Hank Smith: 00:00:04 Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name’s Hank Smith. I’m here with my co-host, John Bytheway, who is of good cheer. John, that’s 3 Nephi 1:13, “Lift up your head and be of good cheer.” We are also here with our amazing guest, Dr. Craig Manning. John, we are in 3 Nephi. We have hit a new book. We’ve covered three lessons in the Book of Helaman. We are now starting what I would call the book of all books, as we start these opening chapters, what are you thinking about?

John Bytheway: 00:00:36 I wonder if these people had any idea what was coming. As I say that, I think, “Yeah, they did if they listened to Samuel the Lamanite, because he was very specific. Maybe they did have an idea of what was coming, but for it to actually happen, people get astonished and are falling down all over the place in this one.

Hank Smith: 00:00:55 I love what you just said, John. We don’t know either, like what is coming up. I don’t know if anybody thought, “Hey, you know what’s going to happen in the next couple of decades?” And then it does, it happens and it’s huge. Everything changes. Like I said, John, we are with Dr. Craig Manning today. Craig, as you’ve prepped 3 Nephi 1-7, what are you thinking? Where do you want to go?

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:01:23 I always go to the mental side of things. I think that’s what faith is trying to be strong thoughts and not worry about the uncertainty of the future, but know that all of these signs and all of these prophets, what they’ve been telling us, and having that faith at some point there’s going to be consequences for those, good and bad, depending on our decisions and the habits that we create, and you see what’s about to come and for it to actually happen. If you’ve done the right things you’re like, “This is good that I did these things. I feel bad for those people that didn’t, but now these are the consequences of a long time.” For me, I’m always like, okay, so we have this faith and we believe this and we do these things, and then for something to happen you can go, “Okay, that’s why we had the faith, because now we’re feeling the consequences of those, all those micro little decisions that add up over time.”

Hank Smith: 00:02:11 I frequently have to remind my children, “Consequences aren’t always negative. We put a negative tone on consequences. They can be very positive. It can be really good.”

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:02:19 Absolutely. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:02:21 John, Dr. Manning has never been on our show before, but he comes highly recommended, so we’re excited to have him, but he needs an introduction, and you are good at that.

John Bytheway: 00:02:32 I learned how to read in about third grade, so I’m good at that. When I looked at the spreadsheet and I saw Craig Manning, I thought, “Wait, is that the guy, The Fearless Mind guy?” Because I am fascinated by sports psychology. I’m fascinated by a guy at the free throw line having 20,000 people saying things which cannot be written in this book, and that he can focus and shoot. I’m amazed by how you do that mentally.

  00:03:02 I was really excited when I saw Dr. Manning on here, and he was actually the BYU women’s head tennis coach for 10 years. He has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from BYU, a master’s degree in psychology, and a doctorate in sports psychology from the University of Utah, head coach for BYU women’s tennis team, and 10 years as head coach BYU women’s tennis team has won four Mountain West Conference titles. He’s been honored with the Mountain West Conference Coach of the Year award three times and also received the NCAA Regional Coach of the Year award in 2005. So fun to hear faithful people in so many different areas of expertise all over the world, including sports psychology. So, welcome, Dr. Manning, thank you for joining us today.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:03:49 Yeah, thanks to both of you. I love everything you guys do. I’ve been following you guys for a while, so I appreciate the invitation, and love talking about the scriptures and truth as well. And by the way, so tennis, all intelligence comes from tennis scores, so there’s some studies I can try to support that with too from some different areas. But yeah, no, I love the game of tennis. It’s been great to me.

Hank Smith: 00:04:09 My dad was a professional golfer and we learned life’s lessons on the golf course. I’m sure you’ve done the same thing with tennis.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:04:17 Yeah, my kids get sick of it, but yes, that’s right.

John Bytheway: 00:04:20 Hank, one of my favorite golf quotes is, “The only thing that matters in golf is the next shot.” That’s so good. You don’t worry about the bogey on the last hole. You don’t worry about the sand coming up, the next shot. Wait, don’t get me started.

Hank Smith: 00:04:35 You and Craig are probably going to have a lot of fun today doing all your sports analogies. Craig, I’m going to read from the Come, Follow Me manual before we jump in. The manual is so well written, I think this is a good place to start. This is 3 Nephi 1-7, the title of the lesson, Lift up your Head and Be of Good Cheer. “In some ways it was an exciting time to be a believer in Jesus Christ. Prophecies were being fulfilled–great signs and miracles among the people indicated that the Savior would soon be born. On the other hand, it was also an anxious time for believers, because in spite of all the miracles, unbelievers insisted that the time was passed for the Savior to be born. These people caused a great uproar throughout the land and even set a date to kill all the believers if the sign prophesied by Samuel the Lamanite–a night without darkness–did not appear.

  00:05:26 In these difficult circumstances, the Prophet Nephi cried mightily to his God in behalf of his people. The Lord’s response is inspiring to anyone who faces persecution or doubt and needs to know that light will overcome darkness. ‘Lift up your head and be of good cheer; …I will fulfill all which I have caused to be spoken by the mouth of my holy prophet.’” Beautiful, an opener to a great movie. So Craig, take over and direct us. Where do you want to go?

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:05:56 Really we’re talking about the human mind. And human consciousness is something that we have not studied a lot, because it is so fundamentally subjective and dynamic. 100 years in the field of science we’ve shied away from really studying human consciousness. Human thought is our self-talk, and self-talk is made up of our words. The mind is dynamic. It’s always in movement. You’re always processing. If you’re not processing, that means you’re dead. How does the mind actually work at the very core? Human thought is language, not like language, it is language. How you think is how you talk to yourself, your self-talk, hence your words are critical. And how many times does the Lord talk about words in the gospel? And you ended that the very words of the Lord and how important those words are, and that’s at the root of human thought is our words and our choice of words.

  00:06:51 What we’re seeing in 3 Nephi 1-7 is there’s a lot of unbelievers and a lot of believers, and it’s creating this polarization that President Nelson keeps talking about. And I see the same pattern right now in our own society where there’s all this polarization in the world and people moving away from religion. And one of the things I see in my field is, sometimes I’ll say to people in the athletic or business or whatever environment I’m in, “But you need truth. Truth is critical in your life to have mental health and mental strength. Truth is critical and this is how you establish truth.” This is why I love the gospel so much. I’m not raised in it. I’m a convert and I joined the church because of truth. I remember the church, because I choose to be, because there’s so much truth in the gospel and it’s the foundation of life from my perspective.

