Learning Life Skills – Your Personal Tutor

Image of a blackboard completely filled with mathematical equations.When I was in college I had to take a year of advanced math. The class met an hour a day, Monday through Friday. I did the best I could in class, paid attention, took detailed notes, and asked questions when I didn’t understand. But I quickly found that when I went home each night I could not do the homework. I spent hours trying to figure it out, reading the book, looking over my notes, to no avail. The next day the instructor moved on to something new — something that required an understanding of the previous day’s material. I was lost, and it was only the first week of class!

I discovered that there was a Math lab, where tutors were available to help, one-on-one. I found that if I went to the lab right after class every day and did the homework with the help of a tutor, I could learn the material and avoid getting behind. Sometimes the tutors had to find a different way of explaining the concepts to me. Other times we had to go over and over things in multiple ways in order for me to grasp the material. It was hard, and frustrating, but I knew that if I didn’t do whatever it took to learn it, it would just be that much more difficult the next day.

I have found the same pattern in my life since I graduated, but I didn’t recognize it right away. I have come to understand that when I need to learn new life skills the Lord will give me as many opportunities as I need to learn them. When I don’t learn from one experience, the Lord gives me another. Sometimes I don’t learn from an experience because, in my pride, I blame others for the circumstances or outcome. Other times I am unwilling to do the work I fear would be necessary to go through an experience so I either work around it or run away from it. There are times when I have needed multiple lessons before I finally have learned a new life skill. When I do master it, I can see how necessary it was for me to learn it!  New opportunities open to me. I become a more useful servant to the Lord.

You have a personal tutor who plans your education — individualized and customized to your strengths and weaknesses — for the purpose of teaching you the life skills you will need to ascend to your eternal destiny. If you refuse or fail to learn the skill from one experience you will have as many opportunities as you need to learn it.

  • Are you tired of facing the same challenges over and over?
  • How have you reacted to these challenges in the past? Have you run away or blamed others?
  • How can you embrace the opportunities the Lord is giving you, search for insight regarding the life skills you need to learn from challenging experiences and do the work necessary to master them?
  • Are you willing to do this?  What are you willing to do?

 

 

3 thoughts on “Learning Life Skills – Your Personal Tutor

  1. Wow! I can relate to this experience well. I had trouble with math, so much so that my desperate but undaunted effort to learn brought me to search for a strengthening that could make me ready and able to comprehend the ideas and perform the work asked of me in my math classes; that quest ultimately led me to taking piano lessons. I read about how this could work in a book called “Music, the Brain & Ecstasy.” Of course piano lessons did not teach me math but I did have to learn principles that were common to both. And, in practicing music, by reading and playing it, I strengthened my mind in a way that allowed me to see, understand and perform the math being taught to me. Math came to be a joy!
    I try to remember that when I am reading scriptures that the same dynamic operates on me in a spiritual way. I may not be reading of or learning about my addiction while reading scriptures but I am being strengthened spiritually, which is what I need to overcome the powerful draw of temptation. If I learn and practice Gospel principles they translate into a greater understanding and peace about why I am here and what I’m supposed to be doing. This heightened spiritual understanding allows me to accept blessings of humility and move out of God’s way to let him work His principles in my life and to be much more joyful about everything.

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