What impressed me about Sister Porter’s approach was her use of singles to exemplify her ultimate message of the valuable contribution LDS singles can make in their world.  It’s a message we’ve been promulgating here at Joy in the Journey Radio by encouraging LDS singles to adopt a personal ministry.  We all can powerfully influence those around us for good, and we’ll make that difference in others’ lives when we heed the lessons at the well.

I love the introduction Sister Porter gives to her remarks.  She was happily married and serving with her husband in the Church in Eastern Europe.  Then her husband’s health took a turn for the worse, and in short order she found herself single.

I don’t know if she actually thought of herself as single.  She didn’t mention that in her address, and I know many who’ve lost a spouse to death still consider themselves married by virtue of their temple covenants.  If your spouse is not in this life living with you, you may be married for the purposes of eternity, but for the purposes of this life, you’re single.

You also have a wonderful opportunity to effect much good.  It starts when you realize your past and present circumstances don’t determine your future.  In referencing her unexpected return to singlehood, Sister Porter shared,

The woman at Jacob’s well exemplified this attitude, which applies just as much to men as it does to women.  She did not allow her past or present condition to determine her future.  She chose to testify of the Savior, and her choice blessed many others.

Likewise, LDS singles can chose to embrace a new future by making the higher choice.  Too often LDS singles play the victim, thinking that their past is prologue and nothing they do will make any difference.

But that’s true for you only if you decide it is.  You’ve been blessed with agency, the second most underappreciated gift of God.  And it’s the second most underappreciated gift of God because so many simply don’t realize the power that’s in them because of this gift.

Sister Porter recognized it.  After quoting D&C 58:26-28 and emphasizing that last phrase in the verses — “for the power is in them” — she declared,

You’re not in this alone!  No matter your past or present circumstances, you can choose to let your light shine, share your goodness with others, and put a dent in the universe.  With the creator of heaven and earth at your side, why choose anything else?

This is how great ends come out of small beginnings.  The Lord is the Master Gardener, the one best suited to help you grow into the fullness of your potential.  He can transform the seemingly meager contributions you make into extraordinary differences.

Sister Porter shared three examples from the Master’s teachings that demonstrate this effect, one involving salt, one involving leaven, and one involving light.  Each of these items in even seemingly small amounts makes a tremendous difference in their separate contexts.

Likewise, though your efforts may seem small and inconsequential, you can make a tremendous difference in your world.  Your salt can flavor the lives of others, your leaven can lighten their loads, and your light can disperse the darkness surrounding them.  As Sister Porter taught,

Heed the lessons at the well and make the higher choice.  When you do, the Savior can turn your seemingly small service into the difference others need in their lives.  In easing the burdens of others, you’ll find your own burdens eased.  In helping others grow, you’ll find your own growth.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

I freely admit my ignorance.  I’ve never been married or a parent, so I don’t fully understand the challenges of single parenting.  But I do understand singleness and recognize several principles Brother Romney shared that apply to all LDS singles, regardless of age or circumstance.

First, and perhaps most importantly, the restored gospel holds the solutions to life’s problems.  You’ll see many of those solutions only after adopting the perspectives the restored gospel encourages.  Far too many LDS singles think a solution will eliminate their problem so they can live more comfortably.  Often real solutions instead allow you to leverage your problems so you can grow and become more than you were before.

Brother Romney brought out that perspective beautifully.  The hope, joy, and strength which he found as a single father came from “small, simple things” like family prayer, expressions of encouragement, magnifying callings, and seeking direction from inspired leaders.  Our Heavenly Father has a plan of happiness for you.  That plan might not resemble the one you’d make, but His plan will best help you attain maximum happiness.

In his article, Brother Romney raised an excellent question: “I was a father trying to raise daughters on my own. . . . How could I help them prepare to become women?”  This variation on the more common theme of “How can I meet the challenge when I don’t seem fit for it?” has troubled many LDS singles.

Yet the answer again lies in perspective.  No matter your situation, you’re in this alone only if you want to be.  Brother Romney found many resources of support for his situation, including family members, neighbors, and ministering brothers and Church leaders.  We all have more resources than we think we do.  We just need to apply the Savior’s teaching: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7).

