Happy People

As it's the Sabbath, I thought I might share a little spiritual thought/motivation. For Christmas, my in-laws bought me Elder Holland's new book "To My Friends: Messages of Counsel and Comfort" and I absolutely love it! Each chapter focuses on a different gospel-related topic that he has spoken about in his talks. I love skipping around the book and finding a chapter about something I really need to hear at the moment. 

Lately I've been feeling a bit down and I haven't had a lot of confidence in myself. I've decided I want to live my life more positively, so last night I read the chapter called, "To My Friends Who Seek Happiness." I loved this chapter because it was based on the talk he gave back in September at a BYU-Idaho devotional (I'm so sad Zach and I missed him giving this talk!!!). If you haven't read or listened to this, you seriously should. Elder Holland's talks are always amazing, but I honestly think this is one of his best! 

My two favorite parts of the chapter were 1) we should live after the manner of happiness and 2) we need to do the things that happy people do. He talks about how in The Book of Mormon, Nephi does not say that he and his people were happy. He says they lived after the manner of happiness. So this basically means that if you want to be happy, you should live life as if you already were happy! I'd never thought about that verse in that way before, but it makes so much sense and it kind of clicked in my mind that I want to live my life in that way too.

And then he said that we need to live our lives doing the things that happy people do. So I thought about all the people in my life who just seem to exude happiness and positivity. And I thought of the Savior and how He set the most perfect example of service and love and positivity that ever existed. I have all of these amazing role models all around me and I now know that if I want to be like them, I need to do what they do. Follow their examples. As Elder Holland said:

"Your best chance for being happy is to do the things that happy people do. Live the way happy people live. Walk the path that happy people walk. And your chances to find joy in unexpected moments, to find peace in unexpected places, to find the help of angels when you didn't even know they knew you existed, improves exponentially."

So here's to a new beginning. A new happy beginning. :)