When I started this blog, I thought, man. This will be great! I'll just work on a goal a week, write a blog post every week, get famous, get interviewed on the Today Show, and get rich. (Okay, actually, I didn't expect the famous part, because the only people who can see this blog are people I send the link to.) That is not what happened.
Turns out, working on goals is hard. It takes effort, perseverance, and patience. And constant focus. Also, I wanted to keep achieving the goals I had set the previous week. Update on my sleeping goal: I go to bed before midnight usually, and wake up at some point before 11. Exercise-wise, I usually go at least 2000 steps a day, but occasionally more, when I actually leave my apartment. I should have a third goal somewhere here, but I don't.
That's where failure comes in. Everyone fails. It's written in our DNA. It's actually part of God's plan (see Ether 12:27), and it is the reason we have goals in the first place. The cool thing is, getting up and trying again (see repentance) is ALSO written in our DNA. So that's pretty nice. And although my blog is not super nice and orderly and organized, and I haven't accomplished the goals I originally set out to accomplish, I haven't been doing nothing! I've started going to the temple once a week, which was totally a goal of mine. I've read the Book of Mormon two days in a row for 30 minutes, and have been having a streak of reading the Book of Mormon every day besides that for even longer, I have found ways to earn money so that I can, you know, support myself and stuff, and all sorts of other things.
You know how people say that fear is the opposite of faith? It's also the opposite of achieving goals. I think fear is what stops me from trying my hardest, because I'm worried that my hardest won't be good enough, and I'll have to accept that I can't do it on my own. (There's a psychological term for this, in case you were wondering, it's called self-sabotage). It turns out that when you face your fears, you can accomplish a lot more.
Another (more personal) enemy to achieving my goals is negative thinking. I think this affects everyone else to some degree or other, but for someone with a mental illness, negative thoughts is something that causes a lot of my symptoms. I have had two really mind-changing thoughts over the past couple days. First, all of my problems have solutions. I read in a Tumblr post (I know.) one time that someone interviewing survivors who had attempted suicide on the Golden Gate bridge, almost all of them had said that about 2/3 of the way down, they had realized all their problems are fixable. These problems, remember were big enough to them to cause them to try to kill themselves. If their problems are fixable, then mine certainly are too. (I've tried to find the article they are referencing, and can't find the exact one, though the interviews I have found have been consistent with the claim. If you want the Tumblr post it's here.
The other thought that came to me yesterday was while I was having a pity party because it turns out I suck at transcription and keep getting negative scores. You know Heber J. Grant? LDS prophet and generally awesome guy? No? Well, here's a story. So, once upon a time he liked to play baseball. He wasn't very good at baseball, though. He hadn't got to play a lot as a kid, because he had to help his single mother with chores. He was in the bottom team of baseball, and couldn't even throw the ball to another base. He set a goal that he would be on the team that one day won the Utah championship, and saved up a dollar, bought a baseball, and practiced throwing it at his bishop's barn over and over and over again, his arm hurting so much at times that he couldn't even sleep. Eventually, he made it to the second team, and then joined another club and managed to get on the team that won not only the Utah championship, but also the surrounding states. If Heber J. Grant can do that, then I can probably learn to be a better transcriptionist.
Tl;dr, I guess what I really want to say is that repentance applies to more than just when we sin. It also helps us to be able to get up and try again when we are trying to become better (See the enabling power of the atonement). And when we work hard, and when we ask God to help, we can accomplish anything.
