Modern Mormon Miracles: Parable: Enjoy the Steak Dinner!

Have you ever been to Texas Road House? Well if you haven't it is a Steak House and it has the best food ever! Everytime I have gone it has been some sort of special occasion-senior ball,graduation, birthday, college graduation, and finishing my surgical technology degree. Each time I go I am beyond excited!Then when we are there and they bring out their rolls. I am pretty sure the only way to describe them is that it is like eating pure joy and happiness. Then I usually get some stake with sweet potatoe and fries. Again beyond delicous. Then of course no dinner is complete without dessert!
There is only one problem-each time I go I want to eat a million rolls, but I know I have to save room. I still end up eating a ton and then I don't fully enjoy the main course. Part of me still wishes I was eating rolls, another part is super excited for dessert. So here are my problems:

I don't enjoy the rolls thouroughly because I am worried about saving room
I don't enjoy the main course as much because I wish I was still eating rolls and I am looking forward to dessert
I don't fully enjoy dessert because I ate too much.

This happens everytime without fail. If I was to go tomorrrow-this would probably still happen!

This made me think of a Talk given by President Uchtdorf (an apostle of theLord-and Second counselor in the first presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)
This talk talks a lot about enjoying the moment. The last couple of months I feel I have really come to more fully understand the way we rob ourselves of happiness by not enjoying the moment. I feel it is a big problem for me and for mankind that we look back at when life was good and miss those times. Then we also expect we will be happier when something happens in the future.

This is just like my problem at Texas Roadhouse! I never enjoy what I am eating because I am so focused on what I did eat and what I will eat.

We don't enjoy the 'steak dinner' of life because we look longingly back at when we had the 'rolls.' I think by looking longingly back at what we used to have, we take away from what we have at the moment. It is always good to remind yourself that yesterday wasn't perfect and has its challenges also.

"I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future." -Elder Holland\

We also don't enjoy the 'steak dinners' of life because we are so focused on the dessert that will be coming. One huge problem is that we always think things will get better in the future when this or that happens, but if we are always waiting for something to happen in the future we will never be satisfied. You will eternally be stuck waiting for happiness you get from a dessert when you could be happy with the steak in front of you!

"So often we get caught up in the illusion that there is something just beyond our reach that would bring us happiness: a better family situation, a better financial situation, or the end of a challenging trial.The older we get, the more we look back and realize that external circumstances don’t really matter or determine our happiness."

"Sometimes in life we become so focused on the finish line that we fail to find joy in the journey."

"We shouldn’t wait to be happy until we reach some future point, only to discover that happiness was already available—all the time!" -President Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Something I have come to learn is that if you are not enjoying the moment you will never ever be happy. Today will one day be the past you wish you had again and it will also be the future you were looking forward to in the past.

The true formula is enjoying the moment! Take it for how it is and love every minute of it!