In December 2012, I bought a guitar learning tool that I just knew was going to change my life. The name of the guitar learning tool was called Rocksmith. It was a guitar game, similar to that of the famed Guitar Hero, except instead of using a cheap plastic guitar with five measly buttons; you use a real electric guitar and play the actual song just like the band itself would. It also has built in guitar arcade games to improve essential guitar skills. When I watched the trailer for this game, I just knew that I had to have it. I bought it and knew it had the potential to help me become a rock star So what happened? Of course since I had this amazing guitar learning tool, I was destined to become a master of the guitar! Especially because I am supposed to be this incredible life coach that does everything perfectly and never messes up, right? Well not exactly, I make plenty of mistakes and have plenty of struggles in my life as well.  The funny thing about guitar just like most things in life is that it is super challenging to get good at it. It takes intentional practice to even get okay at it, and to become a guitar master, it takes a lot of practice. Not to mention the guitar strings literally cut into your fingers and hurt until you build callouses. The first few days and even weeks, I did pretty well, I practiced often, but after a while, I gradually stopped. The game began to pick up dust on my shelf, along with the now forgotten guitar gathering spider webs in the corner. Well, then in 2013, I bought the newest version of the game with new songs and more cool …

Have you ever tried doing something, but the entire time you were doing it you were so worried about everything that could go wrong, that you just couldn’t focus on what you were really wanting to do? Friday night, I went in my backyard and took out my hockey net and shooting pad. Now if you don’t know what a shooting pad is, It’s basically a slippery piece of wood similar to a white board that you can use to shoot ice hockey pucks.  However, it is a bit more complicated, because the pucks  don’t slide near as well as they do on ice. Not to mention, if you have ever held a hockey puck you know that they are hard vulcanized rubber, and they can do some serious damage. In an ice hockey rink, that’s not a big deal because of the protective glass and nets. However, in my backyard, I have my hockey net wedged between a shed and a canopy. On the sides and top of the hockey goal is an almost 2 foot protective netting. The 2 side nets protect, the shed and other random things on the patio and the top net keeps pucks from going into my neighbor’s yard Since, it had been a while, I took a little bit of time just firing the pucks straight in the middle of the net. This requires hardly any skill, and after a while is fairly boring. Then I decided that I was going to shoot all of the pucks into the tiny target net in the top right corner. This requires a quite a bit more skill and plenty more can go wrong at least in my backyard. For the first little while I was so focused on how much pressure that I was placing …

There is an old adage that says, “it takes a village to raise a child.” I think even as we become adults, it still takes a village for each of us to grow. I can’t even begin to share how many people have helped me to grow into the person I am today. My parents, my sister, my nieces and nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, business associates, mentors, coaches, authors, trainers, teachers and so much more. Each of these people have taught me different lessons that have helped me and encouraged me to grow. Do you take the time to honor those people that have helped you on your path? Do you say thank you? Do they know that they have had an impact on your life? Do they know that they have helped shape and mold you into the incredible person that you are today? For years I was terrible about expressing gratitude to those that have helped me, I think I wanted to be just like a little kid that felt like they had to do everything by themselves and never wanted to accept help. The truth is unlike animals that are born and kicked out of the nest to survive on their own, we cannot. We as humans are one of the most helpless creatures. If you had been left alone once you were born, you would have been gone in a few short days or less. The truth is that we need other people in our lives to help us to grow. Heavenly Father places people in our lives to help us to grow and we many times help them in return. It reminds me of the lyrics from a song called “For Good” from the musical Wicked: I’ve heard it said That people come into …

