I suppose it goes without saying that negative speaking so often flows from negative thinking about ourselves. We see our own faults, we speak--or at least think--critically of ourselves, and before long that is how we see everyone and everything. No sunshine, no roses, no promise of hope or happiness. Before long we and everybody around us are miserable.

Faith draws the poison from every grief, takes the sting from every loss, and quenches the fire of every pain, and only faith can do it.

No one would wish a bad marriage on anyone. But where do we think good marriages come from? They don't spring full blown from the head of Zeus any more than does a good education...Why should a marriage require fewer tears and less toil and shabbier commitment than your job or your clothes or your car?

Love. Healing. Help. Hope. The power of Christ to counter all troubles in all times—including the end of times. That is the safe harbor God wants for us in personal or public days of despair. That is the message with which the Book of Mormon begins, and that is the message with which it ends, calling all to 'come unto Christ, and be perfected in him' (Moroni 10:32).

Just believing, just having a molecule of faith--that simple step, when focused on the Lord Jesus Christ, has ever been and always will be not only the first principle of His Eternal Gospel but also the first step out of despair.

One would truly need a great and spacious makeup kit to compete with beauty as portrayed in media all around us. Yet at the end of the day there would still be those "in the attitude of mocking and point their fingers" as Lehi saw (1 Nephi 8:27) because however much one tries in the world of glamour and fashion, it will never be glamorous enough.

We are making our appearance on the stage of mortality in the greatest dispensation of the gospel ever given to mankind, and we need to make the most of it.