Elizabeth Nielson: This is the Prosper Stronger podcast, a community where LDS women gather to cultivate covenant connections and strive to be devoted disciples of Jesus Christ.
Hi and welcome back to the Prosper Stronger podcast. We are now two weeks into January of 2024, and I thought it would be a good time to talk about something that I geek out on. I think we all have topics or ideas that we just really love to think about or just simply catch our attention more than others.
And one of those things for me is this idea of goal setting and like our mission or our vision. A lot of people think about a vision. And when I was researching this several years ago in regards to New Year's resolutions, I was surprised. But not wholly surprised to find out that not that many people keep their resolutions.
And that wasn't the surprising part because I think we all know that. What surprised me is that most of us only keep them maybe two weeks that only 7 percent of people actually carry their resolutions through beyond two weeks. And after the two weeks, only 3 percent of those continue and are able to keep consistent with their resolutions.
Now, those numbers might be a little fuzzy, but I know it's right in there, the three to seven, because like I said, it was several years ago. But the point is that it was shocking that here we have these great ideas, these great intentions. We're going to do all this marvelous stuff to change our lives, have better habits, reach new heights andget new dreams and improve our lives, all those things and we can't even make it two weeks. And I've thought a lot about that. I'm like, why is that? And what is it that it takes to actually stick with it? What is the magic formula? The secret sauce to being in that 3 percent that actually can carry through.
And so I've studied it. I've tried to practice different things. I've read a lot of books. I've gone to a lot of seminars. I've just got, like I said, I geek out about this. And I especially got thinking about it when it comes to the gospel, because for a while there was this kind of conflict in my mind of, all right, I want to create a vision for myself. I want to set these goals.
And so much of the personal development content and material and teachings, even from a hundred years ago or more, they present it as if you have total control. If you just simply say, and this goes into the law of attraction that some people get into, but this idea of, oh, if you just say you want something, you just put it out there then it'll happen. And I struggle with that because I was like, wait a second, we will, we have agency and we know we have power, but ultimately we are here to align our wills with Heavenly Father to submit our will to Him. So how do these two things come together? How do we get this with a vision? And I struggled with it for quite a while.
Honestly, I sat in it. I pondered about it. Like I said, read about it, studied it, studied the scriptures, studied words of art, church leaders, personal development leaders, all kinds of stuff. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there didn't need to be a disconnect, that there actually is a really strong and powerful connection.
And so I wanted to share some of what I feel were answers to my questions about this. And to my confusion, I guess you could say, so I want to talk about that and I want to tie it in there. What do we do then with this new year, two weeks in, how do we reinvigorate? How do we re motivate ourselves? How do we work toward actually keeping those resolutions?
And so let's start with vision. Now, obviously vision, it's how we see, it means to see, to be able to see clearly. We have to have vision, the power to see, the willingness to see. So I was thinking about this and I went back to President Uchtdorf's talk titled Daily Restoration. And in this talk, he mentions this, he says, They were dropped in for us and there were no visible landmarks.
They had to solely rely on their sense of direction. And as a result, like I said before, they kept walking in circles. Some of them as tight as 20 meters in diameter, which is a pretty tight circle, especially when they thought they were walking straight. That's what's crazy about it. And then he says it was most likely or more likely that we struggled to walk straight ahead because of increasing uncertainty about where straight ahead is.
So that says to me that we question ourselves. We start to wonder. We think we're doing it. We believe we're following the instruction, but then we doubt. And how often when we set goals, do we doubt or do we question whether the method that we're using is working or whether the goal is worthy? Of us, like worthy of God, should we be actually seeking that goal?
There's a lot of reasons why we might have uncertainty about whether we're walking in a straight line. He goes on to say whatever the cause it is human nature without reliable landmarks to drift off course. So in this study itself, only those, I've mentioned this already, that actually were able to walk straight, were the ones that could pick a point, focus on that point, and move toward that point. And to me, this is how it works, right? We know that we need to be progressing and we need to be progressing to become more like Jesus Christ. So how do we get there? All the participants in this study had to put just one step in front of the other. But if that goal was a long way off?
