Week 54-Extreme Ownership  

Scriptures:

D&C 130:20-21

2 Ne 2:27

Jacob 1:19

Alma 31:5

D&C 101: 78

D&C 123: 12-17

General Conference Address:  

“Strengthen Thy Brethren” Mervyn B Arnold CR 4/2004

Thought:

You can either be a victim or a victor. Victims let things happen to them. Victors make things happen. Victims make excuses. Victors make plans and then execute those plans. The list goes on and on. Don’t blame anyone. Take ownership of everything. There are no bad teams, only bad leaders. Evaluate things more often to see what you can do to ensure better success. Agency is real and effort and strategy matter. Do all you can to help others be successful. Pray like it depends on the Lord and then act like it all depends on you. 

Misc:

Elder David A. Bednar (October 2006, General Conference):

"Endowed with agency, you and I are agents, and we primarily are to act and not just be acted upon. To believe that someone or something can make us feel offended, angry, hurt, or bitter diminishes our moral agency and transforms us into objects to be acted upon. As agents, however, you and I have the power to act and to choose how we will respond to an offensive or hurtful situation."

Source: And Nothing Shall Offend Them | churchofjesuschrist.org

Elder Lynn G. Robbins (August 2017, BYU Devotional):

"Being 100 percent responsible is accepting yourself as the person in control of your life. If others are at fault and need to change before further progress is made, then you are at their mercy and they are in control over the positive outcomes or desired results in your life. Agency and responsibility are inseparably connected. You cannot avoid responsibility without also diminishing agency."

Source: Be 100 Percent Responsible | speeches.byu.edu

Elder D. Todd Christofferson (October 2014, General Conference):

"In matters both temporal and spiritual, the opportunity to assume personal responsibility is a God-given gift without which we cannot realize our full potential as daughters and sons of God. Personal accountability becomes both a right and a duty that we must constantly defend; it has been under assault since before the Creation. We must defend accountability against persons and programs that would (sometimes with the best of intentions) make us dependent. And we must defend it against our own inclinations to avoid the work that is required to cultivate talents, abilities, and Christlike character."

Source: Free Forever, to Act for Themselves | churchofjesuschrist.org

Invitation: 

Think back on a recent event when you made an excuse for a recent failure. Evaluate it and see what you could have done to make it work. Review your upcoming calendar for the one thing you fear might fail. Take what you learned from the first exercise and apply it to this upcoming event to increase the odds of making it successful.