John Bytheway: 00:07:40 I love that the Doctrine and Covenants gave us this definition of truth, the knowledge of things as they are and as they were and as they are to come. And then few weeks ago, Hank, Jacob 4, Jacob adds one word, which is so perfect in our day, as you said, Craig, “The spirit speaketh the truth, wherefore it speaketh of things as they really are.” I just love that, “And the things as they really will be.”

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:08:07 I love that, John, because if we turn inwards to the Holy Ghost, that’s where we find truth. In science to establish reliability you need multiple data points to quote the science, multiple data points. Well, multiple data points translate to you need witnesses. Well, how many? And Hank, you and I are joking about this before we started recording. Well, technically I just did the profiling for the NBA Draft with the NBA team I work with and the day before the draft I meet with the GM and go over people I think we should draft and maybe some we should be careful about. And one of the things I said is, “We have multiple data points of why we should draft this person, we have multiple data points why we probably shouldn’t draft these two.”

  00:08:47 And he says to me, because he is a religious guy too himself, and he says, “Why do you keep saying that?” And I said, “Look, the Book of Mormon at the front, it has three witnesses.” And I said, “If three witnesses or translating that to, we have three data points. If that’s good enough for God, that’s good enough for me. Three witnesses is a pattern of truth.” And I love that. That is logic. Three data points really is strong and gives you that security and that stability mentally to really mitigate the risk of fear and the anxiety that so many people feel from a mental standpoint.

Hank Smith: 00:09:23 I love that, and I bet we just had a bunch of NBA fans perk up their ears. “Wait, what? Who is our guest this week?”

John Bytheway: 00:09:30 Here’s a shout-out to Elder Uchtdorf. When I took flying lessons there’s duplicate instruments on both sides. You’ve got your artificial horizon over here and you’ve got an artificial horizon over here, but what if one of them is wrong? They always have a third, because that’s the tiebreaker so that you can have three witnesses of if your instruments are telling you the right thing. And I’ve always thought, “How cool that there’s not two, three in the cockpit there.”

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:10:01 Love that. Didn’t know that. That’s so great.

Hank Smith: 00:10:04 Craig, how should we go about walking through these chapters?

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:10:08 To me overall, just for a minute, the Gadianton robbers, what is the root of their issues there? Well, they’re flat out the lying and deceiving. The illusions, that’s the adversaries tools, illusion and deceit. And what that is the opposite of truth. So many people say, well, this is my truth as that big fad in the world. No, there’s one truth. There’s one truth that’s independent of all of us. This is the overlying thing I’m seeing in 3 Nephi 1-7, people are moving in this direction of survival mode rather than thriving mode. And when we move in that direction and we lose civilization, logic, rational, reasonable, logical thought, when we lose that and we stop collaborating, it starts with the Gadianton robbers and then the secret combinations, nothing good comes from keeping things secret.

  00:10:58 As we move in that direction, we lose this civility and we’re not working together, which I think is the law of consecration. We’re not living at this higher level, we’re still survival mode, which survival mode is simply the fight or flight response. It’s normal, but when everybody’s in this state of fear, we all regress to survival mode, and in that mode the strongest survive. It’s a hierarchy. I’m better than you, I’m stronger than you. We’re not collaborating and working together. It’s not a pleasant light always trying to compete to move up the hierarchy and be more authoritative and stronger and more aggressive than somebody else. That’s what I’ve seen in athletics, in business, in every area. If we want to live a high function life, we want to thrive, not survive, we got to get out of this fight or flight response. We’re always battling with each other. And you see that with the Gadianton robbers. It’s the beginning of a loss of truth. And when we lose truth, we lose civility and it goes in the wrong direction fast.

Hank Smith: 00:11:56 In chapter one I can see why you’d be in fight or flight response, because there’s a day set apart where you are going to die for your beliefs.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:12:05 Yes.

Hank Smith: 00:12:06 I can see how you wouldn’t thrive in that kind of setting.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:12:09 Everybody’s going to be in fight or flight response at that point, and now you want to be the most authoritative person on that hierarchy, so you’re the one setting the rules for everybody else. Yeah, I don’t know if anybody’s safe at that point in time.

Hank Smith: 00:12:21 I have a cross reference in 3 Nephi 1 for Alma 30. If you go back to the story of Korihor, it starts out like this. Verse seven, “There was no law against a man’s belief. It was strictly contrary to the commands of God that there should be a law which should bring men on unequal grounds.” It was only 75 years previous to now 3 Nephi 1 you can be executed for your belief. A lot can change in a few decades.

John Bytheway: 00:12:54 I’ve got in my margin, no religious liberty? How did that happen? And also, a day set apart. Okay, it wasn’t random. Samuel the Lamanite was so specific, Helaman 14:2, “Five more years cometh.” We usually don’t get prophecies that you can put in your planner like that. These people had been watching for that day to see if those signs would come to pass. And the only thing I can figure guys is, as it says, “The Gadianton robbers had gotten into the judgment seats.” Because like you said, Hank, what happened to that, “No law against a man’s believe.”

Hank Smith: 00:13:31 Now Craig, 3 Nephi 1, you’re right on here, is full of fear. The unbelievers are fearful that actually this sign is going to happen, so they’re panicking. The believers are fearful. Where does fear come from? In your experience as a coach and a mental trainer, that’s kind of a big question, “Where does fear come from?” Maybe the better question is, “How do I know if I’m stuck in fear? How do I know if I’m acting in fear?” I’m sure you’ve had athletes who are terrified of the stage, that world stage?

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:14:04 Absolutely. Fear is, we have science to prove it now, because this is not theory. Since we have access to the functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, so an fMRI, we can see the actual heat signatures in the brain, which is the processing, and we can see gray matter now. The science is incredible in neuroplasticity, which I know I got my PhD in performance science, but my emphasis was neuroplasticity, which is the science around how the mind is always learning and growing, and we can see it. To answer your question, there’s two parts or three, but the main two is the amygdala and hippocampus, and the amygdala is what houses fear. So, fear is reactive self-talk, to answer your question. Anytime when a reactive state of mind is, don’t miss this, don’t hit the water in the fairway, to talk golf. Whenever you have that mindset, you are creating an idea, a construct that is fundamentally reactive that triggers the fight or flight response.

