Greatness

Lately, I have found myself unintentionally reading and studying several books that have a common thread: greatness, goodness, and leadership. They all use different methods to talk about the same thing...unleashing our individual potential to make a significant contribution in our world. It's a fascinating study that's personal yet universal.

I want to share what I've been studying because I believe that someone (or many ones?) in my circle of friends and family might desire to take the time to also engage in a similar study at some point. And so, here you go...take it or leave it. As Rob would say, he has to scroll so it's TMI (too much information).

Here are the books I'm currently reading/listening to:

Leadership Education: Phases of Learning, by Oliver and Rachel DeMille
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, by Steven Covey
the Scriptures and talks from the April 2010 General Conference
I also got half way through Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall (even though my eyes were opened to the amazing capabilities of the human body, I chose to stop reading because of my personal desire not to read books with an abundance of vulgarity and profanity.)

These books have been really inspiring to me. They all relate to each other. Leadership Education and The 8th Habit are contemporary and they both acknowledge that our current society is lacking in leadership. The 8th Habit says we are moving from an industrial age to an information/knowledge age where the rules we have been following in the workplace have to change, too. Leadership Education emphasizes the need to raise our children in an environment that essentially trains them to become leaders. It describes many things we can do in our homes to do that (yeah, it's a homeschool book, but there are many ideas most families can use, too).

Yesterday, during my scripture study, I decided to look up scriptures about Greatness and Leadership. I felt the desire to see how many scriptures I could find on the Scripture Mastery cards. Look at this amazing list I found! As I saw this list grow, I thought how these scriptures are basically studied by thousands and tens of thousands of youth each year and how we were introduced to principles of greatness and leadership in our youth. (I wonder how many other themes you can pick out just by organizing the scriptures in different categories?)

The Old Testament
Moses 1:39
Abraham 3:22-23
Genesis 1:26-27
Genesis 39:9 (read this whole story in context...it's a great study in how his greatness came from his commitment to goodness.)
Exodus 20:3-17
Exodus 33:11 (I just read an article in the BYU alumni magazine about Face to Face leadership...see?!? Leadership stuff is all over the place!)
Leviticus 19:18
Joshua 24:15
1 Samuel 16:7
Proverbs 3:5-6
Isaiah 1:18
Isaiah 55:8-9
Amos 3:7

The New Testament
Matthew 5:14-16
Matthew 25:40
Romans 1:16
James 1:5-6
James 2:17-18

The Book of Mormon
1 Nephi 3:7
2 Nephi 2:25
2 Nephi 9:28-29
2 Nephi 32:3
Mosiah 2:17
Alma 32:21
Alma 37:6-7
Helaman 5:12
Ether 12:27
Moroni 7:45

Doctrine and Covenants
D&C 1:37-38
D&C 8:2-3
D&C 10:5
D&C 18:10, 15-16
D&C 58:26-28
D&C 82:3
D&C 88:123-125
D&C 89:18-21
D&C 121:34-35 Choose, for yourself, to be Chosen.
JS-H 1:15-20, 25 (the calling of a great leader. He didn't ever back down--even and especially when it was hard)