3 Life lessons from a mormon mission
From February 2010 to March 2012, I spent every waking hour as a proselytizing missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often referred to as the Mormon church. Every day from 6:30 am to 10:30 pm, my life was structured. I had time for daily exercise, meetings with other church members, personal and companionship gospel study, journaling, planning, and teaching and finding activities. My life was forever changed.
I am not the first to serve a mission like this. In fact, both my dad and grandpa served missions. My whole life I was excited to go on a mission because of their mission stories. What could be better than helping people in the noblest cause and doing so in a foreign land?
When you apply to serve a mission (colloquially, "putting in your papers") you have no idea where you will be assigned. My dad served in Japan for example, and many of my uncles, cousins, and others served in various places all throughout the world. Opening your assignment (which used to be physically mailed to each missionary) is often a big deal, with family and friends surrounding the soon-to-be missionary. When I opened my assignment, I was to go to Greece and speak the Greek language. Several months later, I was reassigned to Chicago due to civil unrest and other political factors (a story for another time).
There are healthy and unhealthy aspects of a mission. From birth, being raised in an active Mormon family is an all-consuming lifestyle. Like many religions, you are expected to act in a certain way and believe specific things. Plus, apart from the officially taught doctrine, there are cultural and subcultural ways of life, especially when you live in Utah. For example, I was taught to never drink anything with caffeine in it (though not a specific doctrine), and I wasn't allowed to wear shorts to school.
More globally applied doctrines were things like, not shopping on Sundays, not drinking alcohol, and paying 10 percent of your income to the church. These were all normal things for me and my family, and probably 50 percent or more of the town that I grew up in. Church culture is complex, and while I could write an entire book about it, I'll try to stick to my mission for now. Simply, I believed in these things, did my best to follow the teachings, and had a deep relationship with God.
I absolutely loved my mission. It was intense, hard work, both emotionally and physically. I learned a few life lessons that have stuck with me through periods of belief, doubt, and skepticism. Those are what I want to share with you, lessons that could be learned in other ways, but never in such a hands-on, deep way.
Mental Clarity
The first week after returning from my mission, I went to the movie theater. As a missionary, you don't consume any media, except for a few church-made videos, I hadn't seen or watched anything for two years. In fact, until a few years ago missionaries weren't allowed to have social media accounts and only called home twice a year, on Mother's Day and Christmas.
I'm grateful for a connected world, and I wouldn't want to miss family members' birthdays, blockbuster hits, or family funerals again, but this unpopular style of disconnected living is incredible. Today, we are overwhelmed with media. Every news article insists that someone else's problem is also our problem. Ads are placed in front of us thousands of times a day. Simple acquaintances share their daily lives with us, and we consume them. It's a lot.
As the movie finished and the floor lights brightened, I realized I had just experienced my first moment of complete mental surrender since coming home. For two years I was undistracted. I had a simple goal, to bring people to Jesus, and nothing but my own thoughts took me away from that goal.
We all can reap the benefits of a less distracted world. My advice is to simply be intentional with what you consume. And give yourself some direction, a goal. You can only be distracted if you have something to be distracted from.
A few months ago I attempted to simulate a more focused life like I experienced on my mission. I put my phone on my charger and promised not to touch it for the entire month. I could still take phone calls with my airpods, respond to texts on my laptop, and do pretty much anything else a smart phone lets you do.
I learned a few things like, I have other ways of distracting myself, there are interesting people you can talk to while waiting in line, and I’m very dependent on Google maps. Most importantly, I learned that I can happily survive without my phone. I don’t know when or if I’ll go without my phone again, but mental clarity is something I’ll always strive for.
Living a Perfect Day
When I have a stressful day, I often think about the quote from J.R.R. Tolkien in the wonderful moment when Gandalf is consoling Frodo: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." Truly, we cannot control all things that happen to us, all we need to do is decide what to do next. I love this thought. It simplifies my life.
On my mission, I had a daily planner. Every evening for thirty minutes, my companion (all missionaries are paired with 1 or 2 others) and I planned out our next day. Some things like our morning and evening routines were already planned for us. For the rest of the day, we had two columns.
