Desire

I read this last night as well (after a long run). Lately, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what I really want, and I thought Elder Oak's talk was very helpful in thinking about desires.

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"Desire" - Dallin H. Oaks

--Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions. The desires we act on determine our changing, our achieving, and our becoming.

--The Book of Mormon contains many teachings on the importance of desire.

--Desire, labor, and faith.

--Another great teaching on desire, especially on what should be our ultimate desire, occurs in the experience of the Lamanite king being taught by the missionary Aaron. The king in mighty prayer declared, “I will give away all my sins to know thee … and be saved at the last day” (verse 18). With that commitment and that identification of his ultimate desire, his prayer was answered miraculously.

--Many scriptures speak of what we desire in terms of what we seek. “He that seeketh me early shall find me, and shall not be forsaken” (D&C 88:83). “Seek ye earnestly the best gifts” (D&C 46:8). “He that diligently seeketh shall find” (1 Nephi 10:19). “Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (D&C 88:63).

--Readjusting our desires to give highest priority to the things of eternity is not easy. We are all tempted to desire that worldly quartet of property, prominence, pride, and power. We might desire these, but we should not fix them as our highest priorities. (I think this is what I'm struggling with most right now. It makes me think of Elder Holland's talk "The First Great Commandment" and how he talks about the situation with Christ and Peter, Christ asking, "Do you really love me?" I am asking myself the same question - "Do you really love me more than all of this?")

--Those whose highest desire is to acquire possessions fall into the trap of materialism. They fail to heed the warning “Seek not after riches nor the vain things of this world” (Alma 39:14; see also Jacob 2:18).

--All of us face potential traps that will prevent progress toward our eternal destiny. If our righteous desires are sufficiently intense, they will motivate us to cut and carve ourselves free from addictions and other sinful pressures and priorities that prevent our eternal progress. (Is it really that easy? Maybe it's not that easy, but it is that simple..?)

--We should remember that righteous desires cannot be superficial, impulsive, or temporary. They must be heartfelt, unwavering, and permanent. So motivated, we will seek for that condition described by the Prophet Joseph Smith, where we have “overcome the evils of [our lives] and lost every desire for sin.”⁵ That is a very personal decision.

--Neal A. Maxwell: “When people are described as ‘having lost their desire for sin,’ it is they, and they only, who deliberately decided to lose those wrong desires by being willing to ‘give away all [their] sins’ in order to know God. Therefore, what we insistently desire, over time, is what we will eventually become and what we will receive in eternity.”⁶ (Interesting that I think I just get really attached to worldly things, as well as spiritual things. That being said, I have realized through my own experiences that worldly attachments leave me feeling empty and unsatisfied and anxious, while spiritual things seem to uplift and fill me with hope, light, and love.)

--As important as it is to lose every desire for sin, eternal life requires more. To achieve our eternal destiny, we will desire and work for the qualities required to become an eternal being. 

5 New Design Careers for the 21st Century

I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. I am seriously thinking about something in the design/UX area. I would love to be apart of Open Ideo - feels like an amazing fit! We'll see!

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5 New Design Careers for the 21st Century

--The Hybrid Design Researcher. Once upon a time, design researchers came from backgrounds in anthropology, ethnography, or psychology. Deep qualitative research was the secret to discovering unmet needs. While it’s still a successful design-research strategy, these more traditional methods are now being combined with real-time data to reveal user behavior. Knowing how to tap into technology to uncover how individuals and groups really think and act is an essential part of innovation. If you love people and love crunching data, this might be the design career for you.

--The Business Designer. If you’re a business designer, however, you’re not just looking for innovation from an end product or service. You’re looking at the business model, channel strategy, marketing, supply chain, and a million other things. In truly disruptive innovations, all aspects of the business are up for grabs. If you have a passion for operations and a desire to flex your creative muscles to create new business systems, then becoming a business designer is the way to go.

--The Social Innovator. Creating maximum positive impact on the planet has been my main motivation as a designer. Today, many of those problems—poverty alleviation, access to clean water, financial inclusion, health services for the poor, livable cities, and many more—are in the social sector. Now, large organization such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and others, have enthusiastically embraced design thinking. At the same time, non-profit design companies like D-Rev, Design that Matters, our ownIDEO.org, and others are collaborating with social entrepreneurs and NGOs to bring exciting new innovations to those most in need. For perhaps the first time in the history of design, it’s possible to make a career designing for the social sector.

Design Thinking: A Human-Centered Approach to Innovation in Education

This is totally what I want to do as a career! I love this kind of thinking/problem solving, application & impact.

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Design Thinking: A Human-Centered Approach to Innovation in Education

--Talk to any educator, parent, or policy maker and you will inevitably hear about the many problems that exist in education. It's not for lack of trying—millions of people are working across the country to find new solutions for our schools. And yet we're struggling to find new answers that make a real difference. (I totally agree!)

--We tend to think first about the needs of the system and create solutions from there. But what if we looked first to the needs of people, and then designed ways the system could meet its goals by serving these needs? This is the heart of how design thinking gets to innovative solutions.

--Recently IDEO, the design and innovation firm where I work, collaborated with San Francisco Unified School District to develop a new vision for their food system. Instead of starting from a typical approach to food system reform - auditing equipment, aligning policies - we started by thinking about the students. What do they care about? What would engage them in choosing the healthy meals SFUSD already offers them? And then how might we realign finances, operations and labor to create experiences kids would want?

--Every day people show up at work in our schools because they care deeply about our kids. Yet we often end up designing experiences that don't actually meet these kids where they are. We unintentionally turn them off. So much so that they don't believe we would design something that they would actually like.

--Often it is that very thinking that gets in the way of creating experiences that engage today's youth. What if we took a human-centered approach to the design of our schools, tools and systems? People, and our understanding of them, are the heart of innovation.

--Every parent, teacher, administrator, edtech developer, and policymaker I have met has been aligned on one thing: everyone wants what's best for our children. Few, however, are aligned on what that means we should be doing.

--If we really want to innovate in education, we must let go of our assumptions about how schools work, and open up to what really understanding our students can teach us about what we should be creating.

New focus/purpose for blog..

I'm now using this as a way to keep track of great things I find that are inspiring to me. Starting.... NOW! :)