  00:15:01 Because we all have this antenna at the top of our brain. The brain is hardware when we talk about it, and the mind is software, the programming. But our brain has an antenna on the top of our brain constantly reading, are you a friend or foe? Is that dog a friend or foe? And then only recently the researchers have added a third element of neutrality. Some people send mixed signals. Constantly trying to be aware and be safe. That’s at the very root of our survival is to be safe. So, what keeps us safe? Well, truth does, but when we don’t have that, that triggers the fight or flight response, which are both emotional responses. Fight creates anger and flight creates high anxiety. And those are both emotions, not thoughts. They’re both emotion to try to control to make themselves feel safe. That’s why so many people when they’re, if we talk about aggressive people or angry people, they’re not bad people.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:16:00 They’re scared and they’re trying to control their environment somehow, and the way they control it is try to be more authoritative or more dominant than some others where passive people are in that flight mode. And both of those, so there’s the layers. Fear is a construct or a concept or idea theory that leads to the emotion, vital flight response, anger and high anxiety, not just anxiety, high anxiety, I want to be very specific there. Low to moderate anxiety is actually good for us, but high anxiety isn’t. And then they both lead to aggression, which is where we act on that anger or where we act on that high anxiety. If we continue to create bad mental habits throughout our lives, you’re actually thickening and generating more gray matter in the amygdala, so you become an ornerier, grumpier, more dysfunctional person as you age, unfortunately. The bigger that grows, the more you’re struggling to cope with life.

  00:16:53 The direct opposite of fear is learning, because learning is constructs, theories, ideas, words, why we love the gospel principles, fear is the opposite. So if you’re always in a learning mentality, always learning from every situation in your life, always learning and becoming like Christ, I’d love to talk about that if we have time. That the ultimate level of happiness is who we are and who we’re becoming. If you have a learning mentality, there’s no fear because you don’t look at life as a threat, you look at life as something you can learn from to thrive. Then second in opposition to the fight or flight is memory recall. Think about all of what’s going on right now, all of the signs and all of the stuff that’s happened, and people forget it because they’re always in that fight or flight response. Can you see how important memory recall is to simply, how many times does the scripture say, remember, remember, remember? Well, memory recall is the complete opposite of fight or flight. People that are always in fight or flight lose their memories as they age.

  00:17:55 The best athletes I ever have been blessed with the opportunity to work with, they have phenomenal memories. They remember everything. This time this one athlete I worked with in Milwaukee years, it’s been like nine, we’re into our 10th year and he’ll say, “Do you remember that first session that you did in Utah up there?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I remember it.” English is not his first language. And he says, “I remember that session. You said this, this and this.” And I’m always like, “I cannot believe how good your memory is.” This guy remembers everything. Okay, so memory recall is second.

  00:18:29 Then third in opposition to aggression to where our emotions run and react with aggression is spatial awareness. I love this, love this. Elder Renlund gave a BYU talk and his language was, the more we learn and grow, the more our life gets to a point we see things at higher vistas and perspectives. I love that we’re not better people, we have more awareness of what’s truth and what’s really on. That is the most comfortable way to live. It’s not living in ignorance and putting blinders on and trying to pretend that you’re not aware of reality. That’s the key is we need to be aware of truth and reality, but the more aware we are, the more you don’t have fear anymore.

  00:19:14 I absolutely love that because I think it fits the gospel and what’s going on here. There’s a group of people that are believers and they remember the signs. They know what’s coming. They’re anxious because of people around them that are going to have be impacted by it, but they’re aware of what’s happening and they know what’s going on. And this other group that’s now panicking because all of a sudden the consequences are happening. To me, I see the science of human beings happening through this whole section.

John Bytheway: 00:19:43 A few weeks ago they were interviewing Jimmer Fredette as he was preparing to be on that 3 x 3 team in the Olympics, and he talked about having the gospel, having solid truth is so helpful because what’s really important in life, and it actually helped. I think the way he said was, “It helps me to be calmer in sports because I know what’s really going on.” I thought, oh, what a great way to put it. It’s not all in this basket oh no, what if I fail? It’s not. Truth is still out there and that’s where I’ve built my life. Did I get that right?

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:20:17 Yeah. Love that.

Hank Smith: 00:20:19 And John, Jimmer is a frequent listener to followHIM, so Jimmer, we love you. Thanks for listening. And Craig, maybe I can combine this with what John just said. Take our two questions and merge them into one. It seems that these unbelievers, one, rejoice over their brethren’s difficulty, and two really act irrationally. Fear seems to do that to you is that, like you said, you want to become authoritarian and look down on someone and feel good when someone else is suffering, and then two, to act in a way that you probably wouldn’t behave if you weren’t in that fight or flight.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:21:00 Love it. Yes, rational means real, which means reality. So you’re building from this foundation of truth and what’s real. And irrational is you’re building off these to use the language, these lying and deceiving, these false things, but every living organism needs to find security and safety. So now when you don’t live off truth, you’ve got to find some other way. And one of the temporary ways is to put yourself above and put others beneath and discredit others so you can feel more secure about yourself. The research calls it when we’re angry, it actually inflates. Its ego inflating and you feel better about yourself temporarily. That’s the problem with anger. When you get angry in sports, say you get angry and you’re inflating and you play better for a moment, well, that’s because you’re flighting your ego and you temporarily have a greater sense of control over your environment, but it fades quickly.

  00:21:50 But it creates this pattern of, well, anger actually helps me. Well, yes, for a very small time. Be careful because you create that habit and rely on anger, the reason it’s helping you is you feel better than everybody else instead of focusing on you and being highly competent yourself. The competition is not with other people. The biggest thing I’ve done in all these years of working in sports is teaching people to stop comparing and stop competing with others and compete with yourself and build your own skills and your own competency. And honestly, being very blessed and being involved in two NBA championships, and I’ll never forget one of them that we won, this particular athlete the night before the game, I go over to his house to do a session and he answers the door and says to me, “Doc, I don’t owe you anything.” And I’m thinking, “Okay, this is night before game six, where are we going with this?” And he’s like, “I just feel like I am really good with myself and I’m unapologetic myself.”

  00:22:42 He was just being himself. He was just being him. He wasn’t competing with anyone else. He wasn’t worried about the opponents not having any mental energy on anything else other than what he has control over and what he was responsible for. When he won that game and won the NBA championship, he performed at a very high level. So to me, it’s the gospel. It’s about us becoming. Who are we and who are we becoming? And it’s super easy to add becoming like Christ, but that’s what the science says, who are we becoming as human beings?

Hank Smith: 00:23:15 Craig, you have one of your players say to you, he’s in the NBA, “Craig, where do you get all this stuff?”