Brother Romney rightly mentions that “not everyone will experience this same level of support.”  Wards are people, and people are all at different points of progression along the eternal path.  Some just haven’t yet progressed that far.

Notwithstanding, the Lord won’t leave you comfortless.  He’s provided people around you, sometimes in and sometimes out of the Church, who’ll help in some way.  You just need ask, seek, and knock.  As Brother Romney acknowledges, “until we let others know the gaps we see . . . those individuals may not understand how they can help.”  The squeaky wheel does indeed get the grease.

Ultimately, the Lord won’t abandon you.  He loves you too much to do that.  Not only will He walk by your side, the Lord will provide a strength to persevere only He can provide.

The same Lord Who’s assembled a plan for your maximum happiness, restored His gospel offering needed perspective, and provided resources to support you is also intimately aware of you.  He knows what you need in the moment you need it.

He knows how overwhelming your specific combination of challenges and circumstances can feel.  He submitted Himself to all things “that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities” (Alma 7:12).  Through the enabling power of His Atonement, Christ can help you do what you otherwise could not.

No matter the challenge, whether it be raising daughters as a single dad, raising sons as a single mother, or simply finding joy in LDS singles life, you can partner with the Lord and leverage your challenges to grow and become something more than you were before.  When you do, you’ll grow so much you’ll transcend your challenges.  What once seemed overwhelming will be no more than an afterthought.  And all along the way, you’ll feel the strength of the Lord abiding with you. And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

Understanding the two parts of making a dating connection is fundamental.  The first part involves being agreeable enough.  The second involves crossing paths with someone who’s agreeable enough to you and who thinks you’re agreeable enough.

This is where many LDS singles put the cart before the horse.  They completely skip over making any changes in themselves to become more agreeable, focusing instead on finding the right singles ward or attending the right activity or joining the right online dating site.  They jump ahead to the point of crossing paths with the right person.

Here’s the problem with that approach.  Even if you do cross paths with the right person, that person won’t connect with you if you’re not agreeable enough.  The fundamentals of the dating journey always operate regardless of whether we attend to them or not.  You won’t progress to any stage of the dating journey without the agreement you need to be in that stage, and you don’t make agreements if you’re not agreeable enough.  Cross paths with the perfect companion and it won’t make any difference to your dating journey because you won’t secure the agreement you need to progress without being agreeable enough.

Accepting the truth that most of us aren’t agreeable enough as we are now is a hard pill to swallow.  We want to think we don’t need to change to be good enough, and it’s because we’re biologically hardwired to think that way.

The brain is designed to maintain a status quo, and it does this by establishing habits.  That’s why 95% of what we do everyday is out of habit; habits help to maintain a status quo.  The brain will dream of a “better” future; dreaming of a “better” future doesn’t affect the status quo.  But when it comes to taking action towards that dream, our biological hardwiring kicks in.  Taking action means change, and change threatens the status quo.  And so our brain, designed to maintain a status quo, fights the change.

It usually starts with “Yeah, but ...” self talk.  You feel the dream, and then your brain replies, “Yeah, but that’s too hard.”  “Yeah, but you can’t do that.”  “Yeah, but it’ll never work.”  “Yeah, but you’ll get hurt.”  “Yeah, but ...” on and on and on.

And so it’s easy to believe someone should just love us for who we are with no change required on our part.  That belief maintains our status quo, encouraging us to skip ahead to how we’re going to meet that special someone.  We focus on that second part of making a dating connection without considering the first part.  We put the cart before the horse.

How much progress do you think you’ll make with that?  The horse can’t pull from behind and doesn’t push very well.  Putting the horse ahead of the cart promotes better progress.  Likewise, you’ll make better progress in dating when you attend to making yourself more agreeable before focusing on finding ways to cross paths with that special someone.

As I said earlier, the fundamentals of the dating journey operate whether or not we attend to them.  They even operate whether or not we know about them.  Dating is not only hard but confusing when you don’t know the fundamentals.  The different parts tend to work better when you place them in the proper order.

