June 25th, 2025, 5am MDT
In my youth, I tried to emulate Brigham young college athletes, including basketball stars Kreshmir Ciccić and Elder S. Gifford Nielsen.
Today, I know that many young men have posters of their favorite athletes in their bedrooms. When you strive to emulate talented athletes, you study their techniques, styles, and characteristics. That’s motivating.
However, when you compare yourself to those athletes, you can feel inferior and inadequate.
Comparisons can only bring vy hope and longing, and bring only frustration, pride and disappointment. When we measure our worst against someone else’s best, we demolish and disregard other people or ourselves. Neither option hides or reduces our own insecurities.
This is especially dangerous in the social media world, giving you endless opportunities to invite comparisons. In “For the Strength of Young People: A Guide to Choice,” “Don’t compare your life to what others seem to be experiencing. Don’t forget that your values come from being a child of heavenly parents, not from social media” (p. 18).
President Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is a thief of joy.”
In the Bible, “What is not enlightening is not God’s, but darkness… God’s is light; and whoever receives light and continues in God receives more light” (D&C 50:23-24).
Young people leaders have noticed that young people are comparing themselves negatively to others, so invite them to find someone they can emulate instead. For the strength of young counselors and other youths and the strength of wards and stakes, mention the good qualities of parents, older siblings.
The greatest example we can all emulate is our Savior, Jesus Christ. Talk about his life, his traits and virtues, and how he dealt with people who were deceived and rejected.
Just as a young man may have a poster of his favourite athlete on the wall of his bedroom, the young man should have a biblical photo in his room next to his bed.
Encourage young people to discover and develop their spiritual gifts. To know that “Jesus is Christ, and the Son of God, and He was crucified for the sins of the world” (D&C 46:13). The other is the gift of “knowledge, that all may be taught as wise and knowledge” (D&C 46:18). Finding and using gifts is to emulate them instead of comparing them.
Sister Patricia Holland said, “My greatest misery comes when I feel like I have to fit in what others are doing and what others expect from me. When I’m comfortable being me and trying to do in heaven, “Portrait of Eve: I expect God’s promise of personal identity.”
Her husband, President Jeffrey R. Holland, is the quorum president of the 12 apostles and “God) loves each of us – anxiousness, anxiety, self-image and everything. He does not measure our talents or our appearance. He does not measure our profession or our possessions.
In April 2025, Prophet President Russell M. Nelson taught us to increase confidence in charity and virtue. Emulation rather than competition is a way to increase both.
“Let virtue constantly decorate your ideas, and your trust must be strongly waxed before God, and the doctrine of the priesthood must distinguish your soul like the dew from heaven” (D&C 121:45).
– Mark J. With is a member of the Young Men General Advisory Council.
