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Just to recap, I grew up very mormon and was super molly mormon all through my life until after I got married. To summarize, my parents were quite controlling people and wouldn’t let us question them and rarely trusted us to make our own decisions. So I very much felt like I was incapable of making my own decisions, even through high school and college, and it still affects me now in my mid-twenties. I also built my testimony on prayer and I felt like I had to get God’s input on big decisions, because I felt like I couldn’t make my own decisions without God’s input because He knew everything. Well, now that my testimony on prayer was shattered (got an answer that was very specific and felt strong and received it in the temple, and it turned out to be completely wrong) I can’t trust my answers to prayers anymore. So now I’m left with trusting myself which for me is very scary. I feel things coming to mind like ‘who are you to decide what is right and what is wrong? Only God can do that’, ‘I’m just trying to make things the way I want them, and that’s not how God works. I can’t just CHOOSE what to believe or I’ll get it wrong’, ‘what am I going to do when a big decision comes up and I can’t trust prayers? How can I trust myself to make the right decisions?’ Now, I am currently in therapy for past family issues so I am working on things like my confidence in myself and my self-esteem, but for the time being, I was curious how any of you came to feel comfortable trusting yourself when it comes to what to believe? Have you always trusted your own mind? If not, how did you get from being unsure if what you thought was right, to where you felt confident that you were right? Or is it possible to feel comfortable even if you don’t know you are right? It’s hard for me to be comfortable with the prospect of me possibly being wrong and failing my family in the eternities. I know that was a lot of questions, so just take the one/ones that apply to you. Thanks!
I gave up a few years back asking God for confirmation since I never got an answer. But I have to say I am comfortable with making my decisions. I know my wife is not. She always has “buyers remorse” for anything. I had an experience similar to yours, and similarly don’t try to get answers from God anymore. In retrospect I’m not sure I ever got any answers from God, it was all just confirmation bias. It’s quite a conundrum, actually – I don’t trust the answers I thought I got from God because they really just came from me, and I can’t trust the answers from me either. So, if you figure it out, let me know.
In answer to your questions:
Quote:I was curious how any of you came to feel comfortable trusting yourself when it comes to what to believe?
I am fairly comfortable with what I believe as far as the gospel is concerned. The caveat is that these are beliefs, not knowledge, and they are fluid and ever changing (often because of input here).
Quote:Have you always trusted your own mind?
BC (before the church) I always trusted my own mind because that’s all there was. My faith crisis revolves around how messed up it got after the church. I wish I could go back, but like you that nagging experience of once held beliefs in what God could and would do is ever-present.
Quote:If not, how did you get from being unsure if what you thought was right, to where you felt confident that you were right?
In some ways my experience was opposite. I went from relying on myself to relying on God, then made a huge mistake based on that reliance. Hence I have not regained confidence in either myself or God, but if I could I would only trust me.
Quote:Or is it possible to feel comfortable even if you don’t know you are right?
I think it is possible, but I’m not there. I think I was once there (BC).
Quote:It’s hard for me to be comfortable with the prospect of me possibly being wrong and failing my family in the eternities.
I know this one isn’t really a question, but I will say I have been able to give up lots of the guilt associated with what I should or shouldn’t be doing in relation to the church (specifically). I have let the gospel come to the forefront, and the gospel is much simpler than the church. I don’t know I’m right, but I honestly don’t think anybody is. Essentially I think we’re supposed to be nice, and I rely on the grace of God if I’m wrong (which is likely).
The stillbirth of my daughter was the catalyst for my faith crisis. In the midst of this I was shocked to discover that the church does not have a doctrine as to the fate of miscarried or stillborn children. Did they claim the tiny body and return to heaven in glory? Will the spirit destined for that particular body come to earth through a different body (to the same parents or different parents)? Is a miscarried, aborted, or stillborn fetus a person or more akin to a mass of cells, tissue, and bone? Is a stillborn child “born in the covenant”? Will they belong to us in the eternities? These are important questions for the parents of stillborn children. The church has no answer and instead allows each person to
choosewhat they want to believe in this regard. It feels strange because I always felt that I could look such stuff up in Mormon Doctrine and get a definitive answer. (I say this somewhat tongue in cheek since I now know how speculative much of MD is 
The most common LDS beliefs in this respect are:
1) That stillborn children do count and are exalted in heaven just like a child that would have died shortly after birth (this is what we went with in the case of our daughter). Families can include this child’s name on personal documents and records but the church does not put the name on any church rosters or temple records (the very records that some church officials have said constitute the “Book of Life”).
