Sydney Klingler April 25, 2014 LE1350-050-Sp14 Prof.

Burr Dallof Personal Life Philosophy There are numerous things that guide each individual to happiness, satisfaction, and balance. This document, a condensed look into what drives me, explains some of the basics of what I am personally driven by to find fulfillment in life. The question of how I seem happy constantly is the first to be addressed. In my life, I have found that overcoming different challenges brings incredible meaning and joy to me. In order to know good, you must also know badopposition in all things as my religious background has led me to recognize. This knowledge of sadness as well as joy has immensely improved my mental process for interpreting what is happiness. A matter of years ago, I came across a quote from Marjorie Pay Hinckley, wife of the previous President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that explains, the only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headacheIf we cant laugh at life, we are in big trouble. This quote inspired me those years ago to become more upbeat in my response to everything I face in my life. Simply by deciding to find the humor in whatever seems to go wrong in life, I have found so many fewer things to be truly upsetting! Imagine, if before responding to a bad stimulus everyone took a moment to think of what they will smile or laugh about once the initial shock wears of, oh, how different the world would be! I know that the little efforts of each individual throughout the course of his or her

lifetime affect others, and that it is each individuals choice to respond in a way that will emphasize their goodness or bring out the bad in them; it is what each person does every day that affects everyone they come in contact with. This realization alone motivated me to have a more delightful outlook on life! Having a sense of humor, or at least a sense of temperance in times of hardship or inconvenience, enables greater success in the long run than possibly anything else any self-help book can tell us we need to have; simply deciding to react happily to a situation enables a better outcome! While having an uplifting perspective in life is excellent, I have found that merely reacting to things is not enough to be truly satisfied in life. Nearly always paired with reaction is action. What motivates my actions can be explained by the results of a personality test. In the Myers Briggs personality classification wherein users are classified into one of sixteen categories according to their personality sequence, test-takers decide which is most like them in each of the four categories: Extrovert/Introvert, Sensing/iNtuition, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perceiving. When I took the test and learned that I was ISTJ; I was an introverted person who exercised common sense over perception, based interactions and reactions on thought, and structureoriented. Since then, with the process of adaptations that occur in life, I have become ENTP; a drastic shift in emphasis of my personality traits that show I am now extroverted, intuitive, thought-driven, and perceptive of my surroundings in a way that I am more readily-able to react to variations in circumstance. This goes to show that my manner of perceiving and recognizing success in different aspects of my life will change over the years, so specific plans may not always seem to work out, but as long as my moral compass is pointed North then success will be found.

To have a completed sense of direction and motivation, and in order for my moral compass to effectively lead me northward, I must remember what I am here to do; I must remember the ultimate goal of my life. Due to a religious upbringing, I have always had a sense of where I come from, why I am here, and what happens next. In addition to that sense of origin and end goal, I had a sense that I am on Earth because of a Higher Power. Gordon B. Hinckley, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said it plainly nearly fifteen years ago when he explained, Our great mission is to testify of His living reality. Such a task may seem daunting, draining, senseless, and at least a dozen different adjectives at different moments in time. The why? of life I grew up with an answer to,. Rather, the how? was the hardest answer for me to accept. In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is taught that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass meaning by doing the little things that nurture your spiritual being every day, each individual is better prepared for and capable of greatness (Alma 37:6). Very rarely does only one big thing happen to completely change the way thoughts are processed and behavior is moderated. The willing humilitymeeknessis the factor that leads to a willingness to behave in a manner that suggests full altruism, but such behavior that to inspires constant personal effort to become better able to benefit others through selfdetermination as well. To better understand what motivates my daily efforts, it is necessary to look at what altruism and self-determination are. As evidenced by my classmates during this course, altruism is something that others view with conflicting opinions. This fully religious way of life can provide immense satisfaction for people who live it all the time, but it is commonly associated with feelings of inadequacy or guilt if individuals do not understand why they are living in such

a manner. In the poem Success, Ralph Waldo Emerson explained the value of establishing and maintaining a balance between the two. He tells of how reaching out to others, improving the world, and taking opportunities to validate others in their efforts to improve, whilst winning the respect and affection of those whose lives you touch along the way results in true achievement. I truly agree with this idea because I find validation from helping others improve their circumstances; such validation leads me to feel at least somewhat satisfied on a personal level, and motivated to continue to help others. In order to be able to reach out to others and contribute the assistance that is necessary in some situations, we must have an internal drive and sense of what we are capable of in order to make a dent in the situation. If you put the two together, it creates a far more productive grouping than if the two remain separate. By mixing the devotion and purpose of altruism with the personal reward system of self-determination, a person who is not ruled by one or the other can find success multiple times above that which they were previously able. In conclusion, I find great satisfaction in life by having a balance of internal personal satisfaction and , Not only do I find joy in life through balance that enables me to actually help others, I regular practice and develop a delightful disposition about life in any circumstance. None of these practices would mean much if I did not have the third piece of the puzzle, a personal conviction in regards to why I am alive. This mixture of psychology and religion, service and personal focus, with actions and reactions comes together to create the Sydney Klingler that everyone knows me to be today. The choice to be who I am today and love it further enables and motivates me to become even better to further develop who Sydney Klingler will be tomorrow. Life is an ongoing process full of changes and enhancements that further

shape each other. Just as my life is incomplete, so is this life philosophy. For now, however, this paper gives a glimpse into why I am who I am.

Bibliography Alma. (74 B.C.). The Book of Mormon. Salt Lake City, UT, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Development, R.R. (2012). Myers Briggs Test * What is your Myers-Briggs Personality Type?. http://www.personalitypathways.com/type_inventory.html. Emerson, R.W. (n.d.). Success. http://www.dyslexia.tv/freethinkersu/wisdom_success_emerson.htm. Gardner, M.K. and D.L. Searle. (2003). At Home with the Hinckleys. https://www.lds.org/liahona/2003/10/at-home-with-the-hinckleys?lang=eng. Hinckley, G.B. (1999). Why We Do Some of the Things We Do. https://www.lds.org/generalconference/1999/10/why-we-do-some-of-the-things-we-do?lang=eng. Randall, N.W. (1908). Hymns. United States of America, Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.