I\u2009would like to explain the sequence of how I was first contacted to speak at this devotional. It was on a Monday that I got a text message from a number I didn\u2019t recognize. It had been a hectic day, and I didn\u2019t read the text fully. Thinking it was a request to speak at an upcoming Church assignment, I texted back politely asking who the text was from.<\/p>\n
Matthew\u00a0O. Richardson, BYU advancement vice president, responded that it was he who had sent the text asking me to speak at a BYU devotional.<\/p>\n
The first thought that popped into my mind was, \u201cAre you crazy? Do you not realize that I can barely speak the English language, let alone speak in front of so many people?\u201d<\/p>\n
My wife, who was with me at the time, responded without hesitation, \u201cThat is desperation, not inspiration!\u201d<\/p>\n
I texted President Richardson back with, \u201cI\u00a0think you have the wrong Craig Manning.\u201d<\/p>\n
He then replied, \u201cOops, sorry, I do have the wrong person!\u201d But he then clarified that he did have the right person.<\/p>\n
As intimidating as it is to speak in front of you, the experience of preparing for this devotional has been great. I have found that every time I have put on the radio, in every activity I have participated in, and with every thought I have had, I have double-checked myself to make sure I was in alignment with the Holy Ghost so as to have the Spirit with me. I do pray that the Spirit will be with me today as I deliver my thoughts.<\/p>\n
I would like to talk to you today about a couple of life-changing lessons the Lord has taught me.<\/p>\n
I was born and raised in Canberra, Australia. My mother was, and still is, a Catholic, and my father was a member of the Church of England before he passed away from cancer twenty years ago. We attended church on Sundays, and I attended Sunday School, completing my first Holy Communion. As I got older, I started playing rugby. Games were on Sundays, and it wasn\u2019t long before we stopped attending church.<\/p>\n
I remember coming home from a rugby game one Sunday when my mother said to me, \u201cYou are really good at sports, so you won\u2019t be very good at school.\u201d<\/p>\n
This statement confused me. Although I didn\u2019t have the maturity and clarity of thought at the time to articulate my emotions, I can look back now and see why this statement bothered me. Was there some phenomenon that controlled my destiny? I couldn\u2019t help being good at sports; it just seemed to happen. Every time I participated in an athletic contest, I was reminded that I was a good athlete. So did that mean I had no chance of ever being a good student, and did I have any say in any of this?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t share this story to accuse my mother of bad parenting but rather to illustrate what can happen when we don\u2019t understand the Lord\u2019s plan or, more important, when we don\u2019t learn to live and apply the gospel of Jesus Christ. I spent my teenage years focusing the majority of my attention on sports, particularly on tennis, while directing little attention to my academics. Doing so had become a habit, and I never really stopped to consider doing anything different. This was not to say that I wasn\u2019t attending school; I never missed a class unless ill. But just because I was there physically did not mean I was there mentally. I was passing classes without really learning anything. I don\u2019t believe I was unintelligent; I was just never really paying attention.<\/p>\n
From the Lectures on Faith <\/i>we read:<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cNow faith is the substance (assurance) of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.\u201d<\/i> [Hebrews 11:1<\/a>]<\/p>\n From this we learn that faith is the assurance which men have of the existence of things which they have not seen, and the principle of <\/i>action<\/i><\/b> in all intelligent beings.<\/i> [7 (1.8\u20139); emphasis added]<\/p>\n My personal interpretation of this passage is that without a belief that it is possible to be successful in the classroom, we will not put forth any action toward being successful. I had been in the classroom physically but not mentally; my mind was somewhere else. When I was in high school, my mind was more often than not on the tennis court.<\/p>\n Another passage from the Lectures on Faith<\/i> reads:<\/p>\n If men were duly to consider themselves, and turn their thoughts and reflections to the <\/i>operations of their own minds,<\/i><\/b> they would readily discover that it is faith, and faith only, which is the moving cause of <\/i>all action<\/i><\/b> <\/i>in them; that without it <\/i>both mind and body<\/i><\/b> would be in a state of inactivity, and all their exertions would cease, both physical and mental.<\/i> [7 (1.10); emphasis added]<\/p>\n My personal interpretation of this passage is that we don\u2019t do anything without first putting in the mental effort. If we are not mentally engaged, we do nothing\u2014or, at best, we do very little.