Attitude over Obstacles
As a teenager, I had a bad attitude. One day, I came home from seventh grade, slammed my books on the table, and began my habitual rant about the mounds of unfair homework, friends that ditched me, girls that ignored me, and the injustice of being shorter than not just the seventh graders but most of the fifth graders. My mom unsympathetically put down her iron and replied to my complaints: “You know Blake, you can’t always choose your circumstances, but you can choose your attitude. And by the way, you have a list of chores you need to do before dinner.” My mom’s words settled deep. I am not sure why, but it is as if it were the first time I had entertained the notion that I did have some control over situations that in the past left me feeling like a victim, powerless over my destiny. It was empowering. I suddenly understood obstacles were here to stay but my attitude and how I reacted was 100 percent mine. Mom was right and at that moment I had what the Savior refers to as a change of heart.
I’d like you to consider for a moment a quote from Elder Angel Abrea, former member of the Quorum of the Seventy: "Tribulation, afflictions, and trials will constantly be with us in our sojourn here in this segment of eternity, just as the Savior said [in John 16:33], ‘In the world ye shall have tribulation.’ Therefore, the great challenge in this earthly life is not to determine how to escape the afflictions and problems, but rather to carefully prepare ourselves to meet them."[1]
There is a story of a wealthy king that had a reputation for being irksome and vexatious. One day, he ordered a massive boulder be placed in the middle of one of the most travelled roads in the kingdom. The king knew it was going to get in people’s way, but he ordered his servants to place it there anyway.
The first group of people who bumped into it reacted with utter annoyance.
“Doesn’t the King have anything better to do than find entertainment in annoying others?” they would say.
Because they thought it was an act that only called for attention, they ignored the boulder in the middle of the road. They walked around it, irritated, and never looked back. Several more groups of people were bothered by the king’s incessant ploys to get attention. And the rest showed apathy and continued walking their path. Years passed without changes to people’s reactions towards the sight of a boulder in the middle of the road.
One day, a peasant carrying loads of vegetables stopped to notice this boulder. Rather than walk past it, he tried to move it to the side of the road. His agenda was to move it from the center of the road in order to get it out of people’s way. Because it was a heavy boulder, it took ingenuity and hours to move. It also took much of his energy, so he sat down to rest before continuing his journey.
But as he was resting, his eye noticed something shiny. It was under the boulder’s original location. He was curious. And so, he went near it. He then discovered it was a purse made of gold. When he opened it, he found a note from the king: “Congratulations! Go to my kingdom and present this note. A pot of gold—your reward—is waiting for you.”
The lesson the king wanted to impart is not all roadblocks are useless. If a person invests time and effort into overcoming them, it won’t be long until they notice these roadblocks can also be blessings in disguise.
David B. Haight wisely commented, “One of the most important lessons I have learned is that our capacity as children of God becomes what it has to be. We should never minimize or underestimate our ability to deal with challenges placed before us. The size or complexity of challenges need not be a cause for alarm or despair. Human potentiality is perhaps the most squandered resource on earth, and possibly the least tapped.”[2]
Today holds special meaning for me, and not because I am speaking at devotional. It is December 7. It is a “date that will live in infamy.”[3]
On this day, December 7, 1941, exactly 80 years ago, a dive bomber appeared out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 360 warplanes followed, descending on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow against the US Pacific fleet and drew the United States irrevocably into World War II.
Before December 7, the Navy and Army were severely undermanned. After that fateful day, “all recruiting records of the nation’s armed forces were shattered” as young men waited in long lines to sign up.[4] My father, who had just turned 20 days before, was one of those young men. He and his two best friends, Phil Shumway and Grant Turley, signed up with the Army Military Air Corps to be fighter pilots. Within a year, they would both be shot down. Grant was killed over Germany after becoming an ace pilot. Phil Shumway was shot down in the Philippine Sea but survived. He remained floating in a rubber raft without food or water for ten days before being rescued. He survived by observing seagulls land on his small rubber raft and snatching them as they landed. Phil Shumway’s grit and determination to survive helped him through this terrible ordeal. Both Grant and Phil met their obstacles head on, no excuses, no shirking their responsibility, regardless of the sacrifice.