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:23:21 Yeah. I’m super open. I’m very careful. I don’t want to offend people. I try to be as careful. I don’t want to be a careless person. I try to be as careful as I can. And yes, he said that and I’m like, “It’s from the gospel. It’s from scripture. Because if you do the science the right way and the gospel, so in alignment, they’re so connected. Yeah, there’s so many times with those that I know are okay with it, I’m like, “Yep, I got it from this scripture. I got it from this scripture.” How do you know this? Well, yeah, I was working on it this morning and this is what I learned this morning, so this is where I got it from. All the time.

John Bytheway: 00:23:57 That’s great.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:23:58 Some of the most toughest, toughest individuals I had the opportunity to work with that are from really, really tough cities and tough backgrounds, the ultimate compliment, one day I was working with this guy that I love him and he was so tough and I’m trying to never tell him what to do. Just state the facts, teach them the truth and let them govern themselves. Never tell them what to do because these guys are so tough, they don’t want you to tell them what to do. And he finally said to me, he’s like, “Doc, you know why I love meeting with you?” And I’m like, “No, but I want to know.” He’s like, “Because you never tell me what to do. You just teach me the truth. And that’s what I love.” I’m like, “Oh, I got to write that down. Got to remember that.”

  00:24:37 People just want truth in the end. They don’t want you to tell them what to do. They just want truth. Especially this younger generation, they want truth to help them be, which is really what this is about. Lift up your head. We’re trying to help people transform and be the best version of themselves. You got to teach them truth as best as you can so that they have that foundation, that rock to build off. It’s not about us, it’s about the truth. It’s independent of us.

Hank Smith: 00:25:04 That feeds right into 3 Nephi 1 as Nephi’s people are under this deadline. Nephi goes to the source of truth. He doesn’t go after the unbelievers. He goes right to the Lord.

John Bytheway: 00:25:19 I like He’s not doubting. There’s a lot of people that are very sorrowful. Verse seven, oh, maybe the sign won’t come to pass and Nephi’s not that at all. He’s, “Um we’re waiting, we need the sign tonight or we’re all dead.” I don’t know if it was the next day that was set apart by the unbelievers, but it sounds like it. We need that sign tonight. I love that he prayed all that day, which means he started in the morning and which means it must have been late into the day. So there’s that fourth watch God as Michael Wilcox might say, waited until the last minute.

Hank Smith: 00:25:54 Are you coming? Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:25:56 But he went to the source of truth. He wasn’t doubting. He knew what truth was. He was just asking about the timing, it sounds like.

Hank Smith: 00:26:05 John, I love that. I know the truth. I just would like to know the timing.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:26:11 He seems to push our faith to the limit at times, doesn’t he?

John Bytheway: 00:26:15 Yeah.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:26:15 Why do you have to stretch me so far? My father-in-law, we always said when I was doing my PhD to get down on your knees and pray to the Lord before you do your studies. I’ve created this habit. I like to wake up early in the morning, I’m a morning person, I like to go down to my office. Jerry Seinfeld, he said there was a young comedian that caught him backstage after all of his success with Seinfeld and everything, the show, he asked for some advice and he said, “If you want to be successful, you need to write two hours a day. Not all of it gets in your show, but you got to write two hours a day.” And he said, “Get a big wall calendar and get a Sharpie marker. And every time you get your two hours a day, you put a cross on it.” He says, “Don’t break the kinetic chain. You got to do that every day.”

  00:26:57 And obviously I’m not going to do that on Sundays, but I’ve tried to do an hour a day. I get up early, go down to my office, I say my prayers and I try to study and as I study, man, the spirit opens up. I’ve got my binder here and I like to hand write all my notes. It’s not coming from me, it’s coming from the Holy Ghost. I’m just communicating to the Holy Ghost. When we understand the conscious mind is language and the soul of who you are is how you talk to yourself then. So therefore, how important is your language and your words when you’re praying to the Lord? And how important is that connection to the Holy Ghost? Your language is everything.

  00:27:36 And to make a point of that, I’m from Australia and I grew up playing tennis and I was on the tour for a few years, therefore I could swear not anymore, I could swear in every language there was on the tour. That’s what that all means. When you’re Australian and you played tennis, and you travel the world, you can swear in every language. And that was a bad habit that I had. When I came here and I joined the church after I got to Utah, I don’t judge anyone that swears. I work with people that swear all the time. For me personally, that’s what I had to do to learn the discipline on my mind. And I’ve tried my best to get good at that. And I find the more I’m deliberate with my words in my prayers and my communication, wow, the Lord just opens up and he gives you the answers if you’re precise and accurate with your language. When you really ask with precision exactness the words, the Lord answers.

  00:28:31 When you’re vague in general, the Lord can’t answer that. He can’t do it for us. It’s against his own laws to do it for us. He can’t take our agency away. So we’ve got to pray with precision and exactness. And when you do that, the Lord answers. I’m just shocked at how many times just trying to take notes fast enough because of these ideas popping in my head. I’m like, I got to get this down before I forget this because this is good stuff. Or I’ll be out mowing the lawn. And you’ve worked hard and you’ve been praying and working on a topic. You’ve got to put the mental work in to think through something. And then I’m out mowing the lawn and all of a sudden the ideas come in and I’m stopping the mower and getting my phone out, trying to remember these things that are popping in my head. And that to me is infinite intelligence. I don’t know why we need approval from people in the great and spacious building when we have access to that.

Hank Smith: 00:29:22 Isn’t that the verse 12, “The voice of the Lord came unto him.” The description of what you said there, pure truth. Walk us through what happens next.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:29:33 I love 13 because this is me. He’s asking the Lord basically in my own words, I’m like, why do you push us so hard? And the blessings and the answers finally come right when we hit that max, it seems like when we’re just about to break. With 13, he wanted to know the time, the date of when this is going to happen. Sometimes I feel like, how much longer can I hang on with this before the emotions are getting the better of me? John, could you read 13 for us, mate?

John Bytheway: 00:30:00 Yes. “Lift up your head and be of good cheer for behold the time is at hand. And on this night, shall the sign be given and on the morrow come I into the world to show unto the world that I will fulfill all that which I have caused to be spoken by the mouth of my holy prophets.”

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:30:19 Can you read 14 for us, Hank?