So don’t put the cart before the horse.  If you aren’t agreeable enough as you are now, then you need to spend less time looking for ways to cross paths with a potential partner and more time improving yourself to become more agreeable to a potential partner.  Master the fundamentals of what you’re trying to do, and you’ll find more success in your efforts.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

And that’s the rub.  Bettering our position to receive a miracle requires work, and most of us don’t want to work for our miracles.  We just want them to appear.  Yet miracles still follow universal law.  Appropriate work on our part aligns us with the universal law governing the miracles we seek.  That often involves delivering value, because at the end of the day, it’s all about value.

So many of our desired miracles involve other people using their agency to advantage us.  The miracle of companionship is one such example.  Yet this miracle like all others follows universal law, which begs the question:  What laws govern the occurrence of this miracle?

The answer resides in the fundamentals of the dating journey.  Those who align themselves with the fundamentals position themselves to receive that miracle more easily.  Those who don’t stumble and trip up over and over again.

Stepping back and looking at the fundamentals, it’s easy to see they’re all about value.  Arriving at any stage of the dating journey requires an agreement, and you secure any agreement by being agreeable enough.  That means providing sufficient value.  At the end of the day, it really is all about value.

And that’s where work comes in.  We can change ourselves and our environment to become more agreeable by offering more value and thereby position ourselves to receive more easily the miracle we seek.  And we’re not in this alone.  When we partner with the Lord, He’ll help us (1) to know what work we need to do and (2) to do that work.

We start by understanding what value we offer today.  Those who already offer great value have less to do, whereas those offering less value have more work to do.  Either way, we should seek input from others when assessing the value we offer.  We’re all inherently biased to overestimate the value we offer.  That bias blinds us from many of the imperfections diminishing our value.  Input from others combined with counseling with the Lord can help us overcome our inherent bias and blindness.

So when that 400-pound single adult partners with the Lord and considers input received from others, the realization comes that losing weight and taking better care of one’s body will ease the arrival of the companionship miracle.  Partnering with the Lord, that single adult seeks and follows guidance to assemble a plan and then involves the Lord in executing that plan.  Losing weight then becomes not just a physical change but a spiritual adventure experienced step by step at the Lord’s side with the intention of easing a miracle into one’s life.  Can we not feel the increased power behind this approach to securing miracles?  It all starts with a focus on value.

As we work to improve the value we offer, we need to remember value has different meanings in different contexts.  We also shouldn’t forget everything’s interconnected.

For instance, value in the dating context isn’t value in the eternal context.  We all already have immense value in eternity as children of God, but we all have different value when it comes to dating.  The value of an attribute differs with context, but low value in one particular context often means a lack of attributes valued in that context.

When we see ourselves lacking the valued attributes in the context of a desired miracle, we shouldn’t surrender to despair.  Instead, we should partner with the Lord and get to work.  We should look for invigoration in meeting the challenge and work with faith that, with the all-powerful Lord at our side, we can make any miracle happen.  Making gains in one area of our lives can strengthen us in other areas, giving us a further boost towards making our miracle happen.

At the end of the day, it’s all about value.  Looking through that lens can provide a clarity of vision regarding needed changes.  As we make those changes in partnership with the Lord, we can feel more confidence as we ease the miracles we seek into our lives and more gratitude when those miracles finally appear.  And that will bring us more joy in our journey.

Yes, I know how incredible that may sound to some, especially if your life hasn’t gone the way you expected.  You’ve probably also had some painful experiences involving either someone else deciding against you in a single instance or many others using their agency across multiple instances.  Maybe you’ve experienced both.  But even if you’ve had the whole world against you, I still say seek and expect miracles.

We typically think of miracles as events that defy the laws of nature.  For me, miracles are manifestations of one or more universal laws we don’t understand fully.

This shift in perspective is essential to why I say we should seek and expect miracles.  The perspectives we take and the assumptions we embrace are everything; they’re key components of our thinking, which produces our actions, which in turn produces our results.  In the end, we all want results, so when we don’t get desired results, we need to examine our thinking.

President Nelson begins his comments on miracles with this declaration:

First, he illustrates his concept with the words of a single adult!  And this wasn’t just any single.  No, Moroni had everything ripped from him.  He witnessed the destruction of his people in a horrible war, leaving him to wander alone for the safety of his own life.  Yet he still declared fervent belief in miracles.