My father was also trained as a fighter pilot. He was shipped to North Africa and became a photo-reconnaissance pilot. He would fly a spy plane, taking pictures over enemy territory flying solo. My father had no escort and no weapons, just a camera. After numerous missions flying over North Africa, Italy, and Austria, his plane was also shot down. My father fell in Northwest Italy, near the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He bailed out of his fiery plane, landing approximately 200 miles behind enemy lines. Thankfully, the Italian partisan resistance forces saw his plane go down. They saw his parachute and ran to his rescue before the Germans could find him.
For the next three months, and with the help of his new-found friends, he and other Allied officers snuck past the Germans through high mountain passes and valleys to make it safely to Rome. Sadly, many of those that helped my father and others like him eventually were captured, and many perished in concentration camps. I was blessed to have a father that would tell me stories of real life heroes, not comic book heroes, but people who lived real lives, facing obstacles with steadfastness and determination.
Another example I’ve had in my life of attitude over obstacles is my father-in-law. Don Carter was born in the family farmhouse in Preston, Idaho, in 1920. When I met Don, I was impressed with his easy confidence, success, and intelligence, so I was surprised to learn he was illiterate. Knowing what we now know, I am sure he had dyslexia, but he made up for this shortcoming with a good head for business, common sense, and gift for gab, not necessarily a valued trait in 1920 grade schools.
He hated school. He would jokingly tell my children stories of sleeping on the hardwood floor to make the nights longer and begging his father to let him stay home and work on the farm. His father would say, “Don, when you are smarter than the teacher you don’t have to go to school anymore.” Don, with a twinkle in his eye would tell my children, “That is why I dropped out of school in the second grade.” Don said that a certain teacher told him that he wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans, and that he had better have a strong back and learn how to swing a hammer because that is what he would be doing, hammering spikes in the railroad to put bread on the table. Fortunately for Don, there was another teacher that took him under his wing and he credits him for his success. A high school agriculture teacher, Yale Holland, saw potential in this backward farm boy and mentored him throughout his high school years.
He started to work with Don’s interest in cattle. In 1939, Don was on his way with his prize bull and Mr. Holland to the San Francisco Fair—one of many prize Hereford bulls he would then go on to raise. Difficulties were part of life for Don, but he relished a good challenge. With a positive attitude, never giving in to becoming a victim, he overcame what could have been used as an excuse for failure. Instead he learned compassion for others through his struggles and thrived. He mentored many other underdogs and helped them find success in the cattle industry.
Sister Holly Johnson, in last week’s devotional, reminded us that there is a growth in each season of our lives which requires effort on our part.
Obstacles will arise in some form in all of our lives. How we prepare for it, how we meet it, makes all the difference. We can be broken by obstacles, or we can become stronger. The final result relies heavily on your attitude. Are you prepared to triumph?
Henry Fielding, a 16th century English novelist, said: “Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.”
Challenges can be a valuable tool in our pursuit toward earthly and eternal goals. Obstacles need have no necessary connection with failure. Attitude, self-management, and self-discipline in all of our trials will bring only strength. Bad habits seem to beget bad habits. Good habits encourage additional good habits. When we complain, avoid, or make excuses, we become weaker and give external forces the power to write the story of our life. The problems remain the same. Instead of excuses, look for answers. Instead of giving up at the first rock in the road, look for a way to move the rock. An obstacle to the valiant is an opportunity for growth.
From Harry Emerson Fosdick we read, “The most extraordinary thing about the oyster is this, irritations get into his shell. He does not like them. But when he cannot get rid of them, he uses the irritation to do the loveliest thing an oyster ever has a chance to do. If there are irritations in our lives today, there is only one prescription: make a pearl.”[5]
As I look around at all of you in this beautiful building on this beautiful campus, I think of the Prophet Joseph Smith and the obstacles he faced so we could be here today. Since the First Vision, Joseph’s life was seldom free from adversity.
Vicious verbal abuse and physical threats were a regular occurrence. False arrests and malicious court trials were numerous. Over the years, many Church members, including close associates and even some members of the Twelve, betrayed him, and yet his attitude was never defeated. He teaches by example not to avoid the rocks in our life but to in fact embrace them as refining opportunities.
He is quoted as saying, “I am like a huge rough stone rolling . . . and the only polishing I get is when some corner gets rubbed off by coming in contact with something else, striking with accelerated force . . . thus I will become a smooth and polished shaft in the quiver of the Almighty.”[6]
When I ponder my life before coming to BYU-Idaho and the 30 years I have spent here, it seems to me in retrospect many of the meaningful times I have experienced were times I struggled or had to work through challenges.