Hank Smith: 00:30:21 Yep. “Behold, I come unto my own to fulfill all things which I have made known unto the children of men from the foundation of the world, and to do the will, both of the Father and of the son. Of the Father because of me and of the son, because of my flesh and behold, the time is at hand and this night shall the sign be given.” That’s got to feel good.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:30:43 Yeah, absolutely. If we go back to 13, the very first part, lift up your head and be of good cheer. That brings good energy. There’s one more layer to the hippocampus, but after that spatial awareness, they call it emotional regulation. And what that actually is is where we create our own happiness. So many people wait for happiness to come to you, and they don’t realize that we create our own happiness. And that happiness is even though there’s tough times, like what’s going on here, really tough times. Obviously, like you’ve said, there’s a deadline here that some of us could be losing our lives, but still be of good cheer, which means to me is bring good energy. Just always got to have a good attitude, keep your head up, have faith, and bring good energy. And just to me is an application of faith. So I love that. Just always trying to bring good energy to life. And then the 14 that jumped out to me, there is the specificity and praying. And if you’re specific in how you pray, the Lord will answer. And there that last line, the Lord answers a specific prayer with a specific answer. And behold, the time is at hand. And this night shall the sign be given. I mean, he gives an exact answer. And I’ve always seen that pattern is the more specific we are with our communication with the Lord, the more specific his answers are in return.

John Bytheway: 00:32:02 You know what I love about this is, this is Christmas Eve and sometimes in our different traditions we imagine the wise men were the first to give gifts, but what did Jesus just do? “I will come tonight and all of you can live.” I’ve always loved that, that maybe even here, Jesus was the one that gave this first gift. It’s always been promised glad tidings, great joy and he comes and says, “Be of good cheer. I’m coming tonight.”

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:32:34 I love that too.

Hank Smith: 00:32:35 The Come, Follow Me manual has a great idea. It says, “The Savior has used the phrase, be of good cheer on several occasions.” And it lists some of those occasions in Scripture. And then it asks you to go read those and ask yourself what impresses you about these invitations? Read the surrounding verses about the circumstances in which the Savior said these words. What reasons does he give for people to be of good cheer? Craig, he doesn’t just say be of good cheer, he says, be of good cheer because here’s this truth.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:33:06 Yeah, love that. Emotional regulations where we create good energy. One of the ways you create good energy is gratitude. And I love President Hinckley’s nine Be’s and I don’t know if you’ve ever focused on why gratitude comes first. I think this is why gratitude comes first. Gratitude is critical because when we’re grateful, we’re focusing on and directing our energy to the things we do have that we can be grateful for which creates good energy and that creates a good emotion. That’s why gratitude is so important. It comes before being smart, so love the order there. Be grateful, be smart, be true, then be clean, be humble and prayerful.

  00:33:45 I just from a mental health standpoint, understanding that gratitude was first out of President Hinckley’s six Be’s. I know that added more later, but the fundamental six, gratitude is first. How big of a deal is that? Well, because if you focus on the things you’re grateful for, it’s occupying your mind and creating good energy of something that’s very stable and very real, not fake. Really spending the time and focusing on what are the things that I’m grateful for in my life and jotting down those, that’s such a massive mental habit to create in your life, to always spend the time to focus on the things you’re grateful for because of the tangibleness like, Hank, you were talking about how real that is. It’s not fake at all.

Hank Smith: 00:34:33 In the Sermon on the Mount, when the Savior teaches the people to pray, that’s the first thing he does. We are grateful and I have a feeling the Lord doesn’t need our gratitude as much as we need gratitude in our hearts.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:34:47 Such a good point. He doesn’t need it. We need it. This is why now prayer is always starting with gratitude, the things we’re grateful for, but try to be specific. The more specific you are, the more real it is and you’re building from truth always then.

John Bytheway: 00:35:01 We sometimes think, “Oh yeah, Moroni’s promise, Moroni 10:4.” Don’t skip Moroni 10:3. In Moroni 10:3, you’re instructed to remember how merciful God has been from the creation of Adam down until the time you receive these things and ponder it in your hearts and that will fill you with gratitude. And gratitude is the gateway to revelation, and then you ask. I love that. Verse 3 sets you up to put you in a grateful pondering mindset so that then you can ask about this truthfulness of these things being the Book of Mormon.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:35:39 Love it. It’s great.

Hank Smith: 00:35:41 Craig, when you mentioned someone winning the NBA championship and how excited they must be, I can’t imagine how excited these people must have been a thousand times the NBA championship that the sun goes down, but there is no darkness. That’s the consequences. I went the distance.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:35:59 Hey, can I take that to an everyday experience. For me, when we’re going through something, you’ve got something with one of your kids or you’ve got something, whatever it is in life, financial or whatever it is, and you’re having faith and you’re believing that you’ll get through it and you’re just trying to overcome that little adversity that in comparison to what they’re dealing with there in 3 Nephi.

  00:36:20 You have enough faith and you get through it when you pray to me. You’re going through a lot and you really don’t know the solution of the future, the uncertainty of the future, but you’re praying and you’re looking and then the Lord answers. And the answer comes back, here’s the plan, here’s how you can solve this. That to me just brings so much peace when through the prayer the solution comes up. Okay. All right. Now, I know what to focus on, now I know what I can do.

  00:36:50 I don’t expect you to change the environment, but just help me know what I need to do to navigate this very difficult challenge. Love that, which is a lot more of a simplified version of what they’re dealing with, but I couldn’t imagine winning an NBA championship was, the emotion was amazing, but what would it have been like?

John Bytheway: 00:37:07 I mean, I’ve tried to think about what was going on in the dwelling places of these Nephites and you’re going, “Honey, tomorrow…” I don’t know if honey was a term of endearment back in their time, but honey tomorrow, could be tomorrow, they’re going to ask us if we believe. What are we going to say? Because what if they kill us and take our children? What are we going to do? And you could see the intensity of Nephi’s prayer.

  00:37:33 We need the sign or we’re all dead. I just think that the relief, as you mentioned when going down to the sun, there was no darkness. The relief, I don’t know if they were on their knees. I don’t know if they were dancing in the streets. I don’t know if it was a combination of those things. That’s a pretty hard sign to fake. That’s not like a magic trick with sleight of hand. It’s not going to be dark all night long.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:37:58 I couldn’t imagine the anxiety and the fear. We just had a high adventure camp this weekend with our teachers and priests and we got some crazy strong hikers and climbers that are experts in this. I’m not a hiker and climber. I was too busy playing tennis, so I never went to scouts as a youth. No skills in camping at all.

Hank Smith: 00:38:20 You brought your tennis racket on the hike?

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:38:22 I wish I had taken it I could have fished with that.

