Incorrect Thinking, New Ways, We Saw Giants, Come on In, Sad News

 Emotional Resilience - Incorrect Thinking Patterns

The foundational principle in our emotional resilience lesson this last week was "Our Divine Identity and Purpose".  When we don't have the correct understanding of our true identity,  we can more easily slip into inaccurate thinking patterns. Here is one of our favorite quotes from the lesson material: 

 

“Be careful how you characterize yourself. Don’t characterize or define yourself by some temporary quality. The only single quality that should characterize us is that we are a son or daughter of God. That fact transcends all other characteristics, including race, occupation, physical characteristics, honors, or even religious affiliation” (Dallin H. Oaks, “How to Define Yourself,” New Era, June 2013, 48).

We might frequently find ourselves focusing our thoughts on what is wrong or negative. Inaccurate thinking patterns may lead us to see the worst possible outcomes to a situation. These distorted thoughts cause us to feel bad about ourselves and others. We all experience negative thoughts, but sometimes we get stuck in them and don’t see the inaccurate thinking pattern and how it is hurting our emotional health.

Here are some common inaccurate thinking patterns:  

    All or Nothing - Seeing something or someone as all good or all bad.

    Mislabeling - Taking something that happened and making broad or incorrect statements.

    Jumping to Conclusions - Interpreting others' thoughts or assuming the worst possible outcome.

    Personalizing - Blaming yourself or someone else for a situation that in reality involved many factors.

    Emotional Reasoning - Judging a situation based on how you feel.

    Overgeneralization -  Applying one experience and generalizing it to all experiences. 

    Negative Mental Filter - Focusing on a negative detail and dwelling on it. 

    Discounting the Positive - Rejecting all positive experiences because you don't feel like they count.

    Magnification - Exaggerating your weaknesses or comparing them to others' strengths. 

    Should Statements - Telling yourself how things should or should not be.

 

While thinking errors bind us and limit our happiness and ability to grow, challenging those thinking errors and replacing them with more accurate thoughts will “make [us] free” (John 8:32).  So if you are feeling badly about a situation, do some introspection and see if you can identify an incorrect thinking pattern and try to replace it with more correct thinking.

A New Edition of  'Preach My Gospel'  

The church announced this last week a new edition of the Preach My Gospel reference material.  We love this new image of the Plan of Salvation diagram:

In the announcement of this updated resource, President Oaks said "The primary objective in preaching the restored gospel of Jesus Christ today should be to [bring] people to Christ.  Today, as fewer and fewer citizens and even Christians understand the great mission of our Lord Jesus Christ, the theme of Jesus Christ needs to dominate our teaching." In a letter from the First Presidency, we read the purpose of this updated resource is "to inspire and help members and missionaries to invite and help others to come unto Christ and be gathered to Him."

Visiting the Giants

As we visited the Robsons (our new friends in Inchture, Scotland) this last week we were greeted by some giants.  Apparently, Patrick Matthew of Gowrie, Scotland received some giant Redwood seeds in 1853 from his gold panning sons in California. These seeds were planted in the Carse of Gowrie and it is thought that this is the first place in the world that these mammoth Redwood trees were planted outside their natural habitat of California.   These great trees can symbolize the great patriarchs of our past, like Moses and Abraham, even Jesus Christ, who have taught us wonderful truths-- when these truths are planted in our hearts as the seeds from these trees, and we appropriately nurture them, we can partake of the fruit therefrom.  Good seeds produce good trees and good fruit-- and can feed us spiritually for life and eternity.

Open House

We opened the church up for tours and were delighted to have 7 friends visit us with the desire to be taught the truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Our Newcastle contingency of Elders and Sisters were delighted with the results.  

Sad News

Well, the sad news is that we have totally enjoyed the English meat and potatoes meals as well as breads, pastries and custard!   So much so that we are going to bring it home with us! Not!  The enjoyment of the food has caused significant weight gain!  We are committed to change this so we don't have to buy a whole new wardrobe.  We are going public with this information so we can hold ourselves more accountable.