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So, I received a question via email from a friend of mine and he was kind enough to actually make a little presentation around the question. So, I stole this graphic from him. His question was basically, "How do I do this? My family members are all doing their own thing. How do I get them all swimming in the same direction, rowing in the same direction?" And so he's been reading my book, Joy on Purpose, and constructing a life plan for himself. And now he's working on doing that with his family as well. And this is a huge topic. It's it's something that I'm writing a lot about in a future book. It's it's extraordinarily important in ways that aren't obvious, I'm sure, but it's also very important in ways that are, hence his question. And so I'd like to address this as early as possible. And this is absolutely not exhaustive, but the point of the presentation is to give you something to work on in the meantime. So help is on the way. And in the meantime, here's something to keep you busy in the right direction, which is apppropo of what we're trying to do here. So the number one key in how to do this is to ask yourself why you're doing it or to what end. So it's very different both in how you do it and in what the outcome is depending on why you are trying to do this. So I think most people if they most parents if they really thought about and by the way almost all of this advice pertains to employment as well. If you've got a team that you manage at work or a whole company or whatever the case might be any leadership position. This is a a relevant question, a critical question and the tactics that we talk about here, the techniques are completely applicable to that as well. So what your your ta your tails your your purpose, it's absolutely important your your reason for why you're doing it and where you you're trying to get these people. And in most leadership roles, the truthful answer is that you are trying to do what you're trying to do with other people in order to make your own life better, to make your own life easier. And that really that that comes down to how you feel right now. And that's not a very very powerful reason. There are a lot of reasons for that. But I mean, it boils down to how much you can motivate others to be better themselves. And if they're only doing that for your benefit, very few people will care. Now, that's extremely different than doing what you honestly believe benefits everyone the most. The best organizations, whether that's a family, a group of friends, a church, a company, it doesn't matter. The best organizations have the best motives. They're most oriented toward the the transcendent benefit of all people, whether that's all people in the group or not. that the bigger you can expand to in terms of the the set of people and the degree to which you're trying to benefit, the better that is going to go, the the stronger the reasons you'll have and the the more you can accomplish in that group. And so in a family, the father ought to be following God's purpose and know something about it. and his job is to orient all members of his family to that end. Now, his understanding of God's purpose will never be exactly right, but this is how to point most closely to it. And as you do that, the power of God will flow back into your family. It's kind of like if the sun's shining overhead, the more directly underneath the sun you are, the less of a shadow you have and the the stronger the the sun's light becomes and the heat. It's like that. Okay. So, that's the bottom line up front. But now let's let's use a couple of tools here to dive deeper into this with the goal of exposing to you some potential changes you can make to more closely align with the ideal. So you've probably heard this before. A great way to lead other people is to teach them correct principles so that you can empower them to use their independent perspective and capability to best assist the group goal. This is very rarely done in any modern team, but it is the best way to go. So, as long as you're tethered to the need to micromanage people, you'll never accomplish what you otherwise could in that group because their output is directly tied to your input. And what you'd like to do is begin to dissociate those two things. Take greater advantage of each person's independent capacity while freeing up more of your own resources. Now, anyone who has a toddler knows this lesson well. If you're sitting there making sure that this young child doesn't get into things that would hurt them or destroy things and you're always following them around cleaning up messes and so on and so forth, it drastically decreases your output. It's a full-time job to care for young children and so that displaces anything else that you might otherwise do. But as those children grow, the goal is that they also grow in their ability to independently accomplish good in life. Now, that's not passive. That takes it takes a lot of input and it's best accomplished with a plan. And that's why we're talking about this. Now again going back to that first slide, you can choose to orient your children to some arbitrary goal like, "Oh, I want to feel good as a dad or a mom or a granddad or as a grandmom." Okay, fine. Whatever. Most parents, at least loosely today, at least loosely adopt the goal of maximally entertaining their children. And this is mind-boggling, but that's what it is. They measure their value as a