I want to start this off today with a quick favor: Last night, I learned about a young man named Nathan.  He is thirteen years old and was born with a rare and often painful bone condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta.  This is also known as brittle bone disease. Nathan always has a positive attitude. His motto is “Every day is the best day ever.” He even does fundraisers to help the “unfortunate”. He is now facing a difficult life threatening surgery. On Monday, August 3. He will have a trach placed in preparation for a huge neurosurgery procedure on August 10th. He’ll be in the hospital for a minimum of two weeks immobilized. Because of Covid, he is only allowed one visitor his mother. Would you be willing to send him a letter or card of encouragement? Nothing would be more exciting to see this remarkable young man flooded with your love. If you could send it to this PO Box, his mother will deliver them to him. Could you imagine how cool it would be for his room to look the court room in the movie, Miracle on 34th street, where they bring in tens of thousands of letters? Think of the joy on his face as his mother reads them to him. Thank you so much for considering this, also if you could pray for him, that would be wonderful! Letters to Nathan PO Box 876 Midvale, UT 84047 As I learned more about Nathan last night, I was amazed. Richard Paul Evans shared with us that Nathan was praying and thanked Heavenly Father for his body. There are many others that if they were in his situation would yell at Heavenly Father and complain and get upset that they weren’t given a perfect body. And Sadly, there …

This week I have been reading a book called The Surrender Experiment. It shares a story of a man that started paying attention to what the inner voice was guiding him to do, then he did it. He shares many seemingly miraculous stories of how things just began to magically happen in his life as he followed this inner guidance. Last night, after I had been sitting in front of the television for awhile, I felt drawn to go outside. It was still 90 degrees, but as I stepped outside, there was a bit of a breeze blowing. I was led to sit in this beautiful space in my backyard and listen to this book mentioned above. As I sat listening, every now and then I would have an insight from that inner voice about an action I needed to take. Most were as small as sending a quick message. When an impression to do something would occur, I would go do whatever thing I had felt impressed to do and then go back to listening to my book. A few times I made an attempt to get up and go back inside, but each time I felt that inner voice say it wasn’t time yet. I would sit back down until finally about 9:30, it occurred to me that it was time to get up and get ready for bed. I did so and ended up having a wonderfully peaceful night of rest. In the past few weeks, this was one of the most peaceful nights I have experienced.  I had an insight: Happiness is letting go, just surrendering and enjoying the ride of life–the highs, the lows, and everything in between. What has that inner voice been trying to lead you to do? I know it doesn’t always …

Do you remember when you were a little kid and would constantly ask your parents, “Are we there yet?” every two minutes? I think as we get older, we really don’t change that much. We are still asking the same question, “Are we there yet?” or more specifically, “Am I there yet?” Even before we ask the question, we look around and know that we aren’t there, but we ask the question for some sort of reassurance that we are at least getting warmer instead of colder. We ask these questions of ourselves and even of Heavenly Father, “Am I there yet? Am I any closer to being married or getting out of this hard thing that I am dealing with?” Sometimes Heaven can even feel silent. In my life I have found that when I freak out or complain, it is much harder to hear that still small voice. It is constantly trying to provide us reassurance, yet we can’t hear it because we are screaming so loud that we are drowning it out.” It is that ultimate loving father who, as we are screaming in the backseat, turns around, lovingly pats us on the knee, and says, “No, my child, not yet, but you are getting closer.” When we really allow ourselves to hear that voice, we feel a calm, peaceful, settled feeling, and we know we are all right. Then for a few moments, we sit back and know that everything is going to be okay, until just moments later doubt begins to creep in. We ask ourselves, ” Why aren’t I getting there faster? What more can I do to get there faster? What am I doing wrong?” It’s so hard to not ask that question as we are driving through life, when what we want …

As we struggle to make it through this life, doing the best that we can, it doesn’t always feel easy to know the next right step to take. Especially when we are going through a particularly hard time in our lives, and it feels like the voices in our head keep getting louder and louder, it can be incredibley difficult to know what to do and what is the best path that we can take. A few years ago, I didn’t feel like my life was working at the speed that I felt that it should work. One particular day, I went to one of my favorite places to seek guidance, the Gilbert Arizona Temple, in the attitude of fasting, for those that don’t know what this means, it means going 24 hours without food and water. It is often done to create a stronger connection to heaven to receive answers. I had even invited others close to me to pray and fast for me. When I got to the temple, I helped some people out and then I went and prayed and afterwards flipped open the scriptures to Alma 34. My eyes were drawn to verses 40-41. These basically say have patience and bear thy afflictions with a firm hope that one day you will rest from your afflictions. I realize now that Heavenly Father was telling me to just be patient and everything was going to work out. However, I wanted way more guidance than that! I began to plead and plead in prayer for further guidance and nothing came and nothing came, and I was getting frustrated and then I had a single thought cross my mind about making a career change and I latched on so hard to that thought, and began to freak out. Why …

