New Start.

Yesterday, I sat down and worked on Bishop Broadbent's challenge for this year--to make goals in all of the areas of personal preparedness (roughly).  My first goal in the area of Social, Spiritual, and Emotional was the following (and forever unmastered): "Regular scripture study, prayer, and journals--with a definite purpose and a new way of gaining motivation."

I'm doing quite well at prayers, and I'm sort of meeting the criteria for scripture study, but it is random passages and not enlightening at the moment.  On journal entries, it has been on again off again for forever, and mostly off again.  So I need a change.

So today, I read on Meridianmagazine.com, "The Battle for Our Brains," by Catherine Arveseth quoting Tina Peterson.

As aside here.  I know I am addicted to Conservative Websites and Facebook.  For one thing, they are easy places for short escapes from my freelance computer job.  Yet, they are still addictions and not the top tier of the Good, Better, Best criteria.  One step I took a long time ago was to change my startup page to meridianmagazine.com, rather than a conservative website.  For a long time, I've seen meridian load and immediately gone to my conservative site.  ... But slowly, I am starting to read at meridian.  That's interesting because of this article about battling for our brains.

It says that a new website (as in any sensory stimuli) creates a new synapse pathway in our brains.  When we revisit a particular site many times, the pathway widens and competes for increased stimuli (hence a habit and maybe eventually an addiction).  Perhaps, that is why meridian is starting to take a bit of hold, just due to exposure (even without my enthusiasm).

So we need to do the same with our exposure to scripture.  So, I'm doing to do an experiment.  See the above post.