The following quotes are taken from interviews M held with B in 2014-15. Both M and B are LDS and they used that fact to explore several themes that I've seen in my interviews with LDS people about making evaluative decisions as individuals, in families, in church councils, in work settings, and more. The interviews themselves are available here. Many others are available in the first blog post in August 2017.
B: In our marriage, the decision came from the basis that husband and wife are equal and therefore they should have equal say in the decisions. It has never mattered that I'm the wage-earner in our home and that essentially 100% of our income comes from me. It isn't my money and her money. It is our money. And therefore I have no more power in my voice than she does in terms of how we choose to spend the money, because we are equal. And that's been the policy ever since the beginning because I think that's how God wants it to be. At least I know it is. I think the leaders of the Church have made that pretty clear.
Prior to that, before I was married, pretty much it was just up to me. What things did I think were most important to spend my money on. Education was certainly a big part of that. Recreation was a part of that. Trying to balance those things, making sure that you don't spend too much money or too much time on any one thing. Balance is one thing that the Spirit teaches very carefully if we listen to it. The Spirit doesn't approve of us being weird in any way. We want to be non-eccentric. Yeah, we can have our personal preferences and I could like football more than basketball and my wife can be the other way around. But if I get to the point that football is too important to me, that's not appropriate. I need to be willing to give up football if somebody needs help. If somebody wants to get help you will be moved to do something. If I won't let that happen, then that's not appropriate.
M: So you sought balance in each of those decisions. What's one of the decisions that you made - maybe we will take it back to when you were applying for college. How did you make that decision?
B: That's a good question. My first year of college - I prayed pretty much about everything but I don't know that I was very skilled in getting answers to prayer. I know that I wasn't. But it mattered to me. I grew up in a little town named Duncan, Arizona. The population was about 750 people, and I actually lived 3 miles out of town on a farm. So I was not ready for a big life. And when the time came to consider college, some of my friends were going to BYU, but BYU was too big for me. It was not something I was interested in. And what felt best to me was a little college called Eastern Arizona College which was about 44 miles from my town and had a student body of about 2,000 students. A small two year school.
Another reason I made that decision is because I had a girlfriend who was still in high school. So that kept me close, right? So I could see her on several weekends. So some of that could very well have been selfish decisions that I wanted to stay and be associated with her. But at the same time I knew that I really wouldn't blossom well in an environment where I was just one of the 30,000 students. I know that it was right because I attended a little ward there where I had the chance to do service. Of course this was just out of high school and what kind of callings had I had before that? Priest quorum 1st advisor, maybe teachers quorum counselor or something like that. But that's it. And there I got to do things that were more significant and I thought that was a great opportunity. And then the school of course was smaller and so the classes were smaller and so I had more recognition of myself as a person. I needed that.
But 2/3 of the way through my mission I of course started needing to think about what to do after my mission. As I prayed about it I didn't feel good about going back there. And I did feel good about trying at BYU and I thought "Well, that's interesting." So I tried for BYU and I was able to get in. Again, it was just a feeling. It felt like a better thing to do to go to BYU. And by then I was pretty good at getting answers to prayer.
M: So it sounds like a big transformation - before applying to college and before going on a mission you said you weren't very skilled at getting answers to prayer. Could you talk about what those skills were and how you developed those skills?
B: Yeah, there's nothing like the mission to help you develop that. When you are serving the Lord full time every day you don't have to worry about money. You don't have to worry about studies or homework or relationships because you put them on hold for two years. And you pray about investigators. You pray about members of the ward or branch. And you pray about what is best to do with your time each day. And you're doing your best to live close to the Spirit so that you can be worthy of that kind of guidance. And you start seeing the many wonderful things happen and you go, "Wow, that was inspired, wasn't it?"
Well, it's not difficult to backtrack from an experience where you know you were guided by the Spirit and recognize the signs of what God was doing. And of course you make mistakes as well. You can easily backtrack on those and see where you went wrong. So it was the mission and the continual opportunity to, everyday, many times, to decide what to do. Who to stop on the street and ask them the golden questions. Or what houses, what sub-districts to go knocking on doors. Again, what you do with every day. That's a very key part of what a missionary does if they want to be successful.
M: It sounds like just the shear practice and you looking for answers to prayer and you're making these decisions and needing those answers to prayer for two years - you just started to learn what it takes.
B: Right.
M: Okay, what were some of the things that you learned on how to receive these answers?
