Opening our Spiritual Eyes

The other day I was sitting at the institute waiting for Brad to finish taking a test. Having deleted all social media off my phone so I would be less distracted I had nothing to do. So I grabbed the December ensign and started flipping through it when I came across a story called Smiling to the Blind.

I briefly read it through scanning for nothing important when I found an answer/advice to a problem I went to the Lord with just 3 days prior. 

I was feeling alone, and deserted by my Heavenly Father. Even though I was doing everything I thought I needed to do, it felt like I was not receiving any help from Him. 

While reading Smiling to the Blind, a thought came to me (by the spirit, most likely) that I need to pray to open my spiritual eyes and see all the blessings and help I have received, either directly from Heavenly Father or from someone acting from inspiration they received from Him. 

The Lord is always there ready to help us, sometimes in ways we least expect it. Even though we may not notice it, he is right beside us, listening to our prayers and worries. We just need to humble ourselves, open our eyes and let him in to help.

Since I have been praying to be aware of the blessings all around me I have been amazed countless of times just how frequently his hand is guiding and lifting me up.

“Let him that is ignorant learn wisdom by humbling himself and calling upon the Lord his God, that his eyes may be opened that he may see, and his ears opened that he may hear;

“For my Spirit is sent forth into the world to enlighten the humble and contrite” (D&C 136:32–33).

The Token Economy

During this time of fast approaching finals, studying is all we ever get around to doing in this household. Dishes are piling up because we only take time to eat and then it's right back to studying. The kitchen table looks more like our textbooks threw up all over it than a place where you eat.

But luckily for us Brad is taking a course called learning and cognition where he learns all about learning and strategies to learn. It is one of these strategies that we have decided to implement into our lives and it has changed how we study and how we use our time when we aren't studying. We have been so blessed by the effects and to even feel inspired to start this that we decided to share our experience in hopes that it can benefit others.

The Token Economy
The first time I was exposed to this was in my grade 4 classroom. If we behaved correctly and did our homework we got what my teacher called "Wilson Bucks". We would then be able to trade those in to buy all sorts of goodies from her drawer. This is an example of a token economy. We took this idea and changed it for ourselves.

First, we decided what we would be rewarded for. Our decision ended up being 20 consecutive minutes of really good studying.

After, we chose to be rewarded simply by putting check marks up on the whiteboard by our name for each of those 20 minutes of studying.

Lastly, we needed to figure out what behaviors distracted us from studying and needed to be used as reinforcers to study. We came up with games on our devices, social media, and Netflix.
We attached a price (amount of check marks) to each thing. With one check mark equaling 10 minutes of playing a game or being on social media. A 40 minute Netflix show when watched together cost 3 each, but when alone it cost 5. A whole movie together cost 7 each and 10 when alone.

We decided to make the cost of stuff we did together cheaper because doing activities as a family is better than doing it alone. The effect of this is to make the tokens a secondary reinforcer and the primary reinforcer (the distractions) are then contingent upon the secondary reinforcers which are contingent upon the studying behavior. This leads to an increase in the studying behavior. Voilà!