2) That stillborn or miscarried children do not count as living souls. That the body was rejected and not inhabited by a living spirit. Try again.
3) That the spirit that would have inhabited the body of the child can come again to the family in the body of a subsequent child.
All of these options are open to me depending on what I feel good about. Yes, I did have moments of ‘who are you to decide what is right and what is wrong? Only God can do that’, ‘I’m just trying to make things the way I want them, and that’s not how God works. I can’t just CHOOSE what to believe or I’ll get it wrong’
I do believe that there are some advantages to being able to pray about a big decision and feel good about it. At some point after you have done your homework and decided what it is that you want to do – it can be helpful to move forward with confidence and not linger any further with hand wringing and second guessing. Some people get this sense of security from feeling answers to prayers.
Always Thinking wrote:I was curious how any of you came to feel comfortable trusting yourself when it comes to what to believe?
Some of this is personality and gender differences. My wife used to call her mom for recipes and cooking advice and stuff. I, OTOH, felt like I could find my own answers by doing a quick internet search. I suppose this is the difference between stopping to ask for directions vs. consulting the GPS. My way just feels more independent.
Always Thinking wrote:Have you always trusted your own mind? If not, how did you get from being unsure if what you thought was right, to where you felt confident that you were right? Or is it possible to feel comfortable even if you don’t know you are right? It’s hard for me to be comfortable with the prospect of me possibly being wrong and failing my family in the eternities. I know that was a lot of questions, so just take the one/ones that apply to you. Thanks!
I identify with a lot of your feelings.I’ve been through lots of therapy because my first marriage broke down, there was mental illness in the family, life was beyond what I could handle…I tried to rely on God to give me strength beyond what I could deal with…and ultimately learned he wants me to figure it out.
I have lots of doubts about myself and my feelings. It is how I learn, how I stay humble, how I look beyond myself and try to learn from others. That is not a bad thing.
The think i have worked on hard and tried to learn the most is to accept myself as I am. I have to let go of perfectionism. I can’t wait to make choices until God gives me the perfect answer. I actually have to start learning to go through life with the 80/20 rule…I can study and seek out advice and answers and become about 80% sure I have a good answer…and can’t spend more time on it to get to 100%…it takes too much effort and time. I accept there will be 20% (or 10% or whatever) of “unknown” in things. Ambiguity will be there. I need to learn to become more comfortable with that.
That means I will sometimes make mistakes. Now that I’m an adult…I can’t wait for my parents to give me answers to protect me from mistakes. I can’t wait for the bishop to answer me. I can’t wait for God to feed me manna. I actually need to embrace ambiguity, and mistakes, and imperfection as part of my life. And let myself fail.
I heard a quote yesterday:
Quote:Failure is not the opposite of success, it is part of it.
That is a good way to embrace failures. Sometimes…we need to not let the fear of failure keep us damned. But take courage on the 20% we don’t know for sure but are willing to risk to make a choice and move forward, and if it is a wrong choice, correct it and move forward. Not beat ourselves up so bad for not being perfect, or being better…but we are who we are, doing the best we can with what we have.
The reason the Atonement is in God’s plan is because he knew our minds would be clouded and we see through a glass darkly…and would make mistakes to gain experience…and so we can be hopeful it is ok and we can repent as we trust the Lord and try our best.
I probably trust my wife and others more than myself. I am so used to seeing all my mistakes and my errors. But…I have learned that I am me. I really need to accept myself as I am. And do the best I can. And feel like it is OK.
Perhaps something I can share that might give you some food for thought….I don’t trust myself to make every decision correctly, but I trust myself that I can be OK when I fail. Because I can work through it, I don’t give up, and I care more about people and relationships than I do about being right or avoiding mistakes.
Does any of that get close to something that you think about? Or am I way off base? I’m just sharing things I’ve worked on when I was stressing out that my family was falling apart and church was teaching me that no success compensates for failure in the home…and well…that made me the biggest failure of all. But it didn’t. I just had to learn to see things differently. I had to grow up. I had to be OK with me because I dont’ know how to not be me.
Perhaps I don’t trust myself 100%. I just learn to cope with trusting myself enough to life a happy life. And holy cow…my life is so happy now. Remarried to an amazing woman…my children are my greatest blessing…my life is good…and so I am not defined by my failed first marriage. Or all the other gajillion failures I had and weaknesses I have. I am me. And I get to learn as I go how to find my peace and happiness because I don’t give up.
This isn’t the best advice but they all can’t be winners. You trusted god, god was wrong, you survived. You can trust yourself, you can be wrong, you’ll survive.
