MCOM WEEK 15

I am so grateful that this blog has given me a platform to record my thoughts and feelings. I am usually so bad at journaling. I never take the time to sit down and write down the things that I have been experiencing and learning. But this blog has in a way forced me to keep track of my life. 

No, I didn’t write down a daily log of my day, but I was able to expand my thought process. I think that after reading this book I am more interested in protecting myself from the fake scams of the world. I am preparing to analyze sources and also fill my life with valid content. 

Now I won’t be overly skeptical, just aware. And I will keep trying to document my thoughts and feelings. It will be hard but as I’ve seen, super worth it! 

MCOM WEEK 14

 One time me and my sister were driving to southern Utah. My dad had warned us to leave early so that we could be safe in the dark. On the last leg to the ranch we had a long stretch of dark road. There was not a sign in the road. There weren’t lights either. I was working on my Spanish homework and my sister was driving. All of the sudden we saw a dark figure creep across the street. Then we hit a BABY COW. 

It was traumatizing. I thought we were being aware, but apparently not enough. It is so important to try to get a full perspective of everything that is surrounding you. 

MCOM WEEK 13

 I love finding spiritual connections in life. When a gospel topic works it way into a conversation, I love it. This book introduced a boy who expected a testimony just from showing up to church. But this isn’t so. On my mission I truly learned that the Lord loves effort. Why? Because it is what transforms us and helps us grow. We have to actively work to have spiritual experiences. We have to act in faith to see results and see miracles. This is something I will strive to do. I always want to be putting forth effort to see the Lord’s hand in my life. I am grateful for this knowledge. I hope that someone told the boy in the book to stop being so passive. Its time to be an advocate for finding truth. I love the phrase ask seek & find.

MCOM WEEK 12

 After reading these chapters I think that I am going to be even more aware about authentic content. Whether this is a book, website, or even a person. I want to be able to decipher if that information is a real one for me to glean information from. Someone told me recently that they can tell very easily if someone is being authentic. So I will strive to have a genuine glow to my being. I think my dad is an excellent example of being authentic and genuine. I see many people trust him because of that. 

This book has helped me to realize you really need to look for the truth not just assume that it is already being given to you. 

MCOM WEEK 11

 Reading this book has really brought me to think about the importance of reading. An event that I went to today had a speaker who was sharing with us how she read a one to a few books a day but almost all of them were children’s books. She was missing the stimulation that she needed to inform herself on the outside world. So her assistant offered to start reading for her then preparing a digest of all the most important information topics. This was clearly not the ideal method. I would way rather prefer to have the time to read, but for her current predicament, it was the best that they could do!

MCOM Week 10

Recently I have been asked what is the best part of life for me right now. I quickly answered that the joy that I have felt in all of the aspects of my life is definitely the best part. So many things in life bring me so much joy. First off I would say that the temple has brought me so much joy. I have been able to feel rejuvenated with the spirit and Godly optimism. I have been able to recharge my soul with the peace inside the temple. I have mostly been going at random times here and there. But I would like to start coordinating with friends to go when they can go. It is just so difficult because post covid you have to schedule each appointment and the spots fill up so fast. The biggest success I have gotten in getting a conveniently timed appointment is when I have checked for cancellations the night before at like midnight. 

MCOM Week 9 Things Don't Always Work Out How You Hoped

    Today I am writing this blog entry from my death bed. I woke in the middle of the night Monday night and I was feeling achey and like I had the chills. The cough has also slowly begun to emerge. Then I woke up Tuesday morning feeling terrible. I could barely move. I took a little 58 min walk while FaceTiming may mom and that was the only time I left the house all day. It was great to fill her in on all the happenings of my life. And now here I am, Wednesday afternoon still feeling like trash (but a little better than yesterday)! 

I did leave the house once today to go get Benadryl for my hives from CVS with Amanda. We also got some comfort food at Zupa's. My mom freaked out when I showed her the crazy blisters I was starting to have on my elbows, legs and hips. I think it was from the epson salts. 

Anyways I had a super big check list of things to do to go conquer the day, and unfortunately none of those have happened. As the title says, sometimes things don't work out how you hoped they would. Also our St. Patty's day Dirty 30 Dance party got shut down by the cops. Another fail there! Oh well! 