parent or grandparent as the their capacity to entertain the child even long after they stop being a child. And that's not great. Okay, that doesn't really set the kid up for success. A better way is to to train them to actively use their intellect, their perception, their cap, all their capabilities to independently contribute to the purpose of God. That's a much better goal. Now, along the way, they're going to require your example as a milestone or a a um a closer signpost to orient them on that path as they come to know God as well as you do. And hopefully they they exceed that. They go beyond your limits. They stand on your shoulders and start they pick up where you left off and they keep going. That's the goal. So how do you do this? Well, you have to clearly state your intent. And as the child grows in capacity, this will drift further from explicit rules-based instructions. Do this, don't do that, into whybased instructions. This is what I'm trying to accomplish. This is why. Here's the big picture. Now, here's your piece of it, but because you know the other pieces of it, the bigger picture and where all this is leading to, you're now empowered to make independent contributions. So, as the information changes or whatever the conditions are on the ground, you can adjust accordingly and produce even better than you would if you had to stick to the rules. Now, there's a giant pile of reasons why people and especially Christian people don't get this and don't do this in their lives. And the most glaring uh reason is that they don't understand this is how it works between them and God. They don't understand the commandments. They don't understand the purpose. But all of that can be clarified with the things that are being taught now to a greater extent maybe than ever before. God has a purpose. He has an intent in all things. He's more than willing to teach you all about it. It's all over the scriptures. And according to your heen diligence, you'll learn more. And the intent is that you do this, that you take his purpose and more fully live it in your life. and and input those contributions that you can uniquely make to the space of influence that you have, the scope of influence that you have. And one of the ways you do this is by taking that and decomposing it into your family, which is the whole purpose of this presentation, right? bring it down to your family and do the same inside of your family where you stand in the role of God as the father of your family, the husband and father, and you help them understand your purpose, which is hopefully hopefully you've adopted the purpose of Christ. And it all just boils down to each person's unique place. So this requires you to clearly state your intent and then to remind them help them remember to think of your purpose. And here this is a very brief presentation but one of the many forks here for you to go off and study on your own is to study the ordinance of the sacrament and read the prayers and ask yourself what's actually going on there. What is it that we promise to do when we eat and drink? Remember his purpose. Okay? And you help others remember your purpose. Help your family members or you know, we're focusing on the family, but again, this applies to every leadership opportunity. Help them remember your purpose. Help them adopt your purpose, but also help them understand how to apply it. You know, there's two p there are two pieces to that. Your will that you're willing to keep his commandments and then the details of how exactly you do that. What exactly does he command? What does he want? How does that apply to your specific situation? Then you'll also try to help them have reasons as to why they should want to achieve your purpose. And of course, God does this for us as well. And then, and this is very important, there needs to be a feedback loop. And you have to adjust the relationship that you have with them based on how effectively they accomplish your purpose. Again, this is another thing that we get wrong by and large because we don't understand how it works between us and God. God absolutely adjusts how he treats us based on how effectively each of us accomplishes his purpose. And again, I refer you to the scriptures. These are huge topics to study. But to try to keep this focused and brief, I'm going to continue teaching this using this framework of three levels of law. Those levels are fear, respect and love. Now again, these are absolutely the ways in which God helps us to learn these things to learn his purpose and learn why we should keep it and to teach us to remember it and to um experience the change in how he treats us depending on how we do it. And the thing I'd like to help you think about is that the biggest limitation in how effectively you can do this is the level of law that you live yourself. So for each of these, what we're going to do now is we're going to briefly describe what these levels of law are. And for each of them, we will give some clues as to how to see if you're living that law or not. And so we'll start at the bottom and go up. Fear is the first one. In a nutshell, what fear says, if you live the law of fear, then your motive is that you want to avoid pain and you do the minimum you have to in order to avoid the pain. Now, this is the default. This is how people are. And if you've ever had a job, you know this. This is how most people are. Okay? Now, just because someone is your spouse or your child, it doesn't mean they