Hank Smith: 00:38:23 There’s a bear.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:38:23 A bear, yeah. That would’ve been even better because we did come across two spots where the bears had slept the night before. Long story short, as we go over this huge over the peak was 11,700 feet and we went over this summit or whatever it is. Next morning though a couple of our people in our group couldn’t go back over or they didn’t feel like they could. So we took the longer way, but it was flat and we got lost for three hours at least in my head. Again, just to keep in mind, I’m a complete and utter amateur and all I know is to follow the water and it’ll lead us. But other than that, I don’t know what I’m doing. Three hours trailblazing. Now, I know what that means is that means there is no trail. My mind though was constantly like, “Okay, follow the Bishop. He knows what he’s looking for things.” And he’d go up and look for trails. And it wasn’t registering in my brain, but he just kept going up. I just kept trying to focus on solutions making sure, I’m trying to think through are we making the right decisions on where we’re going? And I was trying to be calm. My son says I was a bit moody, which I was annoyed by that. I wasn’t moody. I was trying to make sense of this to try and solve it because I’m so out of my skill set. No idea what I’m doing. Trying to follow along.

  00:39:35 Then we come to this place after three hours of traversing this river because we just said there’s no room, trees, growth. There was just no room. Looking out for bears. We were literally afraid there could be a bear around. And then Bishop says, “There looks like there’s some clearing there.” And it wasn’t processing, so I’m wondering… I couldn’t imagine what they’re going through, but they must have been in such a state of fear even when there was still light, it didn’t get dark. I’d imagine that most people are still, “What’s going on?” And Bishop is like, “That I think is the beginning of the trail.”

  00:40:08 And I was still, “What does that mean?” I was still in this place of not understanding. Then as we started to move towards, I’m like, “Oh, there’s the trail, the path, the path back to salvation.” Basically the path back to the rod of iron. This is like the rod of iron. The path is the rod of iron. Now all we do is we just stay on the path. We don’t get off the path. Then we get back to meet the expert that’s going to pick us up, and then there’s Dairy Queen on the way down, which is the fruit from everything.

  00:40:38 All of a sudden it hits me like, “Oh, there’s the path. That’s the rod. The path is the rod. Oh, we’re good now. I just stay on the path and we’re good.” But up until that I couldn’t imagine the anxiety and the stress they’re thinking about. They must’ve been so confused and chaotic and destabilized, and so much anxiety and stress. And then when the first went down, I don’t think they would all straight away go understand what that was actually happening at first.

Hank Smith: 00:41:03 Right. Takes a while to go, “Okay, wow.”

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:41:08 Yeah. I always love this research. One of the fundamental purposes in a brain is for sense making organization and storage and sense making. We need somebody there to be able to make sense of what’s really going on, and when you’re in a fight or flight response, you’re not making sense of things. You’re spiraling. That’s a separate part of the brain when you’re in a fear state. That’s why we need our leaders. That’s why we need our bishops. That’s why we need that. So when that sun goes down, we need the prophets there. We need somebody there saying, “Oh, this is what’s happening.”

  00:41:42 We probably needed those people around and those moments in life, I couldn’t imagine what they’re going through. There must have been so much fear and I don’t know who was around them to help them make sense of that.

Hank Smith: 00:41:55 John, you mentioned this is a difficult sign to fake.

John Bytheway: 00:41:59 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:41:59 It says in verse 22, “There began to be lyings sent forth among the people to harden their hearts to not believe in the things which” these four words “which they had seen.”

John Bytheway: 00:42:14 Don’t believe your eyes.

Hank Smith: 00:42:15 “The more part of the people still believed and were converted to the Lord.” I think you’re right on there. This is a tough thing to fake and even with someone telling you, “You didn’t really see that.”

John Bytheway: 00:42:25 “You didn’t really see that,” yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:42:27 “I did. I knew it. I knew that God knew it and I could not deny it.”

John Bytheway: 00:42:32 I really liked the line in verse 16, “The great plan of destruction which they had laid for those who believed in the words of the prophets had been frustrated.” What a contrast. Somebody has a great plan of destruction and somebody has a great plan of salvation, of happiness, of redemption, and these guys had a great plan of destruction. And then verse 20, sounds like all of those, it shall come to passes. All get checked in verse 20, “And it had come to pass, yeah, all things, every wit according to the words of the prophets.” It must’ve been fun to etch that one right there.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:43:10 I love it. So good. It blows me away how people, and it comes from the adversary, they want to literally try to deny something that’s right in your face, but I think this is why the consistency of speaking truth wins out for the most part with most people. If you consistently teach truth and you can consistently try to be as real and as honest as you can be, you’ll earn the trust of people. And I don’t know which apostle said that, but God loves all his children equally. He does not trust them all the same. To me, the consistency of teaching truth and the consistency of speaking truth, I think we earn trust if we do that.

  00:43:52 And I love what that’s saying there is that there are people in this world though that will try to deny something that is so tangible and so real, but they’ll still try to deny that it’s actually… I think they even have a word that they’ve created for that now, they call it gaslighting where that’s a phrase that they now use to try to bring awareness to when people are trying to destabilize the very reality that you live.

Hank Smith: 00:44:13 Yeah. You didn’t see what you actually saw. So, Craig, we’ve had you for quite a while and we’ve only done one chapter. Let’s keep going. Chapter two begins with something you’ve already mentioned. People began to forget signs and wonders, and when they saw a sign or wonder, they were less and less astonished. It’s pretty commonplace for a miracle to happen. What do you want to do with chapter two?

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:44:41 Just even in the summary, wickedness and abominations increase among the people. This is what happens when we’re in fight or flight response. When we’re in fight or flight, there’s no emotional regulation. We’re becoming completely led by emotions. Our emotions are dictating and controlling our lives and it’s just a battle for who can be the most dominant at that time. We’re in total survival mode at this point. And when we’re in survival mode, good things are less likely to happen. A lot of bad things are happening.

  00:45:09 But then what happens? We’re in this fear state, we start looking for a sense of security and this is where Gadianton robbers, and we start looking for these extreme groups to surround ourselves who are trying to keep us safe. To me, we move further and further away from truth and we start trying to take from others because we’re so insecure about ourselves and we go into that fight or flight response, which is survival, which is a scarcity mentality, and now we got to take from others.

  00:45:37 We’re losing self-awareness and we’re blaming the environment. There’s three ways we exist, human thought first, and those thoughts create our habits, which dominates our behavior. And the third is the environment. If you’re not in control of your thoughts and your behavior, you have to control the environment. There’s no other choice. There’s two choices in life. You either control and master yourself or you’re going to have to try to control somebody else. And that’s what we’re seeing here with all the wickedness. Now we’re just turning into survival mode and trying to take what we can from other people.

