Some of you reading this know and understand the Plan of Happiness. You might feel like the people in the photo of that blog post. The excited man, the pondering woman and the overwhelmed man. Don’t forget the woman on the couch. We all have days that we emulate each of these people. The goal is to eventually become the excited man. Don’t stress too much about where you are at right now. Decide to become the man that is excited to live the plan and to share the knowledge of it with others.

Remember, when this plan was presented to us in Heaven, we all agreed to it. Every single person that has lived, is living, and will live on this earth agreed to the plan. We agreed to forget who we were before this life. We agreed to forget our celestial heritage as a child of God. We all agreed that agency to choose is crucial to our salvation.

I believe that we completely understood what was being asked of us. We understood that things would get very messy. Our bodies that we came to acquire would be frail and mortal. This would be a big challenge for some of God’s children. It wouldn’t be until after Jesus comes again that our bodies would become perfect and impervious to aging and disease. How wonderful I think it is that we can have the knowledge of His promise that no matter what, we will have perfect celestial bodies at some point. This is especially important to me as a mother of Special needs children. I am excited for the day where their physical condition does not limit their true potential any longer.

Satan also had power to tempt and distract us from what is important; the purpose of why we came to earth. He wants to keep us from achieving our divine potential in this earthly life. He is very good at what he does. He has an army with him. Remember all of our spirit brothers and sisters that left with him? They are out there too. They work with him to help distract us from our true selves, our divine nature. They love to tempt us, and to watch us fall.

Thank goodness Heavenly Father had a plan for that too. He knew we would need the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Jesus had to come to earth and get his body and live a perfect life. He had to be crucified by his own choice for us to be able to have the atonement. To give us the gift of repentance. It is for each of us to choose to use this gift. We are never forced. We can reject it. I rejected it without understanding what I was rejecting. Now I understand. Now I want to choose repentance. No matter how humble I need to make myself.

Doesn’t that seem like unconditional love to you? To know that in all of this, it is so important to Heavenly Father that we choose, that He watched his Only Begotten Son be ridiculed and tortured and killed while those watched Him with hatred in their hearts. I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult that was. That He loved us all so much that He also allowed it to happen. I don’t think that our imperfect human brains and emotions can even comprehend it truly. But I do know that it comes from a beautiful, perfect love for each of us.

Have I overwhelmed you yet? That is not the purpose of this post. I was working out the other day, and the personal trainer said, “It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be challenging.” Immediately, I stopped my workout to type that in the note app in my phone. I knew that I needed to write a post with those words in it. This is that post.

When we were in Heaven, we knew that it was going to be hard. It would be challenging. But that is not all that we would experience. There will be times of joy, happiness, and growth. IT WILL BE WORTH IT. Even the hard times. Everything we do that is hard, is always worth it. Even when we make terrible choices and make our own reality harder, it is worth it. For those are the times when we grew. It stretched us. They were times of preparation.

Right now, I am the man in the photo filled with excitement, but there are also times when I am the pondering woman. I come to a point, where I learn something new, and I have to take a moment to figure things out. Remember, I was the woman on the couch for several years. If you think that it is impossible to become the excited man, question if that thought is really coming from you. Satan and his minions want so badly to keep you from the happiness they can’t have. They want this earthly experience to be so much harder for you because you chose differently than they did. They don’t want you to leave the couch.

I am here to testify of truth. And I truthfully went from the woman on the couch to the man that is excited about the plan, and I long to share it with others. I like emulating him so much more. He is happier. He finds joy in so much of this life. He is more connected to Heavenly Father. He continues to learn new things. Don’t get me wrong, I have to keep myself humble. I have to repent frequently. I have to put the distractions away. There are so many distractions in this world. They are all very tempting. I have to refocus myself constantly.

I keep thinking about what my daughter said after her piano recital. The best part of her day was the piano recital (she meant being done with it, because her anxiety was over once she finished playing), and the worst part of her day was also the piano recital. Not the emotional meltdown she had over the peanut butter sandwich, but enduring the great anxiety she had leading up to doing the thing that she was terrified to do. And then being able to feel good about doing something that was incredibly difficult for her. Something that she didn’t want to do. I’m so proud of her for pushing through that emotional and physical discomfort. I know how hard that is.

And now, she learned at a young age, that she can do hard things. Her mind told her that she had a limit. She learned that she could push through that limit that she thought she had and break through it. How much confidence she gained from doing that. I wish I had learned that skill at such a young age. It’s okay. I learned it in my 30’s. I use those skills frequently. I’m so glad that when I overcome hard challenges, I can use those examples to help encourage others to do the same. I hope that this post helped you today.

Remember as you go through the challenges of life, you chose to come to earth and go through these things because you knew that it would be worth it. If you can keep that vision while you endure the hard things of this life, it will help you through. Don’t forget to pray. He is there.