All lives have painful disappointments, but most don’t compare to Moroni’s.  If in his circumstances he could find the strength to believe in miracles, could we not muster the courage to do the same?

President Nelson continued,

It’s not just Moroni but every book of scripture declaring belief in miracles — all the more reason to question our perspectives and assumptions leading us to disbelieve in miracles.  While we question, we should remember the Prophet’s caveat: Miracles can take time and may not unfold how we expect.  So often LDS singles seeking a miracle expect something so inconsistent with universal law they take the absence of their miracle as evidence against miracles.

That last phrase caught my attention.  How many LDS singles have approached their desire for a miracle “doubting nothing”?  Most of us have doubts, some so much so they’re consumed by them.  And yet “doubting nothing” is part of the price of faith we must pay for admission to the miracle show.

That means we’ve got work to do.  It’s no surprise then to see President Nelson’s next words:

How often have we advocated taking ownership of your life, or doing what’s in your power, or partnering with the Lord?  Results come from only one thing — action.  To score points, you must quit sitting on the sidelines and get on the field.  So often the miracle we want is perfection delivered to our doorstep.  In reality, we need to partner with the Lord, accept His guidance, and do the work that will create our miracle.

So many LDS singles wanting a miracle are faint.  They’re weary.  They’re beat down by the vicissitudes of life that point their gaze towards their weaknesses and imperfections, leaving them to wonder how their miracle could ever happen.

But none of that matters when you partner with the Lord, for He “giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.”  With Him, we can do anything, even move the mountain seemingly standing before us.

So yes, even if you’ve had the whole world against you, I still say seek and expect miracles.  Believe they can happen for you.  Partner with the Lord and do the work you must do to have your miracle.  You can then live with confidence that in time your miracle will happen.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

I then took that thinking a step further.  What quality does my life really have if I’m too busy to enjoy it?  That’s why I want to circle back today.  I want to try to recapture part of what I missed when Cinco de Mayo passed me by uncelebrated, because to enjoy life truly, you need to party your life.

We’d all agree anything taken to excess is bad and occasional recreation is good.  But what is recreation?  I mean, what is it really?

If we examine the word, we find the prefix re-, meaning again, followed by creation.  So literally recreation means creating again.  And what are we creating again if not ourselves?  Yes, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and Jill a dull girl, but true recreation is not simply play.  True recreation leaves us renewed, rejuvenated, and ready to tackle anew the challenges before us.

That doesn’t happen with just an occasional respite from our labors.  The Sabbath provides that every week, and although I’ve certainly experienced a greater quality of life as I’ve honored the Sabbath, something’s missing.  Yes, hard times come to everyone, but shouldn’t there be a general feeling of enjoyment in life?  If I’m doing it right, shouldn’t I feel every day is worth celebrating?

That’s where the idea to party your life takes center stage.  That’s doesn’t mean all play and no work.  Work is essential to self-esteem, but, as I just said, all work and no play makes us dull.  There’s a sweet spot in the middle where we have a sense of balance.

That equilibrium point is, I believe, the party pad, the place where we enjoy the highest quality of life because that point is where we most feel to celebrate our life every day.  The key, then, to party your life is balance.  And I think that balance comes not only from what we do but how we approach what we do.

For example, if you’re being pulled in too many directions, your life won’t feel balanced.  How can it when you’ve got so much competing for your limited time?  But you get the same result from approaching life with too much emphasis on any one element.  By concerning yourself so much with one element, you can’t effectively work on anything else.

The simple answer is to simplify.  If you’re too busy to smell the roses along your journey, drop what you can so you can.  Likewise, if you’re so focused excessively on one element, drop the excess baggage and lighten your load.

For many, that’s easier said than done.  You can have so much of importance it feels like you can’t drop anything.  And it’s not like you quit worrying about some concern just by flipping a switch, especially if holding onto that concern has become habitual.