B: Well, I remember both reading and experiencing that answers from the Spirit come both as thoughts and as a feeling. And if it only comes as a thought then it's mostly just our own thoughts. But if it comes as a feeling and it's a good feeling, that's from the Spirit. If it's a bad feeling then it's from the adversary. And it was as simple as that. And to me that was very very helpful to recognize that those are the three basic possibilities when you pray about something. And if you can't learn to sense those then you're just out of luck ....
M: That seems like that's a key point where you started to change - as a missionary. Then after returning home and until now are there any other key points that come to mind where it is like, "I became more skilled at making these decisions" or were you kind of set and you followed that.
B: I was pretty set and followed that. I can't think of any time that I had felt the Spirit in response to my [questions and] answers and had a thought and a feeling combined with it that it's been wrong. I cannot think of any exceptions whatsoever. Every one of those decisions has just been wonderful as a result of it. Lots of great things. So it's a formula that clearly works and it's up to me mainly to refine my skills at it.
So many times, when a council [at church, in the university, at home] works appropriately everyone has an equal chance to give input and has their feelings and thoughts heard and it's almost inevitable that you're going to arrive at an answer that everybody feels good about because the Spirit's there and the Spirit guides you to the place that's the best. Many times it's a place that you hadn't even really considered. Other times it's one of the suggestions that was given and everything is good. But it always has that unique feeling - the feeling of "This is going to be great. This is wonderful."
M: We'll just do one more topic and then we'll call it good for today. So you've honed your skills in seeking that revelation and other data and collecting other people's opinions in helping you make a decision. And now you're at a point in a lot of ways where you're like a mentor to people. I'm just wondering how you've been able to teach others or guide others to make their evaluations and make their decisions?
B: That's a great question. Certainly the same thing is applied. I have a son who is in a challenging situation right now. He's married and has a kid and he doesn't have a stable job. And so he doesn't have a stable source of income. But they have a home that they're buying. So he has financial obligations and responsibilities that are kind of weighty. But now the same things happens. He gives me a call and says, "Dad, I'm trying to make this decision with what's going on. And can you come over and give me a blessing?" And so to do that, we'll sit and chat for a while. But he has learned those very same things. He'll say, "So this is what I'm feeling. It feels kind of like this or this thing." And, of course, as he describes it I get feelings as well. And some days I feel "Oh, that doesn't feel like a good thing," and other times I feel like that's a really good thing. It's the same kind of open interchange. And I have found that in all the situations where I have been a mentor I've had, sometimes with students but most often to my children, that the feeling is unanimous. It's always the same. Both what he feels and what I feel. There's no disagreement. Well, that's a clear sign that we're both under the same influence. One thing that is important is that a decision that is what God wants you to make does not necessarily mean that it will be financially successful.
There are many decisions that Joseph Smith made that I believe are right, but financially were pretty tough for him. There's one section of the Doctrine and Covenants where the Lord specifically says that in earthly matters thou wilt not be strong and blessed. I don't remember the terminology. He was told right up front, "Don't go to get rich, it ain't gonna happen." I believe that because the most important thing that matters in this life is the spiritual growth that we obtain, financial success is not very important to God. And, in fact, in many cases He does not want us to experience that because of the - there are many ways the adversary uses that to his ends rather than the successful ends of the Lord. And so I don't believe that an answer to the Spirit means that it will be financially successful. I don't believe that for a minute. But I do believe that it will lead us to experiences that He wants us to have that will give us optimal chances for growth. I do believe that.
M: That sounds like, in hindsight, looking at past decisions, that maybe you can't measure it all by how much money or career success you have or other things like that.
B: No, that's true. You can't measure by that. But you can measure by the joy that it brings because it's inevitable that doing things that the Lord wants you to do will bring joy. You can't avoid that. You don't want to avoid that. That's what you want. And that's a wonderful part of the equation to be guaranteed that if we do things the right way, that in the midst of your trials you will be lifted up, and I've experienced that. I have seen as I look back on pieces of my life where I was in rocky territory, extremely rocky, did not know how to go forward. And I can promise you that I have looked back and seen one set of tracks. And they were not mine. It's a very real thing.
M: I really appreciate you sharing these things.
B: And that help is always there when you try to do the right things. There's nothing better. I don't know everything about it, but I do know enough to be committed to it.