I mean, if god can get it wrong then it’s not that big of a deal if you do too.
:thumbup: Always Thinking wrote:..how did you get from being unsure if what you thought was right, to where you felt confident that you were right? Or is it possible to feel comfortable even if you don’t know you are right?
This may sound like I’m half joking again but I pretty much accept that I’m wrong, no matter what, and I try to feel comfortable with that. I’ve tried to let go with my preoccupation about whether or not I’m right.
AT asked:
Quote:I was curious how any of you came to feel comfortable trusting yourself when it comes to what to believe?
Have you always trusted your own mind?
If not, how did you get from being unsure if what you thought was right, to where you felt confident that you were right?
Or is it possible to feel comfortable even if you don’t know you are right?
Since my FC, I haven’t always been comfortable trusting myself when it came to belief. I have a core of very close friends who I talk with on a regular basis. It can be about any topic.
I respect their input & judgement. As a result, they talk to me about their life, beliefs & problems. I try not to complicate it. (More cliches.)
I really struggled with this when I was younger. I think it relates to self-esteem, and of course, the kind of upbringing you had. I now have great confidence in my decisions when I make them. I don’t always make perfect decisions, but I have found the consequences are generally small if I’m wrong (watch all that come crashing down tomorrow!!!). Also, I teach courses in decision-making under conditions of uncertainty in business, and that has helped me tremendously.
Here are a few ways to make decisions with confidence, without delving into too much practitioner stuff.
a) Talk to people with knowledge about the decision you have to make. The people here on StayLDS have knowledge about certain church-related matters, and I Private Message them when I have a decision to make regarding church-related matters. I get their opinions and I weigh them. So, as you make friends, meet people, get to know what they are knowledgeable about, and then use them as resources when you have a decision to make, depending on the type of relationship you have with them. If you don’t know someone, ask your friends on facebook if anyone knows anyone with expertise in a certain area. “Interview” them and learn as much as you can about the topic before you decide.
Because people have different areas of expertise, I would only ask a Bishop his opinion if I felt he had credible knowledge about the topic. We are always told to talk to our Bishops, but they are simply talented, honest men with their own areas of knowledge and areas of “ignorance” for lack of a better word. To ask them about all things is not wise, and can lead to bad advice if the Bishop isn’t smart enough to tell you he is only guessing.
b) Be aware of the biases these people have. They will often opine from those biases, so don’t be afraid to get input from various sources if you feel their biases are too strong. For example, even if a Bishop disagrees violently with church policy, he can’t speak against it due to his position. So, if I have a decision, and one option I am considering is not something a traditional believer can recommend, I will also ask for the opinion of a non-traditional believer.
c) Don’t make decisions that expose you to so much risk that you lose everything if you are wrong. Make decisions with calculated risks, so that even if you are wrong, the consequences are not severe. You should never make a decision so big that you can’t sleep at night if you are wrong about it.
d) TEST ideas before you decide to implement them fully.
e) Do your research, but don’t get lost in analysis — there comes a point when you have to decide, so do it.
f) ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS respect your own unique perspective, life experiences, fears, weaknesses, strengths, situation. Run ALL advice through your own filters before you decide.
You know your situation better than most people. Some people will be adamant that you should go a certain way, but if your heart says otherwise, consider what your heart is saying. What is right for the people giving advice, may not be right for you. Your conscience and instincts should transcend advice from any source but God — but only if you are pretty sure the inspiration or advice is from God.
g) Have a backup plan in case you are wrong — one that you can live with. I am in a battle right now with an organization, and I have a backup plan. That plan brings me peace in case I know my decision or chosen course of action goes wrong.
h) Have a financial reserve and stay out of debt. I can’t tell you the peace having a financial reserve can bring when you have to make a decision that could hurt you somehow.
You know that if you make a bad employment decision, or a bad financial decision (remember, don’t risk more than you can comfortably lose), you know you have a cushion to help you get into a better situation without relying on anyone else.
I disagree with church advice to not rely on wealth as a source of comfort (if they even preach that, I have heard it), but there is nothing like knowing you have $x available to bail yourself out of a bad decision.
i) Understand your own risk tolerance and blind spots when making decisions. I tend to be overly pessimistic, and very cautious, so I will often pick less risky decisions. My wife is extremely optimistic, and she tends to ignore negative evidence or risks. That is her weak spot. Find people who can counterbalance your weaknesses, and help you make better decisions.
Last, remember, the quote attributed to Marcus Aurellius, the Roman Emporer — “Fear not the future, for we will meet it with the same talents we face the challenges of today”.