Hank Smith: 00:46:12 Verse 2 stood out to me. There are people who are trying to get believers to imagine up some vain thing in their hearts that all the things that they’re seeing, people deceiving them. And then this was an interesting phrase, “I’m going to lead you to believe that the doctrine of Christ is a foolish thing.” That happens all over today from my experience is, “Okay, maybe it is real, but it’s foolish.” It seems that if I can make you feel foolish. This was Korihor’s strategy, then you’re vulnerable, right? As soon as you feel, “I’m the fool in this situation, I don’t want to be the fool, so now I’m grasping.” What do you have to offer me so I’m no longer the fool here?

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:46:57 Hank, see, if we go back to some of the scripture at the beginning is they’re trying to deceive. They’re trying to redirect people’s focus to something else, tying it back to the modern world. Bill George who’s done a ton of research in the business world and written the book, True North, he says, “The biggest things, it’s not how intelligent or talented you are, we get distracted.” And I think that’s exactly what the scripture is saying is these people are trying to deceive. They’re trying to distract and get you to focus on something else.

  00:47:24 Bill George says, “The biggest distractions of leaders, and I would say people is money, fame, and power.” Those three, money, fame, and power. And to me that resonates with these vain things, money, fame, and power distracting you away from truth and the quality of person you are. But what I’m seeing is this diversion away from building around truth and when we build around truth, it’s a flat culture. We don’t need to be above. It’s not a hierarchy. It’s not about being dominant about somebody else and having people beneath us. We’re all on the same level when we build around truth.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:48:00 And what’s happening at this level now, these vain things, money, fame and power. These are distracting us, and this is the beginning of where we’re constantly competing with other people and then that competition leads to wars with other people. And you see that as we go through 3 Nephi. By the end, it’s like the secret combinations where we’re trying to constantly take from others and fighting with other people. Because we’re all about comparison with others, there’s no collaboration anymore. At this point, we’re moving away from rational, reasonable, logical thought, and civility, and moving to this world where it’s just the strongest survive. Instead of evolving, we’re going backwards at this point as a human race.

John Bytheway: 00:48:39 The end of verse two there, I just got in my margin, how could this happen? It says, “They began to disbelieve all which they had.” Some of us question, did I really feel that or not? But this says, “They began to disbelieve all they had heard and seen.” It reminds me of Nephi going, “You guys, you saw an angel.” How do you explain that away? That’s that gaslighting. You’re disbelieving things you actually heard and actually saw.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:49:05 Yep, and that’s the opposite, memory recall is the opposite of fight or flight response, and that’s clearly what we’re showing there. And for anyone listening, again, why it’s so important to live and build around truth. If somebody is gaslighting you, consistently state the facts. When you consistently state the facts, what you’re doing is consistently stating truth for your own benefit so you don’t let somebody else destabilize you by deceiving you. And that’s right there in two where it says, “So led away and deceive the hearts of the people.” And so to not let somebody deceive your heart, you’ve got to consistently state the facts. That is an application of faith. When you have faith, you’ve got to be strong in your self-talk. There’s times that you know the truth and you’ve got to go over in your head what the truth actually is.

  00:49:52 That’s the same for athletes. I was just working with an athlete a few days ago, when something happens and you know what really happened. So first, think about what really, really happened, and once you go over it in your head and your memory is strong and freshened up, consistently go over what you know really happened, and don’t move away from that so you’re not deceived.

Hank Smith: 00:50:13 A scripture came right to my head, Craig, as you were talking. It says, Joseph Smith history this is verse 25. Many people were trying to get him to disbelieve what he had seen, and he states the truth. “I had actually seen a light, and in the midst of that light, I saw two personages, and they did in reality speak to me. And though I’m hated and persecuted for saying that I had seen a vision, it was true.” He just states the truth. State the facts.

John Bytheway: 00:50:43 Over and over.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:50:46 So Hank and John, what we’re talking about here is this is in our marriages, in our relationships with partners, with our kids, with our colleagues, how fundamentally important it is to do exactly, Hank, what you just said there. In all areas of our life, there’s times where we need to consistently state the facts and the truth, and not move away from it. Because when we’re under these moments where we’re being questioned, or sometimes it feels like you might be interrogated a little bit, it’s critical to build around truth. When you build around truth, it’s not about us, it’s just about truth.

  00:51:17 What it does is it neutralizes the ego and it neutralizes this need for people to make things personal. And that’s why we said from the beginning, truth is independent of us. And that’s why it’s so important, and it keeps life flat, where we’re all worth the same and we’re all doing this together. But when we lose that, it’s now destabilizing other people and thinking I’m better than somebody else, and it’s now just a constant battle in that the emotions are dominating things and it’s all the fight or flight response. It’s two paths. Which path are we going to go down? Are we going to go down the Savior’s path or are we going to go down the adversary’s path? And the adversary’s path is not a fun way to live.

John Bytheway: 00:51:56 I love the old saying that people are entitled to their own opinions, but they’re not entitled to their own facts.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:52:05 Yes, absolutely.

John Bytheway: 00:52:06 Oh, I love that idea of state the facts. I think sometimes self-talk, we have to do that. “I’m such a loser.” Okay, now wait a minute. You’ve lost this one thing, but you’ve done lots of other things. And sometimes we have to state that to ourselves.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:52:21 John, in all of these meetings that we get pulled into at times, we just need to be really good at organizing and making sense of what really happened by simply stating the facts over and over again so we’re not making it bigger than what it really is.

John Bytheway: 00:52:35 Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:52:36 We’re not beating ourselves up. I can’t tell you how many athletes do that, John, that they’re beating themselves up, and saying, “Oh, I was horrible. I played terrible.” I’m going, “Okay, that’s not accurate at all. Let’s actually break down exactly what happened.”

John Bytheway: 00:52:48 Yes.

Hank Smith: 00:52:49 Let me quote a great speaker here, and then Craig, you can comment on this. This is a BYU devotional called The Power of Your Words, given back in 2017. This speaker says, “This is what doubt looked like for me. I would miss a backhand into the top of the net and say to myself, not again, your backhand stinks. You can’t make a backhand. Why do you even play this game? You just stink.” He goes on and says, “The problem with doubt is that it doesn’t stay isolated to your backhand. Doubt is a mental habit, and it can and does spread into other areas of your life. Not identifying the root of the problem at the time, I struggled on the tour for the next year and a half, ending my pro tennis aspiration. My poor performance would later be a blessing because I never made any money and I could still claim amateur status.”