are exceptional in any way. Now, I really hope you chose an exceptional person, uh, an exceptional in a good way person, an exceptionally good person to marry. But sometimes that's the case and sometimes it's not and people change. So maybe it was the case or you thought it was the case and not so much anymore. But when it comes to your kids, boy, that's a roll of the dice. And so you don't choose your kids as far as we know, at least not in this life. And kids can really be knuckleheads. And so employment situations are probably much more a general sample of the population than your family. But your family's not too far off. The default motive is to avoid pain. So now the question is, do you live this law? And that in this case would not be a good thing because it's not the law you want to live. It's the lowest one. Here's how you can know. Do you ever do less than your best? And suddenly we see something that everyone would like to think that they've transcended this and that they're better than this, but do you ever do less than your best? If so, why? Well, this is a an exceedingly clear indication that you live the law of fear. that at least some of the time and at least in some ways you only do the minimum you have to to avoid pain because if you wanted what was best then you would do your best. It's that simple. God is just and if you believe that then you have every reason necessary to always do the best that you know because that would maximize what you get. So uh to dive deeper into this, another thing that can help you see if you do this is to ask whether there are times, events or situations where you wouldn't want others to know what you are doing or why. And again, this is exceedingly incriminating, not because it's impossible to pass the test, but just because almost no one chooses to. All right. So remember, it's basically impossible to get anyone in your family or your team to live a higher law than you live. So if you're stuck on the law of fear, guess what? Nothing you change will matter very much until you adopt a higher law yourself. And this is by and large the main reason why most parents aren't very good parents because they just don't care. They they live their lives to avoid pain. And getting back to this, you know, you'll never direct your family to a higher standard if you're not living one yourself. So that's where to start. All right. But suppose that you want to better understand how to live this law with your children because there still is a great deal of good that you can do even if you're stuck on this or even if they are stuck on this. And again, it's the default setting for people. Well, and again, this is this is why very few parents make progress, very much progress with their kids today because these things I'm about to tell you used to be encoded into culture and now they aren't anymore because people think, I guess, that they found a better way, but really all that changed is there's a lot more fake money floating around. So if you want to help your kids and they are living the law of fear, what you need to do is punish them when they fail to meet the minimum standard. You take away the good things that they get from you. Now a parent has a duty to provide the necessities of life to their children. A husband has a duty to provide the ne necessities of life to his wife. But beyond that, when you give things beyond the necessities to people who are acting like turds, you hurt them because you're training them to dissociate behavior from benefit. So you're poorly using the resources that God has blessed you with and that sets you up for loss of those resources. So either you direct your resources the way that you believe God would in your place or he takes them away. That's the way it works. If you want to help people who are living the law of fear, you have to subject them in all things. And that probably doesn't sound very rosy or very conforming to modern sentiments. But like I said, one hallmark of people who are in this mode is that they're inconsistent in their motives and that they do things they they do different things depending on who's watching. And there are parts of their lives that they try to hide from others because they know that they are wrong, that they aren't what is best. And so you have to bring those things into the light. You have to help people you love to not have two different standards that they're living to not have offbooks parts of their lives where you know they they they they keep the commandments so to speak on some things but not others or depending on who's watching. And the mechanism for this is punishment. you withdraw the benefit that they receive through you. I could talk more about this, but this this is a huge barrier in modern modern times because uh fathers don't want to do this. Husbands don't want to do this. They would rather have people who like them. And unfortunately, that's a very selfish motive to get married and have kids. And it's one that basically guarantees that you will contribute to their ruination instead of benefit them. And so they would be better off if they had never known you. And you're leeching off of them by feeding their bad behavior in order to get positive attention in return. It's very, very, very bad. All right, let's go to the next law. So this one is respect. This is very much intertwined with justice in case you're wondering. So the law of respect is you do what you need to get what you want. Now some families