Wannabetraddad

     This week of our studies was a great reminder for me. The three most important concepts that I learned this week are: be monogamous in your career, you have to make time for your family, friends, and fun (and don’t try to crunch that time), and be loyal to God and family. The next three paragraphs will address these concepts respectively.      I think that it is extremely important to keep your mind on just one career. It's easy to try and make money in a lot of different areas, but that can split your focus, and make you feel spread thin. This can be especially important when it comes to trying to be emotionally available for your family. This stuck out to me because I am somebody who does tend to spread myself thin. I want to be able to focus on one area of my life at a time. I can see the strength that comes from mastering a specific area of my life. What that does is gives me a certain foundation, professionally, so that I can take whatever challenges that come in stride,

     This week we learned from many successful self-made entrepreneurs the things that they think are successful. They were all asked what the most important thing was to making a successful entrepreneur- is it skill, character, or luck. Many of them answered with skill. To which, I definitely agree, but I don’t think that it’s everything. I think that we all have natural skills that help us to be exceptionally proficient in a specific area of our lives, but we also need to to work on those, and practice them. On top of that, character is what makes the reputation. I know that it’s not very popular to work on how you are presented, but I feel like it means so much to your customers and other people that you do business with. It gives you a reputation, and whether that is honorable or not is up to your beliefs and actions that are reflected in your business. That reputation will influence the amount of business that comes to you as well. Furthermore, I know that there has to be a presen

     This week we wrote a short essay on what our life plan of core values would be. I would like to share exactly those. You will notice a simple pattern with each of my core values. They follow this structure: defining the core value, making an active statement or two, and stating a positive affirmation. The positive affirmation is weird for me, but I believe what I have been taught, and that is that the more that I say positive things, they become planted in my subconscious mind, and I will become that person that I strive to be. I also have to mention that these values are important to me, and therefore will contain more of the beliefs that motivate me and bring purpose and fulfillment to my life.       Charity: w ithout pure love for everyone, I am nothing. The greatest joys in life are found when we exercise love. We become more like the Savior when we love. I will always choose to love. If I feel that I am out of love to give, I will still give love. I love everyone enduringly.

     Honesty is an especially meaningful topic to me. It is arguably the most important thing to me in relationships, in academics, and in life in general. It started for me as a child. I had a natural tendency to lie and to steal. My mom had this way of always knowing what the truth was. Or, maybe she didn’t, but the moral dilemma was enough for me to believe that she always knew. She learned to first address my misdemeanor by reminding me that the consequences of being honest were always better than the consequences of lying. Then, she would ask me if I was lying. Regardless of my response, she would say, “I’m going to give you one more chance to be honest,” and then repeat the question. When I would initially double-down and lie, that follow up question always got me. Thankfully, I was raised by some incredible parents who helped me to learn from the consequences of my own actions, rather than by unnecessary punishment. That has had a profound and lasting impact on my life. Because

  I have been learning a bit this week about Randy Pausch. He was somebody that was able to achieve a lot of his childhood dreams, and I have a few reasons why I believe he was able to achieve them. First and foremost, as a testament to my field of studies, his parents encouraged his imagination and dreams by allowing him to write on the walls. I don’t think that allowing your kids to write on the walls is the key to children achieving their dreams, but the principle behind it is what’s important. Secondly, he persisted in the face of “brick walls,” or challenges that most people would see as an end to their dreams. One of my favorite quotes from him is, “experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.” In my opinion, dreaming and pondering is important. If we don’t dream, where is our ambition for life? Perhaps we have had experiences where we get discouraged or overwhelmed at the reality or belief of achieving our dreams. From examples of people I have been associated wi