  00:53:42 He goes on and says, “Since that time, I have seen self-doubt in many people, athletes, coaches, musicians, students, and children. As a bishop, I see it in my ward members who I’m a steward over. Once self-doubt takes hold of an individual, action is halted.”

  00:53:58 Craig, that’s almost what we see here is once doubt takes over for these people, their hearts are hardened, their hearts are deceived, in verse two, and their hearts are led away in verse three. Craig. That was a great speaker.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:54:14 Thanks, Hank. And going back to what, John, you said too is don’t deceive ourselves in our own self-talk first, being truthful to ourselves is so fundamental. And building around truth and not lying to ourselves, which is what I was really doing as a tennis player with that example. I wasn’t being honest with myself, and how that can spiral and get out of our control. Now, here’s something I also want to bring up before we move on, but the answer isn’t going the other extreme. So if we’re saying that negative self-talk, which technically, that self-talk, everything I was saying is when I said, “My backhand stinks, I’m a terrible tennis player,” those thoughts are reactive.

  00:54:46 Some people say those who are negative, well, positive and negative is energy. My self-talk was reactive, which creates negative energy. What I want to adhere to is that was a bad spiral I’d get in. So some people would say, “Well, you need to be more positive to get yourself out of it.” But the problem with positive self-talk is it’s not really real. We want positive energy in life, and let’s talk about positive and negative if you want, but they’re energy, and you want to bring good energy. And that’s be of good cheer, is bring good energy. But we need to be real, because we’re not real, we’re not building off a firm foundation. And when we’re just trying to think positive all the time, it’s a bit empty. It leaves too much empty space for the doubts and the fears to still occupy that, or it leaves too much space for bad mental habits to occupy the empty space.

  00:55:33 It wasn’t enough just to go, “No, no, no, you’re a great tennis player.” It’s too empty, it’s not exact. If we’re truthful. We’re diagnosing the reality of what’s happening accurately. And if you diagnose it accurately, your solutions will take you in a better place. But if you misdiagnose and you lie to yourself, either too negative or too positive, you’re misdiagnosing reality and you can’t make things better in the future, which is the 3 Nephi 13:34. “Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow will take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient is the day.” Meaning live in reality, and the better you would deal with reality, the better your potential future will be.

  00:56:10 That was my mistake. I tried to be positive, instead, I should have been real. “Okay, I miss into the tape, now what do I need to do to adjust?” Well, I need to aim higher. Can you see the solution? The science around rumination versus solutions, it’s unbelievable the difference. There’s a big difference between worrying and thinking. So many people say, “I overthink.” Well, no, really what you’re doing is you’re worrying. Thinking is proactive and solution-based. It’s not worrying, which is reactive and subtractive.

Hank Smith: 00:56:41 My friend, Doug Benson, he’s a psychologist as well, and he says, “Those three words can really bless every area of your life.” Check the facts.

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:56:50 Hank, I’d just double down on that. Living from reality, there’s a new therapy that’s getting a lot of traction globally, it’s called solution-based therapy, and I’m a huge fan of it. You diagnose with accuracy what’s really going on, and then you can build solutions from there. It’s such a stable way, and it can eliminate so much anxiety and fear in your life if you live that way. Reality and solutions, reality and solutions all day.

Hank Smith: 00:57:16 Fantastic.

John Bytheway: 00:57:18 Craig, I taught this last weekend. I was quoting Stephen Covey. He had a group of youth, I believe it was, fold a piece of paper in half which created two columns. “Write on the left side what others think of me.” He was surprised how the negative self-talk the kids had, “They think I’m dumb, they think I’m weird, they think I’m this, they think I’m that.” And then he said, “On the other side, I want you to write what God thinks of me.” And it was all truth. Scriptures, lines from patriarchal blessing. Sheri Dew says, “Go to sources that only speak truth.”

  00:57:51 And then after they had the worth of souls is great and here’s your gifts and talents, and your potential on one side and all this negative on the other, he just said, “Who are you going to believe?” That is brilliant. So I loved when you were saying that about self-talk, negative and truth, I thought, “That’s what Covey did.” Write down the truth on the right side and ask yourself, “Who are you going to believe?”

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:58:13 Yeah, here’s a little habit for everybody listening too. I love something Albert Einstein once said, he said, “Question everything.” But the context he said it at first was not questioning others, you’re questioning yourself. So here’s a little habit that I learned from Albert Einstein, is when I’m very conscious of my own thoughts and something hard is going on, and I’ll have a thought, I’ll say, “Is that accurate?” I ask myself that question, “Is that accurate?”

John Bytheway: 00:58:36 Is that accurate?

Dr. Craig Manning: 00:58:38 Is that accurate? I ask myself that question all the time, check the facts. Yes, same thing. And I’ll say it with clients. I’m like, “Is that accurate?” Let’s just get the facts right. Let’s get the reality of the situation right first, because otherwise we’re misdiagnosing and we’re treating it with things that are never going to help us. So what is the reality of what happened? And those are hard conversations. I was teaching a student development class at BYU for about 15 years in just the first level of this content. They asked me to move it to Psych 338 for psych majors and upper level psychs, and it’s very different. Performance psychology to general psychology is very different.

  00:59:14 In the beginning of the semester, the students ask me questions, and at first the questions are quite aggressive and even rude because it’s so different. “Wait, you guys are questioning me and you’re not in the performance industry at all. You haven’t been involved with any of this.” That’s my ego. As soon as my ego kicked in, I’m like, “No, this is my job. My job is to answer the hard questions.” I have learned to love that. And you answer the hard questions by being accurate in your words. That question again, that habit of, “Is that accurate?”

  00:59:45 I love that little habit of always asking yourself, “Is that accurate?” When somebody asks a hard question, I try not to let my ego get in the way. Listen to the question, listen to their words, and really try to answer their question. That’s what our job is as leaders, is to answer the hard questions and not be afraid of the hard questions. I like the book The Great Gatsby. My wife has got me reading it, and I love the end of that book. Scott Fitzgerald used this language, that if you’ve ever seen the movie or the book, at the end, he talked about, “Tom and Daisy were careless people, and they didn’t care about how the impact of how it impact others.” I love that. I want to be a careful person. That’s why our words, we need to be careful with our words so that we’re aware of the accuracy in our own thoughts, first in our own head, and the accuracy in how we communicate with the Lord and the accuracy in how we communicate with others. Because if we do that, we’re building from truth.