Sometimes we have to give ourselves benchmarks or landmarks or goals. Like I remember when I was 14, we did the pioneer trek and it was a long way to walk. And so there were many times when we would simply say, okay, we're just going to make it to the top of that next hill. We're just going to go to that next point.
And that became our vision, that became our goal, that became our destination. And we knew it wasn't the end destination, but because we made it to that point, we could then move on and make it to the next point until we did reach the destination. And so goal setting and vision setting to me is something like that, that each year we have this opportunity to do another step to get one step closer to our ultimate destination.
But sometimes it's really hard to see what that is, what that next step should be. Or like Elder Uchtdorf was telling us, sometimes, which is human nature, we get distracted. We get off track. We start walking in circles. As you study this, these are habits. These are routines that we just fall back into. And I can honestly say that I had a new goal that my daughter and I set, and we were so good the first week.
We were great. We were getting to bed earlier. We were getting ready for bed earlier. We were not turning on a Hallmark movie. We were not, getting distracted. And we did great that first week. But all it took was one time on Monday, this last week, we had a lot of extra time. She was all caught up in homework. There wasn't a lot to do. And so what did we do? We sat down and we turned on one of those Christmas Hallmark movies that we just weren't able to finish over Christmas. And then we did a Tuesday and then we did a Wednesday and they weren't always Hallmark movies. There were sometimes other things, but we just rolled right back into our old habits.
And at first it wasn't too bad. We did it earlier in the night, so we were still able to get to bed early. Get up early. And it was great. I got lots of awesome scripture study time. It was fabulous. But the more the week went on, the later it got, the later we slept, the more tired I was. And I knew last night, I was like, this is it.
I fell away. I fell off already. It's only been two weeks and I already succumbed. And so we already had a conversation today about what we're going to do to change it so we can stay back on track and we don't fall into those old habits anymore. So what do we do?
Tracy Browning in October, 2022, gave a talk titled Seeing More of Jesus Christ in Our Lives.
And she started by sharing her own analogy of when she wakes up in the morning, that she has to get her glasses. It's the very first thing she does, because if she doesn't have those glasses, she can't see anything. She needs them to be able to see clearly and to go about her day. And she related that to the gospel.
So she said, over the years, I've come to recognize that this reaching for her glasses illustrates her daily dependence on two things. The first thing is a tool, right? A tool that helps her clarify, focus, and ground the world around her. And then the second thing, Is a guide to have tangible guidance to continually point me in the right direction.
And she said, this mirrors our relationship with Jesus Christ. And so as we think about this, what is the tool and how do we have the guide? The tools we have, and President Uchtdorf talks about this sister Browning, the tools we have. Our prayer, scripture, our covenants, going to the temple, personal revelation.
We have so many tools available to us and they help us as we chart our course to become more like Jesus Christ and to align our will with His. So how does this relate then to our new year's goals? Our new year's resolutions?
For years, I have been setting goals. I think it started partly. With a personal progress program. And we had to set those goals and they had different categories for each of the young women values. And it set me on a course. It was so helpful and it made a difference in my life. And then when I went on into college, it was a lot of the same things. I had some deeply rooted goals that I wanted to achieve.
And then of course I would set additional smaller goals. We have bite sized goals. We have quarterly goals. We have yearly goals. We have lifetime goals, right? There's all different shapes and sizes of goals, but it surprised me as I got married and started raising my family. That not everybody did this, and it wasn't a tool that everyone was using.
And I didn't understand why it seemed strange. And then life got busy and I did less and less of it. And I realized I was losing focus in my life and I was feeling more confused. I was feeling frustrated because I was receiving direction from Heavenly Father. There were things I knew I needed to do, but I wasn't getting them done.
