your brain (hardwired to have a habit) goes looking for one.  And the default selection is always the last habit you had.  So to get rid of a less effective habit completely, you must replace it with a more effective one.

To do that, live life intentionally.  Consciously choose what you do.  To go where you want to go, you must steer the ship of your life.  You must consciously choose your direction.  You must live with intention.

I know that sounds simplistic, but so many of us don't do that.  Again, we’re hardwired not to think. That means our default selection is to follow a habit rather than make conscious choices.  Many who just “go with the flow” find their lives unsatisfying.  But what they’re really dissatisfied with are their habits.

What does all this have to do with LDS singles life?  Everything!  Many LDS singles dissatisfied with their lives don't realize they’re really dissatisfied with their habits.  They keep looking outside themselves for why they're single, when the answer they seek is really inside them.

You don't have the results you want when you don’t do what you need to do.  Instead of blaming others when your life isn’t what you want, own your life and blame yourself.  Take ownership of your choices and the role they played in leading you to the life you have now.  Examine your habits and replace less effective instructions with more effective instructions.  In short, reformat and reboot yourself.

When you own your life and take charge of your choices, you position yourself for success.  You can consciously eliminate the less effective habits you follow without thinking — habits that keep you from the success you want — and replace them with more effective habits that will deliver the results you desire.

It's not an overnight ordeal, but if you consistently stay at it, you can start seeing changes in your life.  You can see yourself moving towards the blessings you desire.  When you give your all to that process of continuously trying to incorporate into your life what’s right for you, you'll find happiness.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

Last week, I invited LDS singles everywhere who currently feel stuck in their lives to declare their independence from a life of mediocrity.  I also described a three-step process to help them get on track to their best life — make a decision to change, commit to that change, and then execute.

But it's not enough just to be on the right track.  You can start down that road toward your best life, but you won't get very far if you can't change with the changes life will bring you.  To correct the set of your sail as the winds blow this way and that, you must develop self-awareness.

Self-awareness is a skill and like any other skill can be learned.  Also like any other skill, the more you practice it, the better you get.  You start to develop that skill when you wake up out of life on autopilot and live your life by conscious choice.

If you think self-awareness isn’t a part of the solution you need to live your best life, think again.  You’ll never have your best life (or anything else you might call greatness) by accident.  You must intend to have it and act with that intention.

That means making conscious choices instead of living on autopilot, which has you making choices out of habit.  When you fail to practice the self-awareness skills that can take you outside yourself, you’ll simply be playing out whatever habit you have because that’s how you’re designed to operate.

Your brain is hardwired to follow instructions.  And the instructions it follows best are the ones encoded in habit, because having a habit is also hardwired into your brain.  It doesn’t matter whether the habit is good or bad, helps you or hurts you, or brings you success or failure.  Whatever habit you have is the default you’ll turn to when you don’t make a conscious choice.

Because you have habits for practically everything you do, and you’re hardwired to follow the instructions encoded in those habits, it’s easy to live life just going through the motions.  And indeed, this is how most people live.  They walk through life like zombies!

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  If you feel like a zombie as the years of your life tick on by, then here’s some free advice: Stop being a zombie!  Wake up!

Many people walking through life like zombies don’t even realize what’s happening.  That’s why it’s called life on autopilot.  They’re so caught up in their own lives that they don’t see their habits playing automatically in the background.  And when their habits keep bringing them the results they’ve always had — results they don’t want — they feel stuck in frustration that seems unending.

Only when you step outside yourself can you get a clear view of the way out of that dead end perspective.  Developing self-awareness skills allows you to step outside yourself.  It’s very much like stepping out of the dark and into the light.

Once you understand your habit-based operational design, it’s easier to step outside yourself to evaluate the details of those habits.  You can also better see how your habits have brought you your results — the life you’ve known up to now.  At this point, if you own your life, it won’t be hard at all to accept the changes you need to make in you to get better results.

Of course, you can find many different approaches to developing self-awareness so you can see more clearly the changes you need to make in you.  Many of these approaches rely on seeking answers to questions through reflection and/or writing.

