#4 Learning

A secular view of competition is the fact that there is always there and you are either going to adapt or rise to the competition. For example, enrolling is a college or the work field you compete to take a place and there are few in number that are selected. In order to be successful in most cases, you will always compete in your every day life. When you fail in competition, it motivates you to drive yourself in another direction to better yourself. Another example, when someone fails in competition they give up and they do not try to better the situation.
Conflict can lead to the five cancers, but can also be constuctive. A simple example that is an everyday situation is an arguement between spouses. It can be a major conflict with risen anger and can hurt a relationship. On the other hand, when something like this occurs, it but be a constructive thing in their lives and be better from it.
Comparison with anothers spiritual progress can be both motivating or deteriorating. It can motivate you by the desire to increase your spirituality and testimony. But it can affect someone in deteriorating way. Someone may compare their spiritualty to anothers and think that they could never echeive that strong of a testimony or ever be as worhy as whoever they are comparing themselves to, fot whatever reason. For example, say a new elder has just arrived into the mission feild, and his or her companion is an incredible missionary, with an unbelievably strong testimony level of spirituality. This could either motivate the new elder to study harder and to the things which he would need to build his testimony into a stronger one, or it could lead the elder to think that he could never achieve that level of spirituality.
The fact that we had our chairs placed the opposite direction was abnormal for me. That is something I am not used to because that is how our society is today. It is normal to see people everyday and being comfortable with that. If we are taken out of the normality of life there is a created fear and can be a negative affect. For example, with those that live in spanish countries kiss eachother on the cheek as a greeting. That would take someone like us out of our norm but to them that is something that they are comfortable with. There needs to be an adaptive state of mind when things like this occur because in life, this will happen. We will be taken out of the everyday acts of life into something completely abnormal and if it is a permanant thing, we must adapt to it.