And I had to change. I had to go back to those intentional goal setting techniques. And as I got deeper into that, I realized I had, even though I had been setting goals and I'd been writing them down, I was missing a lot of the power that can come from setting my intention with greater purpose, greater clarity, and actually creating A strong vision of what I want to achieve and what I want to do.
And so I feel like there's so much more I have yet to learn, but I also know there are so many others out there that could benefit from some of what I've learned. So here's the thing. We don't want to be blinded by the world. We don't want to be blinded by the simple to do's by the chaos, by the distractions, by the deceptions, and just simply all that has to be done in our lives. And it's so easy to do that.
We also don't want to get into a rut is what Napoleon Hill calls our entrenched ways of thinking, ways of doing. We don't want to get stuck in the rut and not able to get out because when we think we can change, we can, and the adversary doesn't want us to think he wants us to be numb.
He wants us to stay in the rut. He wants us to not try to improve. He doesn't want us to see the end target and he doesn't want us to see how we can get there. And he definitely doesn't want us to raise our lives up. And to strive to achieve more and to do more and to fulfill the mission Heavenly Father has for us, the mission he has for you, the mission he has for me.
And this might be a lifetime mission, but every mission is made up of a bunch of mini missions. So how do we do it? What do we do? The process that I have learned as we set our intention and as we seek to align our wills with God is to, first of all, take a look at what we are feeling in our hearts. I believe that Heavenly Father gives us righteous desires.
If we want them, He will give them to us. And they're different for everyone. I had a desire to do ballroom dance. Not everybody does. Very few people do as a matter of fact, but for me, it was a very strong and powerful desire. And I felt it so strongly that I set goals around it and I created a vision around it.
And I'll tell you more about that later. I also have a desire to share and teach the gospel. I don't get to do it on a full time mission, but I do get to teach and testify as I talk with you here on the podcast, or as I teach my children, or as I just converse with others, right? I have a desire. Recently I had a desire, or I would say recently, that's like in the last three years, I started having this desire to hold a retreat for women to help them draw closer to the Holy Ghost and to learn how to receive personal revelation more confidently.
And I don't know where that desire came from. I haven't always had that desire. And I believe that Heavenly Father put that desire into my heart. So the first step of setting your vision and of maintaining your momentum, I believe is to pay attention to the righteous desires of your heart. And then the second step is to be prayerful.
Ask Heavenly Father, if those desires are from Him, write them down and then go to Him and ask and then ask for direction. Do they need to change? Or, do they need to be enhanced or is this the right time? Be prayerful about asking which of those righteous desires are the ones you should pursue right now.
And as He guides you, write that down. Okay which one is it? I have had this happen. That retreat I talked about, I felt it for three years and there were times that I felt to prepare for it. And I would research, I would study, I'd get ideas, I'd write them down.Or I would actually start gathering things. So I gave out some tote bags and some other swag and other gifts at this retreat, not knowing when I would give them away.
I purchased them 11 months in advance. And I thought, this is crazy. Why am I spending this money right now? But that's what I felt I should do. I didn't know I was going to end up doing the retreat or when I was going to do it, but I was guided as I was prayerful about it to do that one thing.
So first step, pay attention to the desires of your heart. Second, write them down. Third, go to the Lord in prayer and ask for clarification around each of those desires. Ask Him to help you know which one you should focus on now. And some may be, you might have more than one. I like to categorize like in the new children and youth program. There's those categories a physical, spiritual, intellectual, etc.
So I might have those categories for myself. I actually do. And I go to the Lord and ask Him about my goal for each of those. So when I say, figure out your righteous desire, I also write down that in the framework of a goal, right? So I might say, I would like to hold this year. So this was last year, right?
So in 2023, I'd like to hold a retreat for LDS women. So I'd write that down because I was feeling that as a righteous desire. Then I went to the Lord and I asked for clarification so that I could better phrase my goal. So this is all part of creating a vision. So it could better phrase the goal. So then I got specific about this goal and I did that as I worked with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost.
