Trusting yourself

[Anonymous]

Heber13 wrote:

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’]

From a less than TBM perspective, I can compare it to career choices. Some careers pay pretty well. Some are more fulfilling. Some are more noble and contribute more to society. Sometimes there is pressure to join the family business. Sometimes this is the safe choice. Sometimes the family business is in developing film and changing technology forces you to declare bankruptcy. Maybe we get laid off. That does not mean that we necessarily chose wrong. There are many choices out there with different costs and benefits that will each give us different experiences.

What then would be a bad choice then in terms of a career? I believe a bad choice would be a job that diminishes your sense of humanity. A job where you took advantage of other people would be a clear example. Other jobs might be ok for some but not for others. The jobs of soldier or police officer certainly can have their “hardening” element. Can the individual compartmentalize that or will it affect their entire character?

In a true/false test question, if the statement is not 100% true then it is false. Sometimes the teacher will put in a statement that is partly true or mostly true to trip us up. Life is not a true/false question. There is no right answer. There are good answers with supporting arguments.

In summary, I believe that the “point of church” and life is to do the best that you can in your individual circumstances and to help out others along the way.

From a more TBM perspective the principle “point of church” is to provide the necessary ordinances for salvation. What separates us from any other person in any other church is that we have the ordinances. We also believe that at some point each and every child of our Heavenly Father will receive the ordinances (or make a fully informed choice to refuse them and turn their backs on their Father. There are differences of opinion about how far God will go to attempt to rehabilitate these sons of perdition.). In that future state where virtually all have received the ordinances then the only thing that separates us is the way that we lived our life – the character we developed, the experiences we had, the fellow human beings that we helped.

I also do not believe that life/church is a competition for us to win or lose. My measure of success does not depend on how many people are below me (or above me) on the ladder. If I live a life of smugness on how successful (or right) I am and use that to grind it into the face of those I see as less worthy than me – In that state I believe that I would be missing “the point of church” and life and stunting my personal growth potential/experience.

Heber13 wrote:

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.

Yes, that is a good way to put it. :thumbup:

[Anonymous]

My Dad really helped me with this once. I was worried out of my head about going to a foreign country, giving up my credit, my security, my life in my domestic country. The feedback from other expats were that employers wouldn’t follow through on their promises to help you become a full citizen or greencard holder. My kids were very young, and there were a lot of fears.

I asked my Dad “what if I make the wrong decision???”. His answer was “Then you deal with it”. Meaning, compensate, make course corrections, etcetera.

The problem I ran into was exactly as my research said — employer renigged on the green card. But you know what, I dealt with it. It came at a personal cost (my time, money, and stress — my hair went white through the experience), but we are all citizens now. I won. I triumphed. I don’t regret it.

So, part of having confidence in your decisions is found in having FAITH you can deal with the unexpected when it happens. My experience is that it IS possible to triumph even when things you didn’t expect fall out from the decision you made.

[Anonymous]

Always Thinking wrote:

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!

Pardon my lateness to this thread, but I have wanted to reply since I first read your post a while back. I want to encourage you to trust yourself, because I think that at some point you will realize that is all you can really rely on. You have come to see how unreliable spiritual experiences can be. I think you are fortunate to learn this at a young age. You can learn from other people and trust that at least their intentions are good, but ultimately no one is a greater expert on what is best for you, than you.

For me, trusting my own judgment came with age, in my fifties. I sure wish it had come sooner. I think I would have been much better off had I accepted the full responsibility of adulthood, including the ability to fully own my choices even if they were mistakes.

Under the Support forum is a sticky on Fowler’s stages of faith. Stage 4 is called Individuative/Reflective IIRC. That “individuative” term that the spell checker flags as I write this basically means that you trust your own judgment and begin to find your own authentic “faith” under Fowler’s rather broad definition of the term. I encourage you to read that thread and Fowler’s book as well. Fowler believed that people usually do not drop back to a lower stage because they find the higher stages are superior to the lower stages. So trusting yourself is a developmental step that will serve you well in the long run.

Allow your anxiousness about making your own choices motivate you to learn about ways to recognize truth. Learn the scientific method. Learn about logic. Learn about the strengths and the weaknesses of the aforementioned. And understand that the advice you receive from others may be valuable, or it may be worth exactly what you paid for this.

A thought that just came to me was a Dr. Seuss story called (IIRC) “Oh, The Places You’ll Go”. I think it is in The Sneetches And Other Stories. That is what I want to tell you, because that is what I wish my 25-year-old self had learned. I wish you well on this journey called life.

[Anonymous]

The scriptures say to trust in God and NOT lean on the arm of flesh. That includes ALL people, not just bad ones.

That alone is worth considering. In the end, it is what you believe God wants that matters – and Jesus said ALL the law and prophets hang on loving God and his children, so that seems like a great place to start and to build your foundation.

[Author]

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