Personal Editing

After the mulling I've done over the weekend, I've had a few thoughts.

When someone tells you something they don't like about you, the initial reaction is to get defensive and say that's just how you are and they need to learn to accept it because you can't change. Except that isn't true. You can change. We are supposed to change. We are supposed to grow and improve and get better. (Mosiah 5: 2, 7; Mosiah 27:25; Alma 5:26; Alma 19:33)

Plus, I can think of other things in my life where someone pointed something out about me and I then worked on it and changed and became a different, better person from it. But there are also suggestions I've gotten where I think about what they said and decide they are blowing smoke out their ears and completely dismiss their suggestion.

So I needed an analogy for this. How about writing.

When I write a paper, the words that hit the page are the words I would've spoken, they are in my voice and represent what I want to say. And then I might have someone look over the paper for me and tell me what they think. They'll make suggestions where they think the paper can be improved. Some of their suggestions I might look at and decide that making that change really would make the paper better. Other suggestions I'll look at and decide that the words there are just in my voice and I like how it sounds because it sounds like me.

That is how I think I'm going to look at the answer I got Friday night. Is it something that will make my paper better and easier to understand? Or is it just a problem with my voice?

I'm not going to change just because some guy told me to. Instead, I'll make changes that I feel will make me a better person regardless of the relationship situation I seem to find myself at the moment.