101. Advice for What’s Next

0:00 Hey, what’s up everyone? It’s Jennie Dildine, the LDS mission coach and you are listening to the LDS mission Podcast, episode number 101. Advice for what’s next.

0:14 Hey, I’m Jennie, the LDS mission coach. And whether you’re preparing to serve a mission, currently serving a returned missionary or a missionary mama like me, I created this podcast just for you. Are you searching for epic confidence? Ready to love yourself and to learn the how of doing hard things? Then let’s go. I will help you step powerfully into your potential and never question your purpose. Again. It’s time to embrace yourself. Embrace your mission, embrace your life, and embrace what’s next. Hey, everybody, and welcome to the podcast Thank goodness for editing. Because before I started this, I sneezed two massive rooms, maybe three. There’s lots of floaty stuff in the air, you know, pollen and cotton, I think is what it is floating around everywhere. So I might even sound a little stuffy. But hopefully, if I sneeze again, my assistant will be able to cut the sneeze out. So I don’t blow your eardrums or anything like that, hey, I have been feeling a lot of feelings this week. As I have a son that is graduating from high school. I also at the same time have a daughter who is going to be done with elementary school. So it’s going to leave, we’re going to be leaving my husband and I we were actually just talking about this, we’re going to be leaving a very specific stage in our lives where we had elementary school kids, and that has lasted for a really long time. So I am feeling all of the feelings and also have been quite pensive, the last little bit, also full of quite a few emotions. And is, I think always the case that this happens this way, when we have these big milestones that we’re going through or our kids are going through. And that we start to kind of take a look at where we’ve been where we’re at, and what we want to do next. And one of the things on the intro to this podcast is I say on the weekly intro like embrace yourself, embrace your life, embrace your mission and embrace what’s next. So, um, something like that. Anyway, you just heard it, so you know what it says. But, um, this idea of what’s next, after we reach this specific milestone, can be sort of overwhelming and stressful to think about. So one of the things that we tend to do is we tend to seek advice from people. And so what I want to kind of talk about today is why we seek advice, and why it’s not always useful to take other people’s advice. And I’ll have a little preview for you is, I’m gonna be talking about Taylor Swift later. So if you are a fan, like me, just a little sneak peek, but I’m going to be bringing Taylor Swift into this podcast, not herself, that would be awesome. But I am going to be quoting some stuff from a recent commencement speech she gave last year. So you can totally look forward to that. So here’s the thing is that people like to give advice about specific things and specific situations. They like to give advice about what we should do. And when we’re about to move into this new stage of life, or maybe we’re starting college for the first time, or maybe we’re starting a mission. Or maybe we are transferring from a teaching mission to a service mission. Or maybe we’re coming home from our mission, maybe we’re getting married, maybe we just got engaged, whatever is going on for you. It’s normal for us to be curious about what other people’s experiences have been like. Okay, so we are curious about how other people did it because we’ve seen those that work well for them. And so we’re curious about that. And we sometimes want to know how they did it or what their advice would be. Okay. Sometimes the opposite thing of this would the opposite of this would happen is that someone unsolicited might offer us advice about what’s going on like, oh, well, you know, Oh, if you’re having a baby, you should this or