Look at me being all ponderous and thoughtful with no (deliberate) stupid humor! Look at my tendonitis flaring up!

Over at Segullah they were talking about how to know if you’re really “doing your best,” and I got a little long-winded in the comments thread, so I thought I’d better recycle my comment here (since being green is the new black.  Or something.)

A lot of what I’m saying here either assumes familiarity with LDS doctrine and practice, or is responding to others’ comments over there, but I’m just going to leave it how it is and let you figure it out.

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I love that as often as not, by the time I’ve finished reading a thread here, everyone’s covered everything I would have said. I particularly enjoyed the comments in this thread; there is so much wisdom and thoughtfulness here.

I do have a couple things the comments made me think of, concerning motivation. When I’m feeling overwhelmed with all of the things I should do, it helps me a lot when I try to think of which things I actually want to do, and why, and do those things first. Sometimes even if I don’t want to do the task(s), I do want the outcome, and that can be motivating, but it’s even more motivating when I can see a way that the process itself is connected to my righteous desires. My less-helpful usual way of thinking is to think of something like going to the temple as something I should be doing, and probably am not doing enough, and to consider myself to be in a state of failure in regards to the task. Then going to the temple becomes an attempt to redeem myself (instead of letting the Atonement redeem me,) and I’m no longer attending for the experience’s own sake–and I lose my sense of wanting to attend (because it will never be enough; it only erases the debt but doesn’t put me in the black.) If I can re-frame my thoughts to remember that I can be in good graces with the Savior according to the state of my heart before I’ve even made it to the temple, and instead think about why I WANT to go to the temple, and what I will enjoy about going, I’ll stop being hard on myself and instead will start trying to find a way to get there, in order to get what I want. (Sometimes it’s really not within reason to get there that week, and then in the short term I just have to find some other way to meet that desire for renewal of covenants and nearness to God.) I try to adjust my thinking in the same way with other tasks, thinking of why I wanted them in the first place: I want to do my visiting teaching because I need friends and care about those sisters, because I am interested in their lives, because I crave Gospel conversations, and because it is a nice break from my kids. I want to do laundry because I like seeing dirty things get new life as clean things.

This all goes along with all of your great comments about how Satan wants us to feel discouraged, etc. When I can adjust my thinking this way, it helps me live in the moment and let my actual experiences “count” rather than dutifully checking them off the list, all the while feeling that they are not enough and never will be enough.

I can be very task-oriented and pretty far toward the hard-on-myself end of the personality spectrum, so the above way of thinking doesn’t usually come naturally to me, but it does help me a lot when I remember to stop and think about why I’m doing what I’m doing, and allow myself to enjoy the process.

Here’s one more related coping technique of mine: Instead of having a goal to finish a task, I try instead to just plan to work on the task. As the mom of 5 young kids, (which I had on purpose, and am learning things from by accident–love that title,) as often as not I can’t finish what I begin, so if my goal is just to work on something, I can still feel successful even if I have to quit working on it long before it’s complete.

I guess these ideas are just practical ways to make the adjustment from trying (impossibly) to atone for my own sins, versus trusting that the Atonement will take care of them, and doing good because I love the Savior and am allowing my heart to be changed.

Now I’m trying to tie this back in to the idea of whether or not we’re truly doing our best, but I’m pretty sleepy by now–hmmm. Okay: so on the one hand our false “best” could be like Alma’s “Oh that I were an angel . . . but I am a man and do sin in my wish” sentiment of wanting to accomplish things with superhuman power, this being a sin when it denies God’s plan (taking matters into our own hands) and doesn’t accept His time frame or His respect for our agency. On the other hand, our true “best” would be like Nephi’s faith that we can do whatever the Lord truly asks of us (which may or not be what our neighbor thinks they know it to be,) and having our hearts changed so that we have “no more desire to do evil, but to do good continually.” (Forgive the quotes without references; I think my personal best right now might be try to alleviate some sleep deprivation, so I’ll just say that they’re quoted from memory and are somewhere in the Book of Mormon.)

Thanks again for all of your wonderful comments; this was a bit of a feast (or anyway a really filling midnight snack.)

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