If the key is balance, then the key to getting and staying there is your relationship with the Lord.  He can help you see the way to balance because He is the way.  Through His Spirit, He can teach you what you need to do.  By coming to Him, He can carry your burdens and lighten your load.  He can help you find and stay at that equilibrium point where you can most feel to celebrate your life, because it will be the life He has given you.

So party your life.  Let God prevail and recreate you into more than what you could become without Him.  When you do, you’ll better find the balance you need to party your life.  In that space, you’ll not just feel better but be better.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

Yet the theme of broadening the definition of motherhood once more captures my attention.  Especially among singles, we see women who haven’t given birth to children complain about how celebrating Mother’s Day simply rubs in their face the dream they want but don’t have.

The truth is you don’t need to birth a child to be a mother.  But for many, that’s easier said than believed.  So this Mother’s Day, let’s honor motherhood by helping everyone believe that.  Let’s help our single sisters identify themselves as the mothers they are for the care they show to others.  Let’s honor those who play motherly roles to others — the mothers we don’t see.

I call them “the mothers we don’t see” not because we’re blind to them.  Of course we physically see them.  But too often we’ve not seen these women as mothers because they have no children of their own.  We need to see these women for the mothers they already are.

Yes, they haven’t borne children, but they do have children who love them for the care these good women show them.  Some of these women are Primary teachers or school teachers who find great fulfillment by “adopting” the children of others.  And yet other single sisters show great care to grown children of our Heavenly Father.  You don’t need to be a mortal child to appreciate the care shown by single sisters who adopt motherly roles for themselves.

Such broadened perspective reveals meaningful lives because motherhood is about something more fundamental than delivering a physical body into the mortal world.  Motherhood is about sharing love with those who need it.  And that’s something every woman can do, regardless of marital status or life circumstance.  Celebrating those women who make that choice helps everyone adopt a broader perspective on what motherhood really is.

Seeing our single sisters for the mothers they already are can also help them believe in the mothers they could be in the future.  I believe many single sisters (and many single brethren, for that matter) keep themselves from having their own children principally because they don’t believe in their own potential.  It’s always easier to believe in you when others do too.

But most people will take their cues about you from you.  So when you don’t believe in the blessings our Heavenly Father wants you to have, you radiate an energy that broadcasts what you really feel and think inside of you.  And others pick up on that energy.  They presume you’re the expert on you, so if you think you don’t have a blessed future, most will simply defer to your expertise, thereby fulfilling a type of self-fulfilled prophecy.

Think for a moment what might happen if we celebrated women not just for the motherly roles they do play but the ones they could.  We could help those sisters who haven’t believed in themselves to turn around and change course.  We could help them become the mothers they’re capable of becoming, launching loads of love into the lives of people all around.

We’re all biologically hardwired to get our sense of normal from those around us.  So when everyone around us thinks motherhood means bearing children, it’s normal for us to think likewise.

But that works in other ways too.  If everyone around us believes motherhood is really about sharing love with those who need it, then we establish a new standard for normal.  It’ll be easier to believe that’s what motherhood really is all about.  And it’s even easier to believe that when we celebrate the women who live that definition of motherhood.

So this Mother’s Day, by all means celebrate your own mother.  But let’s also celebrate the mothers we don’t see, the women who we traditionally haven’t seen as mothers but who are mothers all the same for the love they share with others in need.  More celebrations of love will encourage even more love, helping to push back the darkness of the world.  And that will bring us more joy in our journey.

The natural man and woman (and yes, they are worth distinguishing) drive the dating decisions of far too many LDS singles to prize the worldly over the eternal.  The natural mindset informs our assumptions about what’s acceptable, which in turn drives our dating thinking and dating behavior.  When you view the bigger picture, it’s not hard to see we need to reject the natural mindset.

This may shock many, but it needs to be said because awareness is the first step towards positive change.  The vast majority of LDS singles make decisions about dating with the natural mindset.  They prioritize self and attributes that don’t really matter in the hereafter (or even very long in this life, for that matter) over what will truly matter in the eternities to come.  Their thinking is all about this life and more specifically, their life.

In contrast, the covenant mindset prioritizes making and keeping sacred covenants.  Covenant men and women value consistently living the restored gospel.  Having a covenant-minded partner is more important to them than physical attraction, money, fame, or status.  Covenant men and women will choose to date someone who may lack in those attributes but who has that commitment to the covenant lifestyle.