We would pray to be inspired to know how to fill that time and record it in the first column. Then we would make a backup plan in case the first fell through. Every 30-minute chunk of our day was planned. This was the case for over 700 consecutive days of my life.
I was ultra-committed on my mission. I made mistakes, but my intention was pure. I believed that I was doing the exact thing God would have me do. Though many days were hard, that belief propelled me through fatigue and discouragement. It was powerful.
I believe this power can be harnessed in anyone's life. The trick is to sincerely and religiously believe in and trust yourself. If you are able to rely on your plans and commit to them, the feeling of living the way you believe is best can help you power through any challenge.
There seem to be two common ways of spending time and accomplishing tasks in today’s world. (1) The checkbox method or (2) the time-blocking method. Ideally, I’d have both with a more heavy dose of the time-blocking method. When you measure your success on whether or not you spent your time doing what you planned to do, you can have a perfectly successful day very often. Barring emergencies, this measure of success is foolproof.
On the other hand, the checkbox method doesn’t care how long you spend your time on one thing, and if you don’t see a check in the box at the end of the day it’s a 100% fail. I didn’t realize it till much later, but the mission taught me to measure success by effort and by time-blocking.
The world’s most difficult, inspiring, or honorable problems to be solved cannot be ticked off at the end of the day, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth tackling. Trust that your future self will spend time working on your plan, and trust your past self thought hard about what you should spend time on. It’s a powerful duo.
Our Human Responsibility
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself." Over the past ten years since returning from my mission, I've continued to benefit from this fact. Personal values and principles, opportunities, and lifelong friendships can all be tied back to this time when I gave up all my desires to try to help others.
At the peak of my mission, I was an assistant to the president (AP), the man who presides over a region of missionaries (for us that was all of Greater Chicago and about 200 missionaries). We were meeting to determine how to pair missionaries together for the next six weeks, and I was complaining about some missionary and his refusal to be a good companion.
My mission president said something that I'll never forget. "Our responsibility is to help these missionaries, whether they accept the help or not." I was a bit taken aback. Why? Why help those that don't want to be helped? Shouldn't they just figure it out on their own? Why waste our precious time trying to help those not as committed as us?
The number one thing I learned from my Mormon missionary experience is that every human deserves help. We are a communal species, one that thrives when we protect and lift one another. While many missionaries (myself included at times) seemed to help people out of fear, duty, or obedience, I found love to be the most powerful motivator.
I recently read a quote by Paul Tillich that goes, “There is no love which does not become help.” I’ve found this quote incredibly helpful when trying to decide how to spend my time. I can get caught up in wanting to work on things that I love and wanting to make the biggest difference in the world that I can. It can be paralyzing.
But what Tillich says is that whatever we love to do, whatever act comes forth out of love or passion, that act will become help. And help is actually useful. Help makes a difference in someone’s life. Help reduces burdens and supports undertakings.
Love for humankind, stranger or brother, is the most valuable asset we possess. It's more powerful than daily schedules, to-do lists, guilt, fear, or pain. And it only gives back more when we surrender to it.
From Missionary Life to Everyday Life (TL;DR)
My mission taught me three wonderful principles (and many more) that can save us from our modern condition.
(1) Restraint. Media overload is real. Today’s news (whether it comes from official sources or our cousin’s instagram stories) is hardly ever critical. It’s not even interesting most of the time. Don’t do things just because they are options of things to do. You cannot choose what an account or source will post, but you can decide which ones to follow and when to stop. Limit what you consume and maybe even create more. Give your cousin something to watch instead.
(2) Intent. This might be easier than restraint, and is often more effective. A lack of purpose leads to mindless actions, so choose what you would like to do and then do it.
(3) Love. Ah love. It’s the best. Love your fellow humans. Work on what you love. Love without agenda, reward, or incentive. Follow your heart and you will be rewarded with helping others (Paul Tillich) and helping yourself (Waldo Emerson).
