Tradition!

Imagine a beautiful field. Golden ears of wheat that sway in the wind. As you walk through the crop, you turn back to where you have trod down the grain in your path. The line is faint, but it is there. Now, day after day, you follow that same pattern, and eventually there is no wheat left on the path that you have walked. It is now much easier to walk it, and when you try to take another way, you find that it is more difficult.

Okay, now that I’ve bored you with my elaborate description, imagine this same thing happening in your mind. The more that you follow the same pattern of thinking the more natural it is for your brain to go down that path. When you try to change that pattern, it is difficult to make it a habit, but it is possible. Your brain is creating millions of new neurons every day that have not been used previously. This allows a plasticity in our mind that helps us be able to learn and develop.

If the path that we have made for our brain to follow is negative, then our mind will react as if we are in a negative environment. Even if it is not true, our mind perceives it as so. It then takes practice and productivity to create a new path that is based on the truth. It is not just about having happy thoughts, because sometimes those are not true either. Life can be hard, but we do not have to get stuck in a pattern of thinking that that is the only way things can be. This is what can lead to depression. God has taught “And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come;” (Doctrine & Covenants 93:24). All of section 93 is amazing and I would highly suggest reading the whole thing. (Doctrine & Covenants 93) When we let our thoughts start to determine what we see as truth, rather than letting the truth determine our thoughts, we see the world through a distorted lens.

However, stress does not always come from an interior source, especially in the family. There are stressor events of all kinds that require us to react in one way or another. I will use war as an example. A family's ability to bounce back following an event such as war can determine how well they stay together, because it is not the event that determines the stress, it is how one responds to it. Understanding that you always have a choice, as well as recognizing the resources available to, will help in bouncing back from difficult events. A family that is in the middle of an area plagued with war faces more struggles than many of us will ever know. But in the words of concentration camp survivor, Viktor E. Frankl, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” This does not mean that choosing what is right is easy, but it is always worth it. There are countless times that I lost my patience with someone, or became irritated, confused, or even angry by a situation, but I know from the times that I was patient and understanding that it is worth the extra effort. I understand that I have had a life of relative ease, but through my own struggles I know that striving to follow what is true will be the greatest benefit to each of us in this life.