What is it I should focus on at this retreat? How, and I didn't have to have all the hows, just so you know, but where could I hold it? Just a few details. What is the purpose of it? And so I fleshed it out a little bit more and I wrote out my goal in the greater detail, but it wasn't totally fleshed out.
I didn't know all the hows. I just knew what it was that I was going to do it. It was for LDS women and the focus was going to be on identity and personal revelation. That's what I had. So I did that. I prayed about it. And then after getting that clarification from Heavenly Father, I had to get to work.
Now, yes, I had to get to work to actually do it, but I had to do something else first. And this is the part I think I didn't understand. And I have learned over these last several years in becoming a high- performance coach and doing mentoring trainings and parenting sessions. I have a lot of certifications and it's funny how many of them come back to this idea of creating a vision. They almost all start there.
So we start with an idea, then we take it, we get clarification, we write it down, and then we have to do the work. We have to create the actual movie or vision. So I'm good. I usually get to the part where I write it down, but putting images to it. It is a harder step for me. I'm not that good at it.
And some of you are. Some of you, it's going to be so easy to create the picture, you're going to have a harder time writing it down. That's the next step. So we write it, we think it, we write it, then we make a picture of it. Once we have a visual, and this could be something you cut out of a magazine. You can print it off your computer, you can pull it from your own pictures.
I even took, one year I took a picture from a magazine this was for my physical. I wanted to be more fit. I wanted to get more muscle and lean muscle. And so I found a picture in a magazine, I cut it out and then I printed out my face and I glued it on top. to create that picture for me, for my mind. So you can create a picture.
There's also AI tools that are really cool and you can actually give it what you want and it can create an image and some of them are better than others, but I'm still playing around with them. I'm sorry, I can't recommend one right now, but it's fascinating to me. I'm like, oh, this is, we'll make vision boarding so much easier. So write it down and then create an image.
Now the next step goes even deeper. You have to create a feeling. You have to experience it as if it's already happened. And this can be hard. This can take practice. For some, it's super easy. Like I said, all these different pieces might be easy for some and hard for others.
I have a harder time actually generating the feeling for some things. Other ones come easier, especially if they're tied to something that I've already experienced and I want to get that back. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to activate as many input systems as we can. And when I say input systems, it's our senses. It's our eyes, our ears, our mouths, even our nose. It's touch and it's feeling. It's our heart. We want to activate all of those if possible.
So when you go to this part of feeling and experiencing your goal as if it's already come to pass or your vision as if it's already happening, you are talking about on bringing in all of these pieces. So you have writing, writing helps verbalize it. You might say it out loud and it helps you see it because your eyes actually see it in writing. Then you have the image. This again is a seeing one. Then we have the feeling. This is for our heart and you put all these together and then you start to imagine what it will be like once you have accomplished it.
Once it has happened, and when you visualize it, you go through all the senses. So what will you be saying? Who will be there with you? What will you be saying to them? What will your conversation be like? How will you feel? What will it feel like around you? Is it going to be snowy and cold? Is it going to be warm and sunny?
What environment are you going to be in? Where will this take place? What will you be smelling? Will you be smelling freshly baked cookies. Will you be smelling sweat because you've worked out and it's, you finally reached that weight and muscle mass that you want? What will you be smelling? Will you be smelling flowers?
Will you be smelling the ocean? What will you be smelling? Maybe you'll be smelling the sweet smell. I'm chuckling to myself because I said sweet smell of a baby. Yes, babies can smell so sweet, but they can also smell not so sweet. Go with the sweet smell on that one. So you get the point, right? What are you smelling?
What are you hearing as this has taken place? What did you hear for it to happen? What are you hearing now that you have arrived there and it has been accomplished? Maybe you're hearing words of love. Maybe you're hearing words of appreciation. Maybe you're hearing applause. Maybe you're hearing the spirit whisper to you. Congratulations, you did it. You did what I asked.