Can you be the first to spot the Leprechaun? Have you ever tried to apply that old adage, “Jesus Take The Wheel”? Last week I tried this, and ended up crashing quite a few times. Why did this happen? I thought that if I just gave him the wheel everything would work out fine. Apparently, there are two parts to this whole thing about Jesus taking the wheel. Maybe it’s not so much about God taking the wheel and steering it for us. Because he actually can’t generally do that — that would take away our agency. We have to play a part in this also. It reminds me of a well-known story about a preacher that is driving down a road and comes across a beautiful farm that is very well taken care of. It had beautiful gardens full of flowers and shrubs. It was full of a fine herd of cattle mooing gracefully in the pasture. He pulled off to the side of the road to admire the farm and noticed a man on a tractor, hard at work. The man noticed the preacher, and pulled the tractor to the side and said, “Hello.” The preacher responded, “Wow, GOD has certainly blessed you with a magnificent farm.” The farmer smiled, looked at the preacher and said, “Yes, He has, and we’re grateful. But you should have seen this place when he had it all to himself.” This story illustrates a few great points. Absolutely, the Lord blesses us but he just blesses us with opportunities, it’s up to us to see what we want to do with them. We are all blessed with amazing opportunities when we listen and work hard, good things happen. I think about Michelangelo and how he was provided with a giant rock, where …

For many years, I lived in this not so magical place called Happywheni Land. Maybe you too have visited this place, sitting dreaming for that magical day when you would get married, make more money or just be a super totally awesome successful person. I too found  myself taking frequent visits to Happywheni Land, I spent so much time in Happywheni land that I had a nice comfortable shack where I could just sit and stew over how not great my life was and how I couldn’t be happy until my life was nearly perfect. When I was visiting I would say things like, “I’ll be happy when I get married… I’ll be happy when I make more money… or even I’ll be happy when I get that new shiny toy.” I believed for so long that my happiness would come from something outside of me. After taking all these trips to Happywheni Land, I have to tell you it’s so overrated and really not worth the drive, the stress or the worry. The trips that I take to Happywheni land have become much less frequent. Think about for yourself when is the last time that you took your own trip to Happywheni Land. What was it that you thought you needed in order to be happy? And once you got it, did it make you happy? My guess is that it did not. As little fun as Happywheni Land really is, some people find themselves going over and over and over. Some go so much they even purchased the season long pass. However, it’s really just like a run down theme park, where everyone is sad and continue to say things like “I’ll only be happy when I…” People walk around with clouds over their heads and it’s constantly …

First off, lets have some fun! Can you Find the leprechaun in the picture above, it’s a bit harder than normal.. In times of uncertainty, what if it were possible to focus on peace and joy instead of fear? If you have watched the news lately, you may be feeling some fear and anxiety.  I am one that generally doesn’t touch the news with a twenty-three and a half foot pole.  In my opinion watching the media often is like hanging out in a smoky room. No matter how much you expect to come out smelling like roses — you will always come out smelling like smoke. And this last week I got sucked into that smoky room of the media and hung out even just for a few hours one night. I kept hopping from one story to another related to the groups attempting to create chaos and fear in our lives. And you better believe I sure didn’t come out smelling like roses, I came out covered in thick black smoke. As I saw many articles meant to cause fear and panic, I began to allow my scary thinking to run a muck in my head.  The more that I watched the news and read the articles on the chaos the scarier my thinking became. I went all the way from the point of asking why this is happening? To ” Am I going to or even willing to defend my home?” I had delved so deep into what I had heard from the media, that I became so agitated, frustrated and upset and even had some very not so nice thoughts towards the people that were creating the chaos and causing harm. Of course as I attempted to go to sleep, that didn’t work so well and …