<\/p>\n On the tennis court I had, first, the belief that I\u00a0was good or could be good, which then, second, led to the physical effort and hard work. In the classroom I did not believe I was smart or could be smart; I turned up physically but did not apply myself mentally.<\/p>\n I love Doctrine and Covenants 130:18\u201319<\/a>:<\/p>\n Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection.<\/i><\/p>\n And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come.<\/i><\/p>\n To me, these two scriptures map out the formula for success: we need to work hard both mentally and physically to increase our knowledge and intelligence.<\/p>\n By the time I had graduated from year twelve, I\u00a0had become an accomplished tennis player, and I\u00a0was selected to travel around Europe with a team of Australian prospects. We spent the first month in France, traveling around playing in small pro tournaments. It was at the end of the winter, so the tournaments were on fast indoor courts. Because I am from Australia and I grew up playing on artificial grass courts, my tennis game was built for quick, explosive points. I did well the first month, performing to my potential and winning a lot of matches on the fast indoor courts. I\u00a0thought, \u201cThis is it; I am making my dreams come true.\u201d<\/p>\n Feeling really good about myself, I left France with my team and headed for Austria. The first tournament of the summer was on slow red clay. If you don\u2019t understand the mechanics of the greatest game ever invented\u2014and, I might add, the toughest mental sport to master\u2014going from fast indoor courts to slow red clay requires a dramatic shift in skill sets. For the first time\u2014and the only time in my forty years of playing tennis\u2014I\u00a0lost 6\u20130 6\u20130, a double bagel, we call it. It rocked my world. I had no idea what had gone wrong. Unwisely, I dwelled on my deficiencies from the match for days; a week later I was still dwelling on the loss. At the time I didn\u2019t realize I was doing anything wrong.<\/p>\n I have since learned that dwelling obsessively on what we do wrong is one of the greatest sources of interference to maximizing our potential. Self-doubt is dangerous. I once had a young thirteen-year-old snowboarder, in answer to my question of what it means to doubt yourself, say, \u201cDon\u2019t say don\u2019t.\u201d It is unimaginable the damage that self-doubt does to your hopes, dreams, and hard-earned skills.<\/p>\n This is what doubt looked like for me: I would miss a backhand into the top of the net and say to myself, \u201cNot again. Your backhand stinks. You can\u2019t make a backhand. Why do you even play this game? You just stink.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem with doubt is that it doesn\u2019t just stay isolated to your backhand. Doubt is a mental habit, and it can\u2014and does\u2014spread to other areas of your life.<\/p>\n 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 aspirations. My poor performance would later be a blessing because I never made any money and could still claim amateur status.<\/p>\n Since that time I have seen self-doubt in many people: athletes, coaches, musicians, students, and children. And as a bishop, I see it in the ward members who I am a steward over. Once self-doubt takes hold of an individual, action is halted. I believe doubt to be one of, if not the greatest of, the adversary\u2019s tools. It is the antithesis of faith. President Thomas\u00a0S. Monson recently said, \u201cRemember that faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind at the same time, for one will dispel the other\u201d (\u201cBe an Example and a Light<\/a>,\u201d Ensign, <\/i>November 2015).<\/p>\n When the opportunity arose for me to come and play tennis at BYU, I thought it was an opportunity to reset. However, I quickly learned that practice does not make perfect; once a bad mental habit is created, it will not go away anytime soon. The problem for me was that I didn\u2019t know how to fix my bad mental habits. I knew faith was at the root of the answer, but how do you do <\/i>faith? How do you apply faith on the tennis court, in the classroom, and in life from one moment to the next?<\/p>\n I thought that the answers might come from the field of psychology. I had always been fascinated by the mind, and I believed it was a key component to success not only on the tennis court but in life. I switched from studying accounting to studying psychology and began a journey that has led me to many personal discoveries.<\/p>\n One of the greatest of these discoveries is that no matter how well the scientific method is applied to human behavior, if I cannot find the parallelism between a theory and the gospel of Jesus Christ, I\u00a0am very cautious of using that theory. If a connection can clearly be made between a natural law and the gospel, I have found that that law always helps people to be better.<\/p>\n One such law is the law of occupied space. This law states that an object can only occupy one place at a time. As it applies to the mind, both faith and fear, self-belief and self-doubt, or simply positive and negative thoughts cannot occupy the mind at the same time.<\/p>\nThe Danger of Self-Doubt<\/b><\/h2>\n
The Law of Occupied Space<\/b><\/h2>\n