MCOM Week 7 (chapters 7&9)

 I thought that the section on apologizing was very interesting. I did not realize that we as human actually have such a hard time submitting to someone else and admitting that we have done wrong. For me personally, I don't think this is something that I have particularly struggled with. I guess except when it came to apologies to my sister. Those were always tricky because most of the time, when it came down to it, I still felt like she was in the wrong. But that is when the phrase "take the highroad", as my dad always said, truly took meaning. My parents taught me so much though their examples when I was growing up. Everything I am today, I owe it to their love, support, and teaching. 

I also thought that it was so sad when the book talked about how when a parent dies, the top thing that people regret is not showing deeper gratitude to that loved one who had been so influential in their life. This made me develop a greater desire to give thanks whenever possible. Especially to the ones who have done so much for me! So if you are reading this... Thank MOM & DAD for all you have given me everyday. 

MCOM Week 8 (chapters 10& 12)

 This section of the book taught me a lot on listening. I felt like I was the master listener after being a BYU Freshman Year Mentor. We were taught the keys to being the best listening. One of the points was to use silence. This was hard for me to do at first because I am naturally such a talker and wanted to sound like I was engaged. I would subconsciously insert different words like "totally" or "uh huh" when really these were not needed at all to validate that I was listening to what they were saying. The other points of the acronym "SOARS" were silence, open ended questions, affirmations, reflective listening, and summary. These were addressed in the book as being the secret recipe to having people adore you.

I loved his example of how when you are talking to Bill Clinton, you feel like you are the only one in the world. You his only focus and he will flatter you instead of himself. This ability is what brought him from a humble upbringing to Arkansas to the President of the United States. 

MCOM Week 6

 Wow this semester is going by so quick! I can hardly believe that next week is the 7th week of the semester! We are almost half way done. Time has been flying. I think that is because I have been keeping myself busy and being intentional with my time. Some people say "Oh I did this just cuz I didn't know what to do to keep my self busy". I always nod along with people when they say this, but really in the back of my mind I am thinking "What in the world! Some days I wish that I could have even just a free extra hour to get done all my hopes, dreams, aspirations, and to do's". I've thought a great deal about balance and how I can have better rhythm in my life. I love a quote that I say that said "I can't I don't have enough time" is the biggest lie you could tell yourself. So I have tried to take this to heart. I plan out my daily schedule and constantly think about the different priorities I have on my wheel of life. A few of those include spiritual, educational, social, physical, and financial. It is hard to give equal or "sufficient" time to all of those but when I get to address all five points of that wheel in a given day or week, I feel content. 

Working for Fulfillment MCOM Week 5

    Recently one of the places I have been spending a lot of my time at is Kiln. During the fall last semester, I thought about how I could better prep myself for the Marketing Business Program. I was thinking about my family members and which ones of them had some cool connections. While pondering, my second cousin Brighton came to mind. He works for a company called Kiln. I called him and asked if I could pick his brain for a second about internship opportunities. He invited me to come on to Lehi and get to know the company. During that visit, I learned so much and got to meet many members of the team. We ended the visit with a small interview on the couch and he offered me the position to be a Marketing Intern. We talked about the ways that we as a company could better tell the story of Kiln. I had a few ideas and said that I would definitely be happy to help with that. I filled out some paperwork then started Jan 3rd! I work there on Mondays & Wednesdays and it has been a super neat experience. I have had many opportunities to learn and grow. More often than not, I am assigned tasks that I have no idea how to do. Sometimes it is overwhelming because I want to do well, but I have gotten good at using my resources and simple looking things up. 

    One of the exciting tasks that they had me plan recently was to organize a photo shoot of the Park City location. I was in charge of finding someone who would be in our price range and also have the right style.  I ended up asking my friend Demi who is studying photography at BYU if she would shoot for us. She said yes, so we scheduled a time and then drove up to the location together. At the office space we staged the spaces so that they could look aesthetically pleasing and draw buyers to them. This was a long day, but also so fun. I have really been finding fulfillment in my new internship because I am working so busy and doing a lot of new things.

Can I get an award for ceasing to be late? MCOM Week 4

Our society is geared to congratulate people on doing something good, and not typically when they stop doing something bad. For example "We get credit for being punctual, but not for stopping out lateness". 

