After teaching school (6th grade) for three years, I thought I could do a lot more good teaching "the gospel" to the youth. After all, what could be more important than helping students climb the ladder to eternal life (I was a silly convert boy).

I was hired in August 1975 and sent to Phoenix, AZ. It started off well, because the stake president (Rudolfo Mortensen, of the Phoenix, East Stake) didn't know his stake had even applied for a new Release Time program.

Anywho, I saved all the monthly pep talks, contained in the publication, The Growing Edge (urge?). Here is the first one I have from October 1975. It reminds me why I always gelt guilty. I was never enough.

Feelings in inadequacy and guilt plagued me every minute of every day for the next 27 years.

After introducing the concept that we (CES sheep) must be exemplary in life as an example to the youth, adults, and PH leaders we serve, we received this "helpful" message from Neal Maxwell, head CES guy.

"With regard to family life, most of us have what might be called My Almost Agendum - a list of things we want to do and know we need to do, but we somehow don't quite get around to doing them. Very often in life, by failing to take small, specific steps, we fall short of attaining a Shangri-la of satisfaction.

"To make this message more specific, therefore, take one specific, doable thing on your Almost Agendum and do it within seven days after you read this message! After you do, I promise you there will e a new measure of momentum appear and a keener interest in taking something else off your Almost Agendum. When you select this item from your Almost Agendum, write it down in a sentence. Then write a specific sentence dealing with one thing you will STOP doing ten another specific sentence dealing with one thing you will START doing in order to complete the task you have selected.

"Those of us who teach of an ultimate judgment and an eternal progression must get more comfortable with the need for daily improvement and interim evaluations, if we are to be consistent."

All those words about consistent improvement became a master with a whip reminding me constantly of my inadequate performance in every area of my life. Yet my puny attempts at progress, never seemed able to keep up.

"No matter how long and grueling my day at the office, I never seem to be any closer to realizing my dream of conquering the world! But I keep on trying!!"

--Adolf Hitler, June 21, 1941, the day before invading Russia



I'm sure we've all seen our share of YouTube videos of someone doing some extraordinary trick or routine.  "How long would I have kept at it?", I ask myself. But I know full well that it wouldn't have been for very long.

I am one whom you, kenc, can count on as an admirer.  While not wanting to be exactly like you, I don't mind admitting that I want to be a little bit more like you.




Edited to correct a spelling error, and to comment that I, too, once shoveled snow, while at the Y.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/2021 03:26PM by elderolddog.

Thank EOD! You just made my day.

Now I have the adrenaline to go shovel show :)

kc

"Those of us who teach of an ultimate judgment and an eternal progression must get more comfortable with the need for daily improvement and interim evaluations, if we are to be consistent."

So why did these inspired men extend the temple recommend interim evaluation to two years? Friends with the DMV?

"Then write a specific sentence dealing with one thing you will STOP doing ten another specific sentence dealing with one thing you will START doing in order to complete the task you have selected."

Sounds like computer programming.

"Yet my puny attempts at progress, never seemed able to keep up."

Yes. That was us furnishing our 50% of their plan.

IF they can't make you feel inadequate then they are powerless.

A couple of points.

First, my grandparents knew and respected Maxwell with the intensity of groupies who once met a rock star and have ever since believed they are best friends--you know, the way EOD feels about Cheech Marin. Anyway, those relatives often told me what a great intellect Maxwell was. The passage you reproduce disabuses me of that impression, for that is some really awkward prose. I guess fawning adoration covereth a multitude of infelicities.

Second, and more importantly, the length of your CES experience is astounding. I knew you did the Lord's work for many a year, but how does a moral thinking man endure what must have been a constant stream of cognitive and emotional conflicts over nearly three decades? I realize the guilt, the sense of inadequacy, bound us all to the church quite effectively, but 27 years of CES involvement must have been very difficult--and having invested so much in the job, leaving can't have been easy.

You must be a very strong man.

No change really between what Maxwell was pushing and what Covey repackaged.

Tyson

That is so very true.

Covey took Mormon teachings, diluted them considerably, and then served them up as business and social principles. He always struck me as a money-changer in the temple, profiting off the religion. He was a showman, the Andy Warhol of religion.

I attended a fireside by Maxwell during my freshman year at a Utah University (Not BYU). I had actually taken a date. A girl named Cindy ( I almost remember what she looked like.) Anyway the goal setting thing went on and on and on, and I was pretty tired of it. I remember as part of his plan for success, I set a goal of getting laid my Freshman year, an achievement that probably was not the success Elder Meanwell intended. But I can testify to you my dear brothers and sisters the acheivment "brought a new measure of momentum and a keener interest in taking something else off my Almost Agendum."

At least you set a reasonable, attainable, worthy, if personal, goal.

But if it was as easy in SLC as it was in Prove - and I can tell you, IT WAS -
I hope you duplicated it in due fashion.

I like goals like this!
VERY worthwhile.