To Live Well

Elder Richard G. Scott, To Live Well, April 21, 2011, BYU Spring 2011 Commencement

Sixth, smile. I don’t need to teach you that. Just being on this campus teaches the importance of knowing how to smile and enjoy life. I don’t mean by that that you need to be cracking jokes every day. But a good joke now and then is an escape valve. It is not all that bad. You will soon learn that everybody has problems and nobody wants to hear about yours. Put those things aside and smile. Have a good sense of humor as the prophets do. I wish I could tell you some of the things that we talk about. Not flippant things, not things that are inappropriate—just a good sense of humor. Today we are a little more serious than usual, but I will tell you a secret of how to wake up in the morning with a smile on your face no matter how you feel. Now I’ll have to whisper, because this is a secret. If you want to wake up in the morning guaranteed to have a smile on your face, go to bed with a coat hanger in your mouth. Remember, a good sense of humor helps you greatly.

Seventh, don’t complain. Life isn’t always fair. That’s a fact. But it’s always charged with marvelous opportunities if you know how to find them. I remember once when I was working as hard as I knew how. I happened to be working for a man who took all of the ideas and suggestions and work that I did and passed them on to his superior as though they were his own suggestions. For a while I was really upset about that. As I pondered it, a thought came to me, and I decided from then on I would write reports to him of everything that I was doing or trying to do, and I sent a copy to his boss. He didn’t like that, but it worked beautifully.