have this attribute that manifests at least from time to time. And this is where the kid will try to be good if they want something from their parents. Now that sounds bad, but it's actually much better than fear. So as you increase the good that you can provide to your family, you give them additional reasons to be better more of the time. So the question is, do you live this law? If you want to get your family to live this law, you first have to live it to yourself. So I would ask you, do you live to deserve what you want or do you try to get it without paying the necessary price? Almost everyone does. Almost everyone does. Well, that's not just that's not fair. Do you hold to desires you're not willing to pay for? This is the number one source of misery in life today, if you ask me. It's that people continue to desire what they're not willing to pay for. Do you have anything in your life that you don't deserve? This is very incriminating because again, people go out of their way to quote get gain. They want to get as much as they can for the least price possible. And so they they do their best to get things that they don't deserve. Justice requires that you live up to the blessings that you've received or you give them away to those that you know who deserve them more than you. And so again, even though this is the second law, it's an incredibly high standard compared to what most people live. But as you live those things, you will give the reasons. You will be the reason, become the reason, why your wife and children should do the same. So what does this require? Well, it requires learning that that mercy is not an alternative to justice. These laws work together, these methods, I should say. Mercy can't rob justice. Mercy is more time to accomplish what justice requires. And mercy has a cost and it's a high cost and someone has to pay it. So mercy can reduce the cost to the recipient but someone still has to pay and that's very important to learn. So, if you want to live this law, one of the main ways that you can do it is to stop giving your wife and kids everything they want without thinking of ways that they could improve and requiring that they improve in order to get it. Now, just to clarify what I'm saying here, there is a cost for them to obtain the things that they want, just like there's a cost for you to obtain the things that you want. So, as the husband and the father or the leader, if we're just talking generically, you might have opportunities to pay at least some of the price required for the people who you serve to get what they want. But that does not mean that you should do so in ways that pay the full price. You should never help anyone without them improving in some way. In other words, it should never be the case that you ever help anyone without sincerely believing that doing so makes it more likely that they will improve in some way. Now, the the safest way to do this is to require them to improve before you help them. So, for example, if your kid really wants that fancy bike, that sledgehammer with the pegs, and they don't have enough money, you can say, "Well, let me contrive work that you can do to earn the money, and I'm going to overpay you, but you're still going to work." That's a very righteous way to approach the situation. You see, so there's improvement there because the kid's going to do more and better than he would otherwise do. If your family's nagging you to go on some vacation, you can say, "Okay, that's fine, but you guys are all going to do this or that in order for us to go." So, real world example, I needed to paint the outside of my house. It was definitely time. We have siding that has to be painted about every 10 years and I think it had been about 15 years since it had been painted. And so, um, we got a quote and it was $10,000. And I said, "No way. We're doing it ourselves. You're all going to learn how to paint." And so I took everything that that required a ladder to get to. and my wife and kids took everything that could be done from the ground. And we did some practice runs on a shed, so it wasn't too bad if they messed it up. And once I was confident in their ability to paint, we took a whole summer and routinely people were out there painting. And I'd be out there before or after work painting up on the roof. And uh we got it done. And then we went on a vacation that cost a lot less than $10,000. And so that was a way to apply what I'm teaching here. All help should come with the expectation of improvement. And if that's not there, you shouldn't do it. So don't give your kids more than they deserve. If you want them to have better things, encourage them to be better people. The third law is the law of love. And no surprise, this is the best one. It's also the hardest one to keep. It requires more than the other two. So if you live the law of love, you do what is best for the world without special consideration of the cost or benefit to you. It doesn't mean you ignore the cost or benefit to you. It just means that there's no boost on the benefit to you and there's no boost on the cost to you. So most people in the world will take whatever they can take as long as someone else is paying for it. So these uh welfare programs are a great example of this. If you know someone who's on welfare, if you went up to them and said, "Look, if this program requires you to literally reach into my pocket, you know me. You know how hard I work. If if this program required you