You Never Know Who's Watching

To all those who have learned another language, whether on a mission or elsewhere, who have seen that one person who was the best at speaking that language? I know that I have experienced it. I served my mission in Korea, and even before that, I was really interested in learning the Korean language. But there was always that one person who I would see was best at speaking, and I would compare myself to them. At first, I would give up, thinking I wouldn't be able to get to where they were, but I took their skills as an incentive to be better myself.

Throughout my life, I have learned not to compare myself to people. Especially on my mission, I would compare myself to missionaries who were better at the language, were good teachers, got along well with people, and so forth. I learned the hard way that we should not compare ourselves with others, but learn from them. This is the type of persuasion that I want to point out—that those people who are better at something, more than we ourselves are, silently persuade us to be better, or to do better at something. In terms of learning a new language, I would see those other people who learned the language a lot faster, and would be excellent at speaking, as a form of wanting to become better myself. I was persuaded by their skills to improve my own.

I think that it is interesting how we could be influencing people to become better at something when they see our abilities. We never know if there is a person who was personally persuaded by us to become better without us even knowing it—that silent persuasion. I think that this silent persuasion is the most powerful, more so than what we can physically say.