I had that experience in 2017. I had felt like I had been guided to take some of my children on a trip. And it was a great trip, but it was a long trip and it was all on me and it was a lot of work and it was fast paced. And there were times of stress and times of worry. It took a lot to make it happen. It took a lot to actually get on the plane and go. As a matter of fact, things were changing. There were roadblocks every step of the way. I even got a priesthood blessing a half an hour before we left because I was feeling so overwhelmed and so distressed and honestly feeling like the adversary was He was working on me to try and get me not to go. He was bringing fear in.
So I got a priesthood blessing. We went, we did the trip. I could tell you more about it later, but as we got on the plane on our flight home and I had a moment of quiet, I felt and heard this Holy Ghost testify to me in these words, you did it. You did what I asked. Thank you. And I knew those words had come directly from Heavenly Father.
So as you imagine yourself at the point where you have reached the destination, hit the target, you've arrived, however you want to call it. Think about what you might be hearing. You also want to imagine what you're touching. You may not be touching much of anything, you might just be touching air, or you might be touching a really soft blanket, or you might be touching a sweet little baby, right?
Having that tiny little hand wrap around your finger, imagine what you'll be touching. And then the true secret weapon is imagining how you will feel. And don't just imagine it, actually work to feel those same feelings, invite those feelings into your life. Even though you haven't reached that point yet, invite those feelings as if you have.
You may want to cheer, you may smile, you may jump up and down. Make the feelings as real as possible. As you do all of these things, what you are doing is setting your intention and you are training your mind. You're training your subconscious mind and your conscious mind. To work together in unison to move toward the goal that you have set with your Heavenly Father.
So that when you look back, you can know that you have aligned your will with God. You have accomplished the mission He set forth before you, and you can hopefully have that experience of knowing. that He approves and has accepted your offering.
Now, creating the vision and setting the intention is of course, just the first step. Then you have to get in there and you have to do every little movement forward. And that's a topic for another day. But I've wanted to talk about this because as we study first Nephi, as we study the scriptures and General Conference talks, we see that Heavenly Father uses the idea of visions. He uses visions to accomplish His purposes.
He gives visions to those who he calls. He gives visions to his prophets. And I've thought, why is it? Why is it that the prophets had these visions and receive these visions? And when you study them, they seem like they're very powerful and they have a lot of similar elements. Joseph Smith's vision. The vision of Moses, of Isaiah, of Enoch, and it can go on and on.
I believe, as I have been prayerful and studied and pondered on this, that they needed to see and know what was before them, what was going to happen, why we needed our Savior, that he would come and then what would happen after he came and atoned for our sins and brought us the gift of redemption and resurrection.
And then that He would come again, that He would fulfill the promises and fulfill the covenants. I believe that these prophets had to have the vision so that In the times of trial at Liberty jail, when they were living in caves and being fed by ravens, when no one was listening to them, when they might've been wondering what they were thinking, what they were doing, how could they keep going and feeling hey, I'm trying to do what Heavenly Father told me to do here and it's not working.
I'm being punished or Abinidi who was actually burned because of it. I believe they had to know. They had to have the power of the vision so that they could have the strength to fulfill the mission. And I believe that is what is required of each of us as well. Although we may not receive a vision directly from Heavenly Father, the heavens may not open up for us. They might, but whether the heavens open up or not, we know this Heavenly Father has sent us here to earth to be proven, to be tested, but also to do His work. And He has a work for you to do. A specific work. He has a work for me to do, and it is our job to go to Him and find out what that work is. He won't always just appear in the middle of the night.
Having an angel come to our room is likely not going to happen. Never happened for me, but I have felt Him give me callings. Give me righteous desires. He has given me work to do. And I believe that he has given us people that teach us how to create visions, powerful visions for ourselves that align with His will so that we can accomplish the work that He has given to us.
I love studying Nephi where he says that he will go and do the work with the Lord has commanded, which has commanded him because he knows the Lord will provide a way for Him to accomplish it. I love Nephi. He didn't have to know how, he just had to trust and believe that he could do it. But he also set the intention that he would do it.