to directly reach into my pocket and steal my money out of my wallet, would you still be on it?" Chances are they'll say no. and yet they have no moral problem being on it when it's someone else's money that they don't know. This isn't an argument for not using welfare. The system's going to exist whether you're on it or not. It's also not an argument for using it. My point is that an awful lot of people do have special consideration of cost or benefit to themselves or the people they care about. their positions will change depending on how much it affects them or the people they care about. It's not just a dispassionate evaluation of universal cost or benefit. And that's a violation of the law of love. So, do you live this law? I already gave you one example, but here's a more generic approach. Do you ever place your own needs or wants before those of others? So, I have a friend who sold a house recently and he was upset because right before the buyers took possession, there was an expensive thing that broke in his house. So, he had to fix it. And he said, "I wish this just would have waited until after the other people moved in." I said, "Well, that's pretty messed up." So, a person that lives the the law of love would actually want it to break before they move. They wouldn't want someone else to get hit with that. Which which is actually that that's even true for the law of justice, the law of respect that we talked about before because that's due unto others as you would have them do to you. That's justice. That's not love. Anyway, do you ever place your own needs or wants before those of others? Are you dedicated to a transcendent purpose? And let me explain this. Before love, you are oriented towards what you get. And it's more localized obviously. But when you live the law of love, you don't do what you do specifically for what it matters to you. It's it's more general than that. It's for the benefit of the world. And this is this this really changes things when you learn to take yourself out of the equation or just to treat yourself as another person in the equation. And that's what the law of love requires. It requires you to lose yourself. Now what what we come we come back to this picture. Why is your family rowing in different directions? How do you get them coordinated in one direction? Well, they have to learn to submit to a transcendent purpose. Otherwise, they'll always be rowing in a different direction because each person's different. And if they're still rowing for themselves, they're going to row in a different direction than everyone else. If you want to get everybody on the same track, you've got to teach them to submit to a higher purpose. Now, that will ultimately be God's purpose, but they're going to learn God's purpose through you as the father. That's that's why you're there is to be a closer surrogate for that, an estimate of the ideal. And so, it's your job to show them that God is worth trusting by being worth trusting yourself. your trustworthiness will persuade them of God's trustworthiness. Now, this is obviously a high calling, but it's right there in the scriptures. You know, wives are charged to love their husbands as if they were Christ is a very, very high bar. And most women do not think about that when they decide who to marry. they're they're more interested in who's most attractive or whatever else. But the selection criteria should be who is the person most like Christ that I know, who's interested in me, and do I know any men who who meet the standard well enough that I'm willing to submit to them in all things as if they were God? It it sounds cultish to even say that. It is right there in the scriptures in several places. Okay. So, as a father, as a husband, getting married and having kids, that is your calling is to fill that role. And so, you better understand the magnitude of what you're signing up for. And if you don't fulfill that, you'll fail miserably in teaching your wife and kids what submission to a transcendent purpose is and why you should do it. So to to conclude, let's go back to this picture. How do I do this? Well, the short answer is be more like God. But specifically, you help those in your family or on your team, whatever the the unit is, to adopt a higher purpose and to more fully live it of their own accord. And there are level levels at which you can do this. And it's probably unavoidable that the need to walk through those levels is probably unavoidable. But you start at fear, then you teach them respect, and then you teach them love. And those aren't particularly separated. These are things that can overlap and they can change. You know, they can be different for each person because like I said, you need to respond to how well that person responds just like God does. God has has a fear relationship with most people. He has a respect relationship with very few. He has a love relationship with almost no one. He loves everyone, but very, very few people love him. And so he has to act accordingly because he acts for our greatest benefit. And when you treat a person who's living the law of fear as if they're living the law of love, you hurt them and you hurt others. So I hope that these thoughts are helpful to you. I hope that they give you some things to think about and work on in your family. And like I said, I'll be coming out with a book at some point that dives into much greater details in a whole lot of scriptures on these and a lot of related topics.