Bury the Weapons: the Power of Positive Thinking

Symbols speak to us. Lynette Hadley Read writes, "Symbols are a vital tool in communication. In fact, all our forms of communication are made up of symbols—figures, words, sounds, gestures, which of themselves have no meaning but stand for something that does have meaning" (All Things Testify of Him).

Those symbols also come as stories, like in Christ's parables and scriptural events. A story that an elder in our district used to teach us is found in Alma 24:6-19 in the Book of Mormon.

The story is simple: a group of Lamanites were converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ by the preaching of the sons of Mosiah. After their conversion, these people took the name of Anti-Nephi-Lehies, refused to shed blood, and buried their weapons of war: "and thus we see that . . . they buried the weapons of war, for peace."

After reading through the story, Elder Gustafson posed this question: "What do we need to bury? What are our favorite weapons (or tools of rebellion) that we must give up?" Then he passed around little cardboard cutout weapons, and we all wrote our sacrifices on them. Once we were done writing, we marched outside and buried our weapons next to a bush.

This could have been a silly little exercise, but I decided to take it seriously. On my cardboard weapon, I'd written "negative thoughts about myself and my future." My resolve was to adopt an "I CAN DO IT" attitude.

My mom taught me about the power of thoughts. For a long time, I didn't believe her; why would repeating things to myself ever make a difference? Did I even have any control over my thoughts?

Then I went through a difficult time. This became my personal mantra:

I am a warrior with tenacity and great courage. 
I will win far more battles than I will lose. 

I repeated this over and over again to myself, and today, I believe it. A similar thing will happen when I bury my negative thoughts: they will no longer have power to harm me. Like the Anti-Nephi-Lehites, I will be free.