M: I have one more question that came to mind. And this will be pulling it back to the work sort of thing. This is actually - it has to do with the research we are doing, but it's also something that I'm wondering about with careers in tech. A lot of your decision-making has come to being open to inspiration and feelings. I'm wondering how - have you ever had to deal with making decisions with a team who, maybe they don't openly say that they're going to base their decisions off of feelings or even take feelings into account. Or they are just saying that we're just going to use logic or some other way. How has that worked? Have you had experiences having to deal with that?
B: I have. That's a great question. A couple of experiences I've had. One, I started a company a few years ago and I guess you know. Millenniata. I've sat in on lots and lots of meetings there where we've made some pretty significant decisions. And those were not made with prayer in advance. I mean, I prayed for my personal life. And I do not know what they do because that is not my responsibility. But I know that the meeting did not begin and end with prayer.
And then the same with the IT model curriculum. I don't know if you know anything about that but I was the chair of the committee that wrote the IT model curriculum. And that took - it was about 150 hours worth of meetings with this group of seven. And there were 20 or 30 hours of meetings with a group of 20 plus people plus dozens and dozens, probably 100's of hours of other work that I did as the chair. And leading all of that and writing the documents and so forth. And in those meetings there was always very open discussion. Everybody had a chance to give their input. And one thing that just thrilled me was that the committee was made up of a very unique cross-section of people. Very unique. Two of them are common-law spouses, so they've never been married but they've lived together for years. And they've since become some of my dearest friends. And you wouldn't expect that. But we spent so many hours together and of course every day, not only did you meet, but you went out for dinner that night because you need to go eat somewhere. You might as well have some fun together. So you have lots of social time together.
Every one of our meetings - every one of our decisions, and some were pretty big, was made unanimously where everybody agreed, "Oh yeah, this is right." I will never forget this one day. We were just hammering at something and couldn't get it, couldn't get it, couldn't get it. I looked at my watch and it was 4:30 and I thought it's too early to quit. I don't remember exactly what we did, but finally we wrapped up at about 5:15 and we said "We don't know. We haven't reached the answer." Everybody agreed that we didn't know what to do. So we went out and had a great dinner, had a great social evening. We went to sleep, came back the next day. Within 15 minutes we had found the answer. And it was a revelation, it really way. And yet you can't - you know, they don't really understand what it was, but I knew it was. There's no question. Because everybody had the same thing, "This is right, this is good, this is great!"
And this happened over and over and over and it happened in our Millenniata meetings too. You talk about this technical challenge. "What's this?" "What about that?" You gather information. You consider all the possibilities. You do everything you possibly can to arrive at a good decision. And then you do the decision based off of what everybody feels is right.
The incredible thing that I found is - these were solid people with strong opinions. They were not quiet, not reticent. They would tell you. But there were never ever any feelings of personal rancor or bitterness about a decision in either Millenniata or the model curriculum. Every single decision that was reached was - everybody had had a full chance to give input and everybody felt that this was the best decision. In every case, it's always proven to be true. We've looked at what we wrote. We've looked at what we've developed, and the company technically. And it's always been solid, right on.
I don't know how to do that [in general] with business decisions because I'll be honest with you, I believe that many many times God doesn't care whether one business fails or another succeeds. I really don't believe that. So I don't know how business people make decisions because I don't think the Spirit guides that. That's my personal bias and I could be completely wrong. But I do know that the relationships are the foundation. You value everybody intensely. And if you can see somebody is holding back, you call them out and you say, "Hey, we haven't heard from you. What are you thinking?" And if you don't bring everybody in, you never make the best decision. You always make a better one by making sure that everybody is heard by specifically making sure that you get their input, always. Even if it takes extra time. You’ve just got to do that because the relationships are really what everything hinges upon. And that's what keeps things going, is those good relationships.
So those are a couple of examples that have been really neat, in my opinion. Because I - before I experienced those I really wondered how much can those kinds of decisions be made with 100% positive results and unanimity. You hear of lots of places where there's bitterness and anger and people bring up petty issues. And a decision is made and people don't agree with it and so forth. I have never experienced that, ever. And just .... it doesn't ever need to be that way and shouldn't be. I've had some success in seeing that the meetings I've been in aren't that way. Even if I'm not the leader of the meeting, anybody can have a large influence to make sure that that happens in the right way. So I don't think it's always been me, but I do think I've had some influence that way.
M: It sounds like unity, relationships, like that's almost - just as important as the actual facts that you're looking at.
B: Yeah, in the eternal scheme of things, whether a disk succeeds or not isn't nearly as important as whether a person feels valued.
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