One of my summer jobs immediately after my mission was to clean sprinkler nozzles and change gear boxes and flat tires on center pivots or circles on a large farm in Tri-Cities, Washington. Like many jobs, I had a few good moments and a lot of trying times. As a token of a job accomplished, on my last day of work, I nailed my shoes to this power pole. It was simply my way of saying: “I gave my soul and soles to this job.” I didn’t think much of it at the time. And I thought a few people would see the shoes and have a good laugh. I thought the shoes would survive on the pole for a few weeks, maybe a few months, and then they would be gone and forgotten. Well, this picture was taken just about a month ago. That is 38 years after I nailed them to that post. These are just a few of my students that have now graduated from our program and have also worked at the same place. I hope the shoes remind them of the meaning of attitude and moving the rocks in your life. That job, it turns out, wasn’t just a job. I have personally relied on many experiences learned at that job to navigate my career at BYU-Idaho.
My dear friends, your current situation in life may feel like an insurmountable challenge at times or like a job where you are just cleaning sprinklers and fixing tires, but I firmly believe your situation is only what you make it because you are not a victim. Attitude is everything.
On the devotional discussion board Anngela Starnes commented, “In my eyes, no matter the situation or circumstance, you stay true to your values and morals, keeping your focus on your Savior; we must endure to the end.” I agree.
This persistence and grit has been studied by Dr. Angela Duckworth, a social scientist. She found that passion and perseverance to reach long term goals can be taught. My understanding is that she left a great career in management consulting to teach seventh grade in the New York public system. It is there she noticed her successful students were not necessarily her smartest students. She decided to go to graduate school to study how people overcome challenges in the learning process. She explained what she found this way: “I started studying kids and adults in all kinds of challenging settings, and in every study my question was, who is successful here and why? My research team and I went to West Point Military Academy. We tried to predict which cadets would stay in military training and which would drop out. We went to the National Spelling Bee and tried to predict which children would advance farthest in competition. We studied rookie teachers working in really tough neighborhoods, asking which teachers are still going to be here in teaching by the end of the school year, and of those, who will be the most effective at improving learning outcomes for their students? We partnered with private companies, asking, which of these salespeople is going to keep their jobs? And who's going to earn the most money? In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It was grit.”[7] Dr. Duckworth went on to develop a grit scale. Here are some of the items:
Setbacks don’t discourage me.
I don’t give up easily.
I am a hard worker.
I finish whatever I begin.
I am diligent.
I will never give up.
I believe we can be as persistent as the peasant moving the rock and find our reward through grit, through enduring to the end. I believe the best way to move our rocks so we can continue down our journey is by listening to the still small voice of our Lord Jesus Christ and obeying His promptings. His voice alone can change our attitude about our rocks. It may not remove the rocks immediately, but it surely will make them bearable and it will make us stronger. In January 2012, President Thomas S. Monson wrote an article titled “Living the Abundant Life” and made the following comment:
William James, a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher, wrote, ‘The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.’ So much in life depends on our attitude. The way we choose to see things and respond to others makes all the difference. To do the best we can and then to choose to be happy about our circumstances, whatever they may be, can bring peace and contentment.
My dear friends, I don’t believe we are meant to do this alone. I firmly believe we should complete our life’s purpose together. In fact, I believe some of the big rocks in our lives will be moved because of the help of a kind roommate, a receptive teacher, or a compassionate staff member. And with God’s help, we can endure to the end while “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”[8] This is my prayer, in the sacred name of our Savior, even Jesus Christ, amen.
Notes
[1] Angel Abrea, “Patience in Affliction,” Ensign, May 1992.
[2] David B. Haight, “My Neighbor—My Brother!,” Ensign, May 1987.
[3] Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Day of Infamy Speech,” Dec. 8, 1941.
[4] Craig Shirley and Scott Mauer, “The Attack on Pearl Harbor United Americans Like No Other Event in Our History,” Washington Post, Dec. 7, 2016.
[5] Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Treasure Chest, ed. Charles L. Wallis, Harper & Row.
[6] Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 304.
[7] Angela Lee Duckworth, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perserverance,” TED Talks Education, May 9, 2013.
[8] Hebrews 12:2.