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One Question That Can Change Your Life

Sister Wendy W. Nelson

What would a holy young adult do?

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President and Sister Nelson sitting together

Our dear brothers and sisters, how we love you! How we wish we could take each one of you home with us. More importantly, we pray that something the Holy Ghost teaches you tonight will help you be better prepared to return Home. Home with a capital “H.”

Tonight, I would like to talk with you about one question that can change your life!

This one question can increase your confidence, decrease your anxiety, motivate you, lift your mood and your sights, increase your productivity, increase your focus and clarity of thinking, help you resist temptation, help you detect deception, increase your gratitude, decrease the stress in your life, increase your capacity to love, and help you make better decisions. This one question can bring you joy, comfort, love, and peace!

How can I be so sure? Because that is exactly what thirty of your peers taught me. And I believe them! These young adults taught me that when you ask yourself this specific question, it can help you pursue what is really important in life, help you make changes in your life that you want to make, and can even help you truly repent.

According to your friends, this question can give you eyes to see, like you never have before, the Lord’s hand in your life, the beauty of the earth, and the goodness in others. In short, because this question can put you in touch with the Spirit of the Lord and with the divine DNA in your spirit, this one question can bring you more light and truth!

Your peers also taught me that this question will work no matter how crazy busy or monotonous your life currently is. It also doesn’t matter how you’re feeling: happy, sad, isolated, inundated, depressed, encouraged, anxious, excited, lonely, left out, overwhelmed, overlooked, overjoyed! It doesn’t matter. This one question can work for you.

Would you like to know the question? Great! A little background first:

Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Redeemer, and the head of this, His Church, has made it very clear that He wants you and me to become increasingly holy. He even commands us to do so, saying, “Ye must practice … holiness before me” (Doctrine and Covenants 46:33; emphasis added). And He doesn’t just leave it at that! He adds the word “continually.”

Now, does it seem way too lofty—and simply impossible—to practice holiness continually? I completely understand if you’re thinking, “Sister Nelson, I just don’t have that in me.” Let me assure you why I know that you do.

Prior to our marriage, I was a psychologist, a marriage and family therapist, and a BYU professor. During those thirty years of my professional life, I learned about the power of questions. Some questions can help us think of things in a brand-new way, opening our hearts and minds to all kinds of possibilities that we otherwise would never consider.

So two months ago, as I thought about the power of questions, I invited thirty of our young adult friends—exactly your age, married and single—to experiment with this one question for three days. I asked them to do the following: “In just one situation a day—for each of three days—ask yourself: ‘What would a holy young adult do?’”

That’s it. That’s the question: “What would a holy young adult do?”

For example:

How would a holy young adult start his day?
What would be on her to-do list?
How would he talk with a friend? Or shop, or play, or pray, or do laundry, or read to a child?
What would a holy young adult listen to or say? Write or read? Watch or wear?
If a holy young adult were falsely accused, betrayed, or misunderstood, what would she do?
What would he do in a really difficult situation where his values or morals were tested?
How would she prepare to partake of the sacrament each Sunday?
How would a holy young single adult use his time to prepare, rather than wait, for marriage?
How would holy young adults who are married strengthen their marriage?

And what happened? In several states in the USA, and in two cities in Canada, thirty young adults went to work asking themselves: “What would a holy young adult do?”

A flurry of normal daily activities commenced—each now being done as a holy young adult would do it. After only a few days, reports began to pour in. Let me tell you what some of your friends did:

Carrots for lunch were crunched with more gratitude.
Usual music and podcasts were exchanged for inspiring music, general conference talks, and Come, Follow Me podcasts.
Time consuming social media apps were deleted.
Foul language shows were turned off.
Bloated to-do lists were reprioritized.
Prayers were offered before attempting difficult homework assignments, inviting the Holy Ghost to become the tutor.
Scriptures were savored at a variety of times, including right before an exam started, which brought miraculous results.
Spiritually-strengthening habits that had been lost since returning home from a mission were reinstated.
Testimonies were shared with classmates.
Jealousy of friends who were dating and marrying was replaced with love and joy for them.
Driving time became quiet meditative time.
Persistent negative thoughts were replaced by counting small victories and many blessings.
Tapping and scrolling were replaced with phone calls and in-person visits.
Time in the temple increased, as did housework by husbands!
And the love of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ was experienced in abundance!

What else happened?

One young adult discovered “the power of my agency!” She continued,“As I chose to watch general conference as a holy young adult would, I wasn’t watching to please anyone or to control the way people see me. I was watching because I know this Church is true. The gospel is true. The men and women speaking are inspired and guided by the Lord, and I wanted to learn.”

A chronic people pleaser reported that her stress at work decreased. She wrote: “Asking myself that question changed my perspective completely. I had newfound confidence because I was remembering the significance of more important things. I learned that the holier you become, the less you worry about doing what everyone else wants, and more about what God wants.”

My dear brothers and sisters, at the present time, the Salt Lake Temple is an architectural wonder, but it is not an operating temple of the Lord.

As that extraordinary structure undergoes extensive renovations and life-saving stabilizations, the Salt Lake Temple has been decommissioned as a temple. When a temple is decommissioned that which is sacred, related to ordinances and instruction, is removed.

Sadly, the same can happen with people. Through the buffetings of Satan, poor choices, and eternal-life-threatening brushes with those in the great and spacious building, tragically, many young adults have had the sacred removed from their lives. These young adults have been—so to speak—decommissioned as “temples of God” (see 1 Corinthians 3:16–17).

Now, whether this has happened to you or not, I invite you to reclaim or to increase the sacred in your life by doing exactly what the Lord has commanded, which is to practice holiness continually.

You may want to begin this process by doing what your peers did. Ask yourself—in just one situation—for each of three days: What would a holy young adult do? And then follow through.

As you live your life in crescendo,¹ trying to be just a little more holy day by day—and quickly repenting when you mess up—you will find joy in this life, and eternal life in the world to come. And you will begin to experience, in a most profound and unforgettable way, exactly what our Savior, Jesus Christ, promised when He said, “I am able to make you holy” (Doctrine and Covenants 60:7).

My dear brothers and sisters, President Nelson will speak to you now. I testify to you, and I could testify in any court in any nation on earth, that President Russell M. Nelson is the Lord’s prophet on the earth today, chosen and instructed by Him.