Now, I want to make clear I’m not suggesting any two active LDS singles should come together on that basis alone.  We’re not interchangeable parts.  We’re all unique, nuanced individuals, and our dating decisions should acknowledge that individuality. But that individuality finds best expression within a covenant relationship with someone who prioritizes covenant living.

Yet many LDS singles prioritize finding someone who today excels in desired attributes.  They want perfection up front when the perfection they insist on having really comes only after a lifetime of work.  It’s an impossible standard leaving many singles unnecessarily single.

And there’s a dangerous assumption lurking behind that standard.  It’s the assumption your marriage is all about you — your happiness, your life, your eternity.  But correctly understood, your marriage is not about you.

Yes, it has to do with you, but it’s not entirely about you nor even principally about you.  Your marriage is about your companion and your children — the family you’ll create together.  That often means giving up something you want for yourself in order to prioritize something for them.

That’s why the natural mindset is so dangerous.  Thinking your marriage is all about you engenders a selfish approach to dating and marriage, one that prioritizes what you want over making and keeping sacred covenants.  What do you expect results from that approach?  It’s exactly what we increasingly see — more and more singles remaining single and more and more singles who do get married struggling to make their marriage last.  You don’t get maximum happiness outside covenant living, and the covenant lifestyle doesn’t work when you prioritize self over covenant living.

And that’s why the natural man and the natural woman are enemies of God.  When you prioritize self over covenants, you prevent families, which play a key role in our Heavenly Father’s plan, from being created and nourished.

The real obstruction is the insistence on having nothing but the best in a companion.  It’s the associated idea that “settling for second best” can’t lead to happiness that prevents us from having our maximum happiness.  Only inside sacred covenants can we find maximum happiness.  Happiness is about giving, not having.  So few of us are genuinely top shelf by worldly standards anyway that allowing the natural mindset to drive our dating decisions under the false belief that “settling for second best” leads only to misery is what’s really making us miserable.

If you want your dating journey to lead to maximum happiness, reject the natural mindset.  Start by learning what you need to reject.  Consciously choose to act with a priority of covenant living rather than selfish desire.  And embrace Christ’s wondrous Atonement.  When you do, He’ll purify your desires so that what you sincerely want is what you should want.  Then making the right choices becomes easier.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

It takes practice, but it’s not difficult to think like the opposite gender.  Both men and women think logically and rationally.  Yes, it’s true.  Men use intellectual logic based in reason.  Women use emotional logic based in feeling.  Once you understand these principles, remembering five magic words can help you experience more dating success.

Of course, men and women have their own five magic words because men and women think differently.  So first, brethren, let’s be gentlemen and help the ladies understand the five magic words for men: It must make intellectual sense.

Now, I can already hear some of you objecting, “Men are always following their hormones.  They’re always chasing the hotties!  Where’s the intellectual logic there?”

All men do think with their head.  Unfortunately many don’t use the one between their shoulders.  But let’s get real, ladies.  Those are natural men chasing youth and beauty.  Once you lose yours, they’ll lose you.  What you really want is a covenant man who’ll prioritize making and keeping sacred covenants, take ownership of his life, and demonstrate leadership by making something of himself.

These men aren’t following hormones as much as they follow what makes sense.  That’s how masculine men process thinking — with intellectual logic.  If it makes sense, they accept it.  If it doesn’t make sense, they reject it.

So ladies, stop, for example, trying to attract a man by increasing your own status.  That works to attract a woman because it aligns with how a woman thinks.  But men don’t think like women.  It makes no sense to follow status because that doesn’t offer a man anything he values.  And what sense does it make to chase after something of no value?  It must make intellectual sense.

Of course, women have their own five magic words.  So brethren, let’s huddle around and learn the five magic words for women: New experience with desired emotion.

Once you understand these five magic words, you’ll have come a long way towards understanding women.  That may surprise men fooled by the common myth that women are illogical and irrational.  That’s simply not true.  Women are completely logical and totally rational.  Their logic simply has a different base.