Some of my favorite exercises for improving self-awareness involve other people.  The whole point of developing self-awareness is so you can step outside yourself to see more clearly.  Other people are by definition already outside yourself.  Getting feedback from these, especially friends who provide honest yet constructive criticism, can help you make improvements light years ahead of the ones you could make without their help.

Meditation is another self-awareness exercise gaining popularity and one that I’ve started recently.  The main benefits I’ve seen so far from my practice are lower stress levels during the day and better sleep at night.  The best part is that it takes only ten minutes just before bed.  In exchange for these disproportionately positive returns, I’ll gladly stay up an extra ten minutes.

Whatever approach you decide to take, developing self-awareness skills can help you leave a life on autopilot for an intentional life lived through conscious choices.  By acting with more intention from conscious choices, you can more easily live your best life.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

For over two centuries, Americans have celebrated freedom on Independence Day.  And yet most Americans don’t call the holiday by its name.  To them, it’s the Fourth of July.  That wording may seem innocent enough, but is it?

I sincerely hope many think about their freedom and the price paid to purchase it.  But it seems like more and more people have their minds elsewhere.  Far too many see the day as a time off from work when they grill their favorite meats and shoot fireworks in their neighborhoods late into the night.  In short, they celebrate the freedom to party.  There’s more to freedom than that.

Many LDS singles live similar lives of dissonance.  Mortality is intended to be a time of growth and progress along a more eternal journey.  Yet many LDS singles aren’t growing or progressing towards eternal blessings.  Like that hamster down at the pet store running endlessly inside its own wheel, many LDS singles are constantly doing, doing, doing, but not really getting anywhere.

Does that describe your life right now?  Then declare your own independence.  It starts when you exercise the power God gave you — the power of agency.

Here’s the first step: Decide enough is enough.  Yes, it really is that simple.  Often we want complicated because that strokes the ego.  It’s OK we can’t figure it out if it’s complicated.  But not figuring out simple makes us look like idiots.  No one wants to look like an idiot.

Once you accept it really is that simple and then own your life by accepting responsibility for whatever your life currently is, you can more easily embrace the path that leads to success.  And that path begins for you when you decide enough is enough.

Are you frustrated with constantly trying to do the right thing but never succeeding at having righteous blessings?  Tired of always doing but never making any progress?  Disgusted with being stuck in a life far beneath your dreams?  Know this: You have the power to change.  It all starts when you decide enough is enough.

Once you’ve decided to change, the next step is to commit yourself to that change.  This is where many people falter.  Everyone wants a better life, and many have decided to pursue that better life.  But most don’t have the commitment to do what is necessary to achieve that better life.

Committing means accepting nothing but the one result outlined in your commitment, and that means cutting off all possible avenues of “escape” — every road except the one leading to success.  That’s the key to commitment.  You must cut from your life everything preventing you from fulfilling your commitment.

That’s why most say they want change but don’t commit.  They don’t remove from their environment the temptations that dissuade them from success.  They don’t remove from their social circles the false friends that accept lives of mediocrity.  And they don’t step out of their own way when they feel the enticement of the many fun but futile activities that don’t make anyone’s life any better.

The result?  They don’t follow through on their decision to change.  They don’t get the prize.

And that’s why many LDS singles stay single longer than they need to be.  Afraid of their own greatness, they commit to the lesser life they have instead of doing whatever is necessary to have the life they could have.  That’ll be really hard to hear if you haven’t yet owned your life.  But all who have owned their life readily see the truth of it.

Whatever you commit to do, you need to be all in.  You need to give everything you have to following through on your decision and keeping your commitment.  Whatever it takes, that’s what you do.

What books do you need to read?  What knowledge or skills do you need to acquire?  What mentors do you need?  What support systems will help you keep your commitment?  Whatever it is, go after it.  Within the bounds of righteousness, do what you need to do to get the knowledge and skills you need.

Then with knowledge and skills in place, execute with passion.  Give your all.  Only when you give your all to the right things for you will you find true happiness in your life.

You need not be imprisoned by fear, ignorance, or mediocrity.  You can free yourself from a life lacking progress.  You can declare your independence.  When you decide enough is enough, commit yourself to greatness, and then execute with passion, you’ll see life unfolding for you in ways you never imagined.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.