Dear Gramps,Thank you for the help and understanding of baptisms and sacraments. I am slowly working and building what I hope to be a fortress using the rock or great cornerstone. I have done a lot of things necessary to rebuild my life. I do have one problem though, So I will ask you for your advice. Even though I feel that I have fully repented in the past I do find myself doing the stupid things that are like these habits. I try to keep them at bay, but I sometimes find myself almost unconsciously doing the things I did in the past like laziness, confusion, and storytelling. It is hard to break these things from myself because that is what I have resorted to in my life. And I realize now that I need to change. Do you think that it is too late to change something for the second time, and please give me any advice to help make me stronger. Please. Thank you,
Dakotah Yankton, from Reno, Nevada

Dear Dakotah,

Repentance involves a change of attitude–a change of character. not necessarily a change of habit. Having repented, what used to be enjoyable to you is now repugnant. The fact that you are uncomfortable with the things of the past that are yet like habits, is an evidence of your repentant attitude.

You are now faced with the interesting challenge of overcoming an undesirable habit. The fact that you repeat an habitual act does not make you a bad person. We are judged more by how we feel about what we do than we are by the act itself. If you were a piano player and you had learned by heart some composition, but in that composition you had learned to play well but incorrectly a given passage, the fact that you recognized your error would not make the incorrect playing of that passage go away, but it would certainly change your attitude about it. To overcome that incorrect habit would take much repetitive practice–going over again and again the correct procedure until it had become habitual, sublimating the incorrect procedure.

So it is with any habitual act; it will undoubtedly be repeated from time to time. So the question is, how does one overcome a bad habit. One proven procedure is to replace it with a good practice. Take laziness–you might make a decision that whenever you realize that you are feeling lazy, that would trigger a specific response, like the decision to read a given book, or perform some other non-lazy task. If you feel confused you might try replacing that feeling by addressing your Heavenly Father in a prayer of thanksgiving for his many blessings. If you find yourself beginning to tell a tale about someone, you might immediately think of something complimentary to say about the person, and practice those planned procedures until they become second nature. Then the unpleasant things that have caused you concern will have disappeared.

Gramps