Day 231 The Power of Evaluating Your Wins
Show Notes
Allen Roberds delves into Alma 49:1-18, showcasing Captain Moroni's genius in continually evaluating wins to build impenetrable defenses. This episode explores the profound principle of learning from your successes, not just your losses, to foster sustained spiritual and personal growth, ultimately leading to greater savor in life.
Key Points
- Captain Moroni demonstrated exceptional leadership by evaluating his army's wins to proactively strengthen city defenses, making them nearly impregnable.
- The Lamanites learned from their losses by adopting armor, yet were consistently outmaneuvered by Moroni's foresight and continuous improvement strategies.
- The episode emphasizes the 'multiplier effect' of analyzing successful outcomes to understand what contributes to victory and replicate those conditions.
- Listeners are encouraged to apply the principle of evaluating wins in their own lives to identify effective behaviors and strategies for ongoing personal and spiritual development.
The principle of learning comes into play whether it's winning or losing, but there seems to be a multiplier effect when you take that evaluation into your wins.
Full Transcript
In Matthew 5:13, Jesus tells his followers that they are the salt of the earth, and in the same sentence offers a warning that savorless salt is good for nothing. Join me in an attempt to be savory salt as I share each day one verse of scripture and one small thought. Perhaps this small daily emphasis can lead to greater savor in your life and ultimately you and I can be savory salt.
Hello, my friends and family, wherever you're listening from, thank you for joining me and know that I'm cheering for your every success. Do you learn from your losses? And better yet, do you learn from your wins?
Welcome to day 231 on our 365-day journey through the Book of Mormon together. Today, you're going to be reading Alma chapter 49, verses 1 through 18. We're going to get into some more battles and some more war.
We are in the war chapters. For those of you that are just catching up, today's a fun one to look at, my friends, because what you've got here is the Lamanites went home. They learned from their losses in the battles.
They made themselves some coats of armor. They got themselves covered up because before that, if you remember, the massacre was brutal. And so this time, they got armor on, and they're ready to go.
They think, "Hey, we've caught up to the Nephites now! We are ready to battle with them man for man!" And then they get over to their city. They go in to attack the city, and they find that it is so insanely protected and that the defenses have been built up in an incredible way.
And this is what happens in Alma: "But behold, to their uttermost astonishment, they were prepared for them in a manner which never had been known among the children of Lehi. Now they were prepared for the Lamanites to battle after the manner of the instructions of Moroni." Now, what was happening when the Lamanites are learning from their losses? What's Moroni doing?
What are you doing? He's learning from his wins, and I love this one. I recently was at a conference for the National Speakers Association.
It's called "Influence," it's the annual conference, and all these speakers get together. And if you can imagine the pressure of speaking in front of an audience of speakers, that's what all of these keynote speakers had, right? They got this crazy pressure on them.
And a lady stood up, and she absolutely captivated all of us. And one of her primary principles she taught was, "How much do you take time to evaluate your wins?" And she gave examples of, you know, when you lose in sports or something like that, you go to the tape: "Let's look at the areas that we messed up. Let's look at the places that we could do better." But she said the incredible power of excellence is going to come when you evaluate your wins.
And this is what happens with Moroni. Moroni gets done with the battles, and he absolutely could have been like, "Hey, guys, well done with the armor! Well done, everybody!
A thousand of them, zero of us." Like, he could have absolutely just said, "Hey, guys, we are good to go. Let's just wait for them to come again. Let's stay in defensive mode." But he didn't do that.
He continued to seek the advice of the Lord, he continued to build defenses of his cities, and he made the cities basically impenetrable. And the Lamanites, even though they had caught up and learned from their losses, Moroni continued to learn from his wins. My friends, this is such a great principle to think about because sometimes when we're winning in life, we just go on autopilot.
We're like, "Yeah, this is awesome!" But if you're winning in life, take a chance and some time to evaluate the win. What things are you doing that are making you win? It's easier to evaluate those times and losses and say, "Hey, what can I be doing better here?" But if you're winning, let's evaluate that because there's more winning to occur.
I love the example that Moroni sets here of continuing to learn from his wins rather than only taking time to learn from the losses. The principle of learning comes into play whether it's winning or losing, but there seems to be a multiplier effect when you take that evaluation into your wins. That's all for today, my friends.
Remember that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass. Keep it small, keep it simple, and always seek to be savory salt. I'll be here tomorrow, and I hope you are too.
This transcript was generated using AI and may contain errors. I do my best to review and edit them when I can.