Skip the sidelines

"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."

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.

---

Find your useful passions

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.

---

Turn it on

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).

---

Stay in the game

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.

---

You can listen to the monologue from today's episode of Joy In The Journey Radio here.  Please also feel free to continue the conversation by leaving a comment below.  Want to hear more?  Listen to the whole show by going to the show page for this episode!