I think that this is an interesting idea. Last semester I had a 9:30am Spanish class. I loved the class. We danced, sang, shared, learned, and expereinced.  Every martes y miércoles I felt like I was back in my Chile element. But even though I enjoyed the class so much, I am sure that 9.5/10 days I walked in late to the room of seated students prepared to learn. Usually it was just a little more or less than 5 minutes. I often asked myself: "Why couldn't I have just have woken up 5 minutes earlier or took 5 less minutes to get ready?". In my mind it should have totally been so easy and possible. But for some reason, I made that mistake daily. I just couldn't get there before 9:30am. Luckily, I finished that class with a great grade. But even now I wonder, what would my motivation level been like to get there on time if someone had started positively recognizing me for stopping that lateness, breaking that habit, and changing my schedule? Maybe I would have taken that extrinsic motivation displayed in let's say an extra credit point or two to drive my bad habit away. I guess I will never know. I will keep this thought in mind when an opportunity comes around where I can really acknowledge someone's ability and effort to
cease to do something bad. 

Thoughts on the book "What Got You Here Won't Get You There" MCOM Week 3

Since college and high school started, I feel like my leisurely reading completely stopped. I was instantly was inundated with textbooks and homework assignments. That content started to be the only content I consumed. Well that is the only "non-religious content". I still continued to make time for scripture study. 

But this semester in MCOM I have been able to start reading two books and I appreciate that they are not text books! The book "What Got You Here Won't Get You There" started to touch on some interesting topics. The first topic depicted people who have a special ability to know where they are and where they are going. They are so grounded in who they are that we feel secure around them. The examples in the book had incredible talents and skills that made them Uber successful, but it mentioned that they had seemed to loose this source of "center". 

I definitely would love to continue to become the type of person who is very grounded and knows without a doubt who I am. I would say that I am slowly becoming this person who does not change with the tides on how I act and who I stand for. I want to be someone who is crazy driven but dependable. It sounds like consistency and dependability are qualities that make you that grounded person. 

Kennidy's Journal MCOM Week 2

Today I am reflecting on the fact that I have been home from my mission for just about 6 months! I returned back from Chile on July 28th, 2021. This blows my mind because it seriously feels like just yesterday that I was walking off of that plane and coming down the escalator to a crowd full of people that I love. They had signs, posters, and the biggest smiles. As soon as I saw my mom and embraced her, my eyes filled with tears and I couldn't believe I was finally in her arms. It was so surreal to be back with my siblings and lifelong friends. It took some encouragement from my siblings to take off my mask. I had been trained to keep it on in all public places because if I didn't in Chile the police would come and ask us to put in on and make sure that it completely covered our faces. After a chant of "CHI CHI CHI, LE LE LE, VIVA CHILE" and some hugging pictures, we walked to the car and went to grab some In-N-Out (A California classic). I walked into the restaurant and sat down with my sister and best friend Madison Frost. We ordered and got chatting. I slowly started to feel so weird. Here I was completely relaxing and eating yummy fast food, not doing anything crazy productive to help others in the middle of the day. It was different. I wasn’t used to it. The past few months though I have gotten used to it. But the goal is not to get too used to it–I still need to stay out of my comfort zone and look upwards and outwards. 

Kennidy's Journal through MCOM Week 1

My "DTR" with Writing  

 The process of putting impactful words on a page, that phenomenon that they call writing, has always impressed me. I approach writing assignments usually with the classic resent that a student feels upon receiving another lengthy homework assignment. That resent leads to procrastination, which leads to an even greater mental block. But once the deadline
finally starts to stress you out enough to start, you sit down, stop distractions, and begin writing. Rapidly, ideas usually enter my head and I realize that there really is something powerful that I wanted to say. No, it doesn’t fall onto the page perfectly, but an idea begins to come across. I am really starting to prove a point.

 

I love the feeling when one of your good ideas connects to the other and you can illustrate the desired topic in an interesting way. Upon completion, you never really feel like the writing assignment is perfect, but at one point you must turn it in. In my case, I often never read that poem, essay, or research paper again. But on the rare case that my conversations coincide with topics that I have spent hours learning about then craftily portraying in an essay come, I go back. I read them again, and wow isn’t that the most rewarding moment.