Formula for Success
By President Thomas S. Monson

First Counselor in the First Presidency

First, fill your mind with truth; second, fill your life with service; and third, fill your heart with love.


Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
gratitude: losing yourself in thanks and generosity


Attitude On Money

§  What is your attitude toward money?
The first thing we need to understand about money is that is not evil. Money is neither good nor bad. The Love of money or the obsession with accumulating money from others unrighteously, no matter what the method, may be evil, but money in and of itself is neither good nor evil.

Money has great power. It is the power to feed ourselves and our families, power to purchase or rent shelter and to buy transportation. It is the power to purchase medicine for our sick children and power to go on missions when we are young and power to go on missions when we are old. The power to purchase clothes to keep us warm when the Rexburg winds blow and chill you to the bone. Realize this million-dollar bill can give the possessor of this bill the power to buy a million hamburgers for hungry children or buy a million bullets to kill the innocent. It can buy a million pills to treat the sick or a million cigarettes to make people sick. It isn't the million dollars that is bad or evil but how it is used. The possession of excess money often reveals or exposes what kind of a person the individual is.

§  How can your view of money affect the way you live?
Money can make good men better. Now I ask you, as Latter-day Saints, should we seek for riches? Jacob, writing in Jacob 2: 18-19 seems to me to say yes, it is alright to seek after money, if we do it in the proper order, after we have received a hope in Christ. And if we seek after money to do good. "After ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good - to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted." Jacob 2:19. I can testify to this because in my own life, seeking after money and the creation of wealth has enabled me to do many good things that I could not do without money, especially in the area of liberating the captive. This is part of the work my wife and I have been doing for Filipino returned missionaries. We have established an Academy in the Philippines, called the Academy for Creating Enterprise. So far we have graduated more than 10,000 returned missionaries from many different countries who are now becoming self-reliant by applying what they learned at the Academy. Through the wonderful opportunity of education you are liberated and can liberate others that are held captive by their ignorance. One of the big factors that distinguishes the rich from the poor is their chances for learning.

§  What rules are recommended for prospering?
Rule 1. Seek the Lord and have hope in him
Rule 2. Keep the commandments, that includes the temporal ones, tithing and fast offerings.
Rule 3. Think about money and plan how you can become self-reliant.
Rule 4. Take advantage of chances for learning so you will not be ignorant of these matters.
Education, as President Hinckley has taught us, is the Key to Opportunity.
Rule 5. Learn the laws upon which the blessings of wealth are predicated.
Rule 6. Do not send away the naked, the hungry, the thirsty or the sick or those who are held captive.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Leader

Randy Haykin: The Making of an Entrepreneur.”   “The transition went fairly smoothly because I had an amazing first and second year in business. In most start-ups, it takes several years to grow, make money, and find your niche. In my first year at Interactive Minds, I tripled my salary and found myself doing amazing projects with total choice and control over what I was doing.” “The down-side, after the first year, is that I was beginning to feel lonely heading up a small start-up on my own. There were also elements of the business that I didn't enjoy -- bookkeeping, managing people's problems, getting customers to pay their bills, and to a certain extent the constant business development. (When you run your own consulting business, you are in perpetual business development mode.) The biggest challenge of the entrepreneurial situation was balancing family and work.” “of course partners bring on a whole new set of frustrations—for example, how much autonomy was I willin...
Read more
What I have been really pondering is whether it is worth it for me to start my own business or just work at an existing one.   I think for me, it makes more sense to work at an existing company.   I can still wow them and start gaining flexibility because of my results.   I want to be able to take vacation and actually turn off work.   I just do not have the drive to work at something forever and hope that it becomes successful.
Read more
How Do You Find Your Passion and How Do You Pursue It? Randy Komisar , Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers How do I know what my passion is? Rather than thinking about THE passion, think about a portfolio of passion and match with opportunity in front of you You will be paralyzed by trying to figure out what is My Passion? And What is the end mark that I am going to make. Instead, decide what is important to you, what are your morals and now what am I going to do next? “My career makes no sense at all in the windshield, it only makes sense in the rear view mirror.” A Hero’s Journey   “you have a very special mission on this earth, a mission that will succeed beyond your wildest dreams, if you have the faith and the courage to find your entrepreneurial calling.” The Hero’s Journey is all about you, but it is not about you at all. Seeing struggles as adventures and setbacks as lessons. What matters most isn’t the prize at the end, but how the hero is chan...
Read more