Where men base their logic in intellect, women base their logic in emotion.  Just as men accept what makes sense and reject what doesn’t, women accept what feels good and reject what doesn’t, because feeling good is the emotional equivalent of making sense.  That’s why the five magic words for interacting with women are new experience with desired emotion.

Any man who’s had any experience with women can understand that experience better after applying the five magic words to view it.  Once he does, he’ll understand why women always chase the bad boy, the muscle man, the money man, or the famous man.  These men offer new experience with desired emotion.

There’s so much more about the five magic words that we’ll get into in the course of the broadcast today.  They represent the key to learning how to think like the opposite gender.  And it’s that type of thinking that can unlock the door to greater success with dating.

After all, it all goes back to the fundamentals we’ve discussed so often on this program and The World of TED.  Every stage in the dating journey has an agreement.  If you don’t secure the agreement for a particular stage, you don’t progress there.  And the way to secure an agreement is to be agreeable enough.

Women who can offer men what makes intellectual sense and men who can offer women new experience with desired emotion have a huge advantage in being perceived as agreeable enough.  So remember the five magic words.  They’ll help you see the world through the eyes of the opposite gender.  That perspective can help you approach dating prospects more effectively, encouraging better results.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

After inviting a student to read the first stanza of Robert Herrick’s oft-quoted poem “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time,” Mr. Keating draws the students into a discussion about the meaning of the poem.  Carpe diem is probably the best known Latin expression among the common populace today, most of whom don’t speak Latin.  Yet for as well known as the Latin phrase meaning “seize the day” is, few actually practice it.

And that was the whole point of Mr. Keating’s lecture.  We each have a window of opportunity while we live, and that opportunity is to seize the moment in front of us and make the most of it.  This was Mr. Keating’s message in his first lecture.  “Seize the day, boys!  Make your life extraordinary!”

I’m not sure why it didn’t hit me earlier, but this is a perfect message of LDS singles.  Too many waste their lives away waiting for something wonderful to happen, as though the blessings they want in their life will appear magically at their front door.

Here’s the problem with that approach: It wastes opportunity.  The same agency that singles use to waste away their time waiting for their blessings is the same agency they could be using to make their lives extraordinary.

But most don’t make their lives anything, let alone extraordinary.  They simply flow with the waves of life, going wherever they’ll carry them.  This is the path of the natural man and the natural woman.  Simply following the impulse of the biological programming within our physical bodies is easy, and that programming would have us staying where it is “safe.”

But the extraordinary life doesn’t come to anyone who simply goes with the flow.  Rather it comes to those who will make their own waves to create the currents that carry them to the destination they desire.  They make conscious choices to act against the natural impulse to go with the flow.

Conscious choice is the key not only to making one’s life extraordinary but also to encouraging the blessings you want in your life to come into your life.  Notice I said encourage, not make.  Many blessings require the agency of another to decide in your favor.

That truth doesn’t diminish the greater power we each have to achieve the results we desire.  Too many focus on what is outside their control, and that focus belittles the power we each have to change our lives for the better and make them truly extraordinary.  In reality, many exercise their agency in accordance with what is presented to them.  And you choose what you present to them every single day (pun intended).

So what should you choose to present to others in order to attract the results you desire?  If you want an extraordinary life, then present the elements that will attract an extraordinary life.  This is more than just the activity you embrace in your life.  This is also, and perhaps more importantly, the assumptions and attitude you embody.

Focusing on what you can do will enable you to feel more of the power you truly have within you.  And by acting on that truth, by doing what you can do, you’ll feel more powerful more often.

When you make your life extraordinary, you make yourself more attractive.  So where do you start?  How do you start?

The extraordinary life is an attractive life, but it is also an interesting one.  So start by making your life more interesting.  And the easiest place to begin is with your own imagination.  What do you think makes a life interesting?  Put those things one by one in your life.  And don’t rely on what others think is interesting.  Follow what you yourself genuinely think is interesting.

Make your life extraordinary.  Take action to start living your life.  The more interesting you make your life, the more attractive it will be to others and the more enticed they will be to share it with you.  When you leverage the power you have in your own agency, you can make your life more than you imagined it could be.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.