Increasing ability through developing character traits - Tranquility

When I decided to work on the virtue of tranquility I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I enjoyed it so much I extended it by about a week. It was an amazing experience and look forward to the next rotation to work on it even further.

How does one work on the virtue of tranquility? It was something that I really did not know where to kind of start. Just before I started this week I heard somebody say, “If you really want to get to know yourself, go for a whole week driving your car in silence.” This would mean no radio, no phone calls, pretty much nothing. The first morning I did this I thought I was going to go crazy. It is amazing how much your mind bounces and wanders when you are left alone with nothing but your thoughts.

I have so much going on in life that it was nice by the end to be spending some time just being quiet. With work, family, school, and all the little projects I am trying to work on life gets really hectic. I really believe that what Franklin meant by the virtue of tranquility is to just be quiet and listen. As someone I know is fond of saying, Shut your pie hole!

Another thing that I did was to make sure that I spent a couple minutes in the morning and evening meditating and praying. I don’t think I am the only that when I pray I kind of say a prayer but don’t pause to listen for an answer. I believe that there is a lot of power in pausing and listening for an answer. Meditation also helped to clear out my head.

With the time I spent just being quiet I had time to recognize more about how my mind works and how I process thoughts. It was a nice additional benefit I did not expect. It has helped me to slow down and focus my thoughts a bit more when I process things. This has helped me to increase patience and truly think before I speak.

I was just thinking that it is funny that after having worked on tranquility I don’t have a whole lot to say about it.

Next week is persistence.

Increasing ability through developing character traits - Faith

Choosing to work on the personal virtue of faith was quite an interesting task. First, I had to decide what aspect of faith I wanted to work on. Do I concentrate on the spiritual? Do I concentrate on faith in myself? When initially looking at it I did not think it would be that complicated to figure out. I did however figure something out. I decided to focus on faith as I went through my daily activities. How would my decisions affect my faith?

Being conscious of your faith in making decisions and reviewing at the end of your day how your decisions proved to be interesting. I found that while a lot of the choices I made would have been the same without this active focus, the focus did help me to see how our choices effect our eternal progression. Would the environment some of my potential decisions put me in have a negative or positive influence on my faith?

In looking at some of my routines and habits I did a couple of things a little differently. First, I wanted to actively increase my faith during the week. I made sure that I read scriptures before going to bed along with books and talks of a spiritual nature. I also continued to pray on my knees before going to bed. I have been doing the latter consistently now for about 3 ½ weeks. It is starting to have a profound impact on my life. I see things much longer term and can see with more clarity the roads my potential decisions would lead me down. Doing both of activities mentioned above helped me to close out on a peaceful note and therefore sleep a little better.

Another decision and change of habit that just kind of came about with this focus was how I spent my commuting time. On average I usually just drop the radio on whatever type of music I’m feeling like. Some occasions I would listen to some talk radio. The last week I haven’t played any music at all while driving. I have either listened to downloaded recording of talk radio shows or listened to some books on tape. This has had the effect of increasing my knowledge both intellectually and in regards to a basic awareness. By focusing on faith I viewed the news of the day and other events through the prism of faith. It is amazing to see how differently you internalize information when viewed through this particular prism.

Jesus Christ in the countless times He healed others during His earthly ministry would often send the recipients off with the phrase, “Thy faith hath made thee whole.” I have always just viewed that as a combination of their being physically healed as well as spiritually healed through a forgiveness of their sins. This week has brought me a new perspective on this. In focusing on my faith it has allowed me to see things much more clearly. It has allowed me to see all the components of my life and how they fit together within the big eternal picture. All of the pieces of my life are now coming into picture as one complete whole. As I slowly bring these pieces together and find balance between them it makes me whole as a person.

As I go through this little experiment of working on a virtue every week and thinking back on it in review, I am just going to continue blogging about them. I will just keep the rotation going and see how each instance builds upon the last.

My virtue for this next week is going to be……vision.