“Are You Happy?”: Keys To Happiness

by: Nicholeen Peck

“Men are that they might have joy.”  Really?  Is this what life is about; finding happiness?  Yes.  The Lord said, “For this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the eternal life and happiness of man.”  The Savior’s sacrifice was intended to bring us happiness.  The gospel principles and ordinances are  intended for our eternal joy. From the beginning of time, our lives were prescribed to experience happiness and sadness for our learning and benefit, and we were admonished to choose the path of happiness.

With such a grand plan for happiness, why do so many people seem so sad?  Why do couples fight?  Why do child pout in their rooms and roll their eyes at their parents?  These behaviors are not happy.  Why do people choose to do them?  Continue reading →

Question

“I am a much better, calmer parent than I used to be since starting to focus on teaching myself and my children self-government, but I still have two issues I seem to constantly battle; attitude problems and whining. What do you do when the child won’t calm down, and won’t do what you tell him? How do you stop whining?”

Answer

Learning to be a better parent is just like any other learning process. We learn “line upon line; precept upon precept, here a little, there a little.” We recognize what principles we need to focus on first, and then as we improve we will see what our new parenting focus needs to be next.

The majority of people first recognize that they need to fix themselves first by being calm and in control. Next people usually see a need for increased structure at home as well as skills to teach the children so that they can have more positive parenting interactions. Finally, parents are ready to take on the big behavior problems which they initially wanted to learn self-government for, such as attitude problems and anger control issues. Continue reading →

“Porter, what is that?” asked my Chinese friend Phil when he was visiting our home this last week from China.

“The moon.” replied eight year old Porter as he looked at the sky.

“In Chinese the moon has a different name.” Phil went on.

Phil told Porter the two syllable word which means moon in Chinese, but Porter struggled with the new sounds. After a minute Porter was able to reproduce the sound combinations, but something was still missing. Phil had Porter listen to him say the word again and again so that Porter could make the sounds with the correct tone. Finally, Porter said the Chinese word for moon with the proper tone, soft in one place and more abrupt in another place. From this simple vocabulary lesson, Porter learned that good communication skills require two things, the action and the tone. Continue reading →