This happened when he went to get the plates and he said, should we not continue in faith? Be faithful in keeping the commandments of God. He tried and it failed, but he went forward not knowing what to do, but he knew he had to do it. And he was determined. To get the plates. He had set his intention, created the vision, and he had done it.
Same with building a boat and on. It's the same in our lives. I believe Heavenly Father wants us to do the work of setting our own intentions of set, creating the power of visions. So that we can align our will with Him and we can do His work with greater power, with greater speed, with greater momentum and with greater commitment so that we don't fall off the path so that we don't waste time working in circles, but we can move forward to become the people He needs us to be His covenant people.
And I don't think that is relegated only to the spiritual. I believe that every aspect of our life is involved in becoming like Jesus Christ. Taking care of my physical body is showing honor and respect and reverence for what He has given me and also striving to be healthy enables me to better serve Him and His children.
So physical goals. Intellectual goals. We are told to seek knowledge and truth out of the best books. Set goals like that, right? Our spiritual goals, our social goals, our emotional goals. There's any number of goals, our financial goals, so that we can become self- reliant, so that we're not dependent on others.
Because when we are self- reliant, we can have more freedom. We can have more agency. We can be more free to serve again, right? To serve as children. I believe all the different types of goals can be goals that Heavenly Father wants us to set so that we can become more like Him and so that we can better serve Him and do the work he has for us.
So I hope today to share with you some ways we can do that in setting powerful intentions by drawing on the power of creating and nurturing and living experiencing. Visions as our targets so that we can walk in a straight line and go where we need to go, where Heavenly Father wants us to go. And I just have to say that as I was going through my papers and working on what I was going to set for my visions this year, I came across a paper that I had forgotten about.
And although the next step, like after you've put all your emotion into your vision is to actually revisit it everyday, morning and night, and often in between, put it out there and put your picture, your words, your feelings, everything. I even have people I know that put a soundtrack to their vision.
I've done that once and wow, it was powerful and I should do it again. I need to do it again. That's the ultimate. That's how you really create powerful visions. But I hadn't done that last year. I had written out the goal. I had written out about the retreat. I'd prayed about it. I'd gotten into further detail and it's taken some steps, but I had not posted this and put it in a place where I could see it over and over again.
So as I was going through my papers, at the end of December, I actually came across one and it surprised me because as I looked at this list that I had written, and it wasn't extensive, but it was probably one of my first steps last year. One of them I had just written very first hold a retreat for LDS women and I'd put a date on it.
And I looked back at that and thought, oh my goodness, I really did do this. I can check this one off. Here was the beginning and now I'm at the end. And even without going back to it every day and being in more purposeful and putting more effort and energy into it, even though I didn't do those things, it still happened because I believe that any amount of effort that we put into it, Heavenly Father will magnify. And as we come to Him submitting our will and letting Him know we are willing to do the work that He will guide us on the path.
So I hope this helps today. I hope you take at least one thing that is a righteous desire in your heart and take it to the Lord and practice this idea of creating and setting your intention by using the powerful tool of visions, and you can put them on a vision board. You can put them in a book. I know people that have a binder. Some of people put them on their phones, but create a fleshed out, fully experiencing vision of one thing. Give it a try. And I believe you will be filled with abundance and delightfully surprised as you see what happens in your life.
And I believe you will prosper stronger as you do it. Thanks for listening today. I hope you have a marvelous 2024 and if you'd like to download your free guide for personal revelation and growing into that, go to prosperstronger. com. It's yours for free. There are great things ahead for you and Heavenly Father has a marvelous work that he wants you to do. You've got this.
Thank you for joining the Prosper Stronger podcast today. We hope that you have felt inspired and empowered. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast and share it with your friends and family. I also invite you to join me at prosperstronger. com where you will find free resources to help you grow and learn, as well as join in our discussions where we go deeper into some of the things that we talk about here on our podcast.
Remember that you are loved and cherished by Heavenly Father who wants you to prosper and thrive. Until next time, may you continue to cultivate covenant connections with God, with others and with yourself, and find strength in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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