Mitt Romney instructs BYU students on a spiritual level

Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney returned to his alma mater of BYU on Tuesday to give some very personal, spiritual advice to BYU students.

Romney spoke a lot about his recent run for president of the United States, but it wasn’t politics that he came to speak about this time around. Instead, he used those experiences to teach about the spiritual lessons that he learned throughout the whole process.

“When you see (Romney) on the political road, you don’t get to hear about his testimony of the church,” said Jared McArthur, a BYU student from South Jordan, Utah, “He’s got to keep that stuff out of it. So I really liked hearing that aspect of (his address).”

Romney’s main message to the students? Keeping the right prospective and remembering what matters most. Romney concluded by telling the students that if they define success on a secular level, they will most likely fail due to all the things in life that happen by chance. However, if they define success on an eternal level, specifically speaking of their relationship with God, then in fact success is up to them.

This was specifically relevant to Romney personally given his recent loss to President Barak Obama in the most recent presidential election. Some might say that he failed because he didn’t win the election, but Romney said that he prefers to think of it as him winning the silver medal.

Family was also a big subject for Romney as he stated multiple times how important his wife Ann is to him and how supportive she’s been for his whole career. When asked how he manages to still spend time with her despite the busy schedule, he stated that they always practiced the principle of “time tithing,” meaning that despite what was going on, he always made sure to set aside at least 10 percent of his time to spend with her and their kids. He also said he made sure to leave his work at work instead of bringing his work home with him.

In addition to giving this address, Romney was also very personal with everyone afterwards. Even after the question and answer session of the forum was over, he still hung around to talk with students and reporters. In fact, he even took time to sign McArthur’s book.

About this experience, McArthur said, “I’ve always been a big fan of Mitt and when I heard he was coming last week, me and my brother wanted to camp out, but that didn’t end up happening. We came at like 8 a.m. instead. We got front row and then I saw him coming over and after his great speech and forum, I was lucky enough to get my book signed and I got to interact with Mitt Romney, so I’m really happy about it.”

When Romney was asked if he plans on running for president again by a random individual from the crowd, he side-stepped the question and chose to focus on his message, replying simply, “Yeah, I did that actually.”