Living After The Manner of Happiness

From the front of the notebook where I am keeping track of what I am learning.

In the Book of Mormon the prophet Nephi says that his people "lived after the manner of happiness".  In the Bible it says to "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart" (Proverbs 3:5), and also, "...God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7)

I try to be a happy person, and I would say that I try really, really hard to live after the manner of happiness, and yet, I feel like I can do better.  I can be happier.  I can trust God more, and fear less, and find more joy.  It is true that we are not going to feel happy all of the time, but I feel like I can be happy more often.

My niece Emma told me about a talk that Elder Holland gave about this very topic.  I think listening to it was the perfect beginning to my study of this subject.  This is my summary of what he said; We put our head into living after the manner of happiness.  We fight for it.  We strive for it.  We insist upon it.  We participate relentlessly in working for it.  (2015 Devotional given at BYU Idaho titled "Living After the Manner of Happiness)

As hard as I have worked at being happy, this talk made me realize that I have not tried hard enough.  I have not worked relentlessly at keeping my thoughts from being negative, especially when thinking about myself.  I have not worked relentlessly on figuring out how, in the very moment that negative thoughts arise, I can banish them and can feel God's love instead.  I get tired, and give in, and sometimes those thoughts are really persistent and, quite frankly I need to learn to ask for help more often.

I have just begun my study and have already seen a couple of successes.  There was a moment when I was able to stop myself from my usual negative reaction to something, and laugh instead.  There have also been moments when I have realized that I still wait for other people to "make" me happy instead of taking charge of myself.  My goal this year is to learn more about how to live after the manner of happiness, and to practice applying what I learn.