Becoming a Quality Person Now

Our first goal in becoming the person that we want to be, is to identify who we want to be. 

In this short excerpt from a fireside given by Marvin J. Ashton, he tells us why we need to strive to be a quality person. Becoming a Quality Person Now- Marvin J. Ashton 

Next, write a list of qualities you hope to have or be working on at the end of this short program. What habits do you want to have formed? What kind of person do you want others to know you as? What qualities does God want to bless you with? What qualities will be necessary to have in order to be a great mother/father? What qualities/traits do you want your children to learn from you?

President Henry B. Eyring tells us the importance of planning for the best in his CES fireside "The Family", but here is the excerpt I find the most pertinent to this discussion...

"There are things we can start to do now. They have to do with providing for the spiritual and the physical needs of a family. There are things we can do now to prepare, long before the need, so that we can be at peace knowing we have done all we can.

To begin with, we can decide to plan for success, not for failure. Statistics are thrown at us every day to persuade us that a family composed of a loving father and mother with children loved, taught, and cared for in the way the proclamation enjoins is going the way of the dinosaurs, toward extinction. You have enough evidence in your own families that righteous people sometimes have their families ripped apart by circumstances beyond their control. It takes courage and faith to plan for what God holds before you as the ideal rather than what might be forced upon you by circumstances.

There are important ways in which planning for failure can make failure more likely and the ideal less so. Consider these twin commandments as an example: “Fathers are to . . . provide the necessities of life . . . for their families” and “mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.” Knowing how hard that might be, a young man might choose a career on the basis of how much money he could make, even if it meant he couldn’t be home enough to be an equal partner. By doing that, he has already decided he cannot hope to do what would be best. A young woman might prepare for a career incompatible with being primarily responsible for the nurture of her children because of the possibilities of not marrying, of not having children, or of being left alone to provide for them herself. Or she might fail to focus her education on the gospel and knowledge of the world that nurturing a family would require, not realizing that the highest and best use she could make of her talents and her education would be in her home. Because a young man and woman had planned to take care of the worst, they might make the best less likely."

If we prepare for failure that is most likely what we will get... so lets prepare for the best!