Not an exact quote, but you get the idea…
I would say I have to agree quite a bit with SD’s comments. With age (and not totally screwing up to this point) I have come to trust myself, but even then you can see an example of me following much of what SD is saying in my thread labeled “convince me not to come clean”.
a) Talk to people with knowledge about the decision you have to make.I asked for input of this group why I might want to hold back a bit on talking with my bishop. b) Be aware of the biases these people have.I am sure if I went to exmo redit that I would have received a bit of a different response. I kind of assumed that folks at “stayLDS” would be leaning towards staying “in” the church more than I was wanting. But knowing they had this leaning it was helpful. c) Don’t make decisions that expose you to so much risk that you lose everything if you are wrong.I am not going into my bishop and saying, “you are stupid to believe in the church”. I want to leave a door open if I want (or need ) to come back a bit. d) TEST ideas before you decide to implement them fully.When you can, this is great advice. e) Do your research, but don’t get lost in analysis — there comes a point when you have to decide, so do it.I manage some really smart folks at work and I often am having to get them out of analysis paralysis and have them contribute to the business before the rest of the company moves forward without any of their advice because they are still working on the last few digits to the right of the decimal (i.e. details that are not needed). I could go on but this is good advice from SD. And realize you will make a few mistakes here and there. Most Millionaires have lost a TON of money, but they try to learn from it and get back up and keep going.
One of our Articles of Faith says we allow ALL (wo)men to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. Collectively, we tend to ignore the simple fact that LDS members are in that category of all people.
Therefore, I follow that core component of our faith and worship according to the dictates of my own conscience.
I accept fully that I don’t know objectively if I am right or wrong about things I can’t see, so I don’t worry about it. I do my best and believe God will understand.
Letting go of the need to be right is amazingly liberating – and it makes church attendance much more peaceful and less stressful when you can grant everyone (including leaders at all levels) the same privilege.
Old Timer wrote:I accept fully that I don’t know objectively if I am right or wrong about things I can’t see, so I don’t worry about it. I do my best and believe God will understand.
Sometimes I think about the people that lived the “gospel” in old testament times. They sure had some funny ideas and cultural blinders. They were given the lesser law because they could not handle the higher law. We believe that the faithful of this age will live in heaven. I imagine that there will be a significant adjustment between what they thought they “knew” and how things really are in heaven.
Fast forward to today. We are now teaching that the restoration is an ongoing event with the church still growing, changing, improving, and evolving. We teach that there are many books of scripture that we have not received yet because we are not yet ready for them (Book of Joseph, sealed portion of BoM, records from 10 tribes). We believe that God will “yet reveal many great things pertaining to the kingdom”. We too have our funny ideas and cultural blinders. We believe that the faithful of this age will live in heaven. I imagine that there will be a significant adjustment between what we thought we “knew” and how things really are in heaven.
Essentially, even from a TBM perspective, God allows us as individuals and even collectively as his “chosen people” to live and die being wrong about many, many things. God must make allowances for that.
Roy wrote:Essentially, even from a TBM perspective, God allows us as individuals and even collectively as his “chosen people” to live and die being wrong about many, many things. God must make allowances for that.
I’d agree Roy.But…also…how do you reconcile that thought with the idea that God will never let the prophet lead the church astray?
Sometimes I wonder how much God is directly involved at all. In which case…what is the point of the church. [This is just a thought I have, I work through it…just hoped to get your thoughts on it…and others’]
Sometimes I think it isn’t about trusting myself in getting “the right answer”, but more about trusting myself I can keep going in the right direction, not focused on every point along the way, but the cumulation of the points that lead in a direction. If I can trust myself to go the right way, it can allow for moments of being wrong and constant course corrections. I may have impatiently just answered my own question…I’m like that dude in sunday school that asks a question and answers it before others can speak up…I’m a doofus.
:geek: Heber13 wrote:I’m a doofus.
:geek:
But a very thoughtful doofus!
We all goof up a bit. I heard that even as we walk, our body makes dozens of corrections on almost every step. But we don’t seem to get upset about all of these “course corrections” (errors?).
LookingHard wrote:We all goof up a bit. I heard that even as we walk, our body makes dozens of corrections on almost every step. But we don’t seem to get upset about all of these “course corrections” (errors?).
I like that thought. And at some point…we get so used to the course corrections, we just trust the imperfect steps we are taking without even thinking about it…as if it was perfect. That is kind of what I hear with people who say the “know” the church is true…they may not really have a perfect knowledge…but they trust it enough as if it was perfect, even if it is not. Like the steps. Until one day…they don’t see that last step and take a spill.
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