Ten Axioms to Guide Your Life

By Robert D. Hales (excerpts)

You will find that your greatest success and influence won’t come solely from the knowledge you’ve gained.  It will come from what you do with that knowledge— the wise use of agency to make sound decisions.

Here are 10 axioms, distilled from my own experience of living the gospel.  I hope they are helpful to you in determining the principles that should guide your life.

Axiom 1

It’s not the obstacle that counts, but how you overcome it.

Consider for a moment, that you are the engineer of a train.  As your locomotive races down the tracks, you look out the window.  In the distance you see a great pile of debris blocking your way.  What do you do” Radio ahead for help?  Stop the train and take care of the problem yourself?  Pour coal into the engine and plow on through?

Now it’s axiomatic that we will all encounter obstacles in our lives.  Temporal obstacles make eternal development possible.  So we must decide how to meet those obstacles.

Like the engineer, we can call for help. By prayer, fasting, and diligent study, we can obtain the assistance of our Heavenly Father.  He will comfort us, strengthen us, and enlighten us by His Holy Spirit.  Sometimes, like the switchman, He will help us get on a different trac.  But from time to time, the only way to clear debris from the track is to stop the train and remove the problem.  

This is always true when the obstacle is of our own making, such as when we violate the lord’s commandments.  Repentance is the only way to clear the debris of sin and move forward in our lives.

There are times when Heavenly Father directs us to pour on the spiritual coal of faith and hope and plow ahead. To use the more scriptural phrase, “press forward”:



20 Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.
(2 Ne. 31:20)

Axiom 2

Pursue your goals with all your heart, might, mind, and strength.  You are doomed to failure if you pursue them in a vacillating manner.

Axiom 3

From a tiny spark can come a large fire.

Decide now to extinguish the sparks of conflict by thinking well of others.  See the good in people.

Axiom 4

Our greatest strengths can become our greatest weaknesses.

Our greatest strengths can become our greatest weaknesses to us whenever we forget that our gifts, talents, and intellect are given to us by God.  Confess . . . his hand in all things.

Axiom 5

Failure is one of the greatest teachers if we have the faith to learn from it.

We can overcome our failures.  Therefore, we should embrace the opportunity to learn from our mistakes, analyze where we could have done better, and make plans to improve. In doing so, we discover that setbacks and disappointments are “but for a small moment” and “shall be for [our] good.” (D&C 122:4,7)

Axiom 6

It is not how you start the race or where you are during the race. It is how you cross the finish line that matters.

We came with a mission and a purpose, and that is to endure to the end.

Axiom 7

“If you wish to get rich, save what you get.  A fool can earn money; but it takes a wise man to save and dispose of it to his own advantage.” ~Brigham Young

Do not try to have now what it took your parents years of patient saving to acquire.

Axiom 8

You cannot learn the Lord’s will without exercising your agency and becoming accountable for your decisions.

Too often we thing that with little or no effort on our part, the Holy Ghost will give us answers to our questions.  But this is not the way of the Lord.  He has commanded us to “study it out in [our] mind[s]; [and] then. . . ask [Him] if ti be right.   (D&C9:8 emphasis added,)

Axiom 9

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In 1975, I said, “[T]he world is moving farther and farther away” [from our standards.] That was almost 32 years ago.  Today, [f]rom my perspective, I’d say it is thousands of miles away— maybe farther— but, again, the Church has not moved.

Axiom 10

The temple of God is the greatest university. 

During my life at college, in the military as an adjutant and fighter pilot, in graduate school, or in my professional career. . .— I was never required to compromise my values or beliefs.

Was it easy?  I don’t know.  I wasn’t looking for easy.

Was it hard?  I wasn’t looking for hard either.  That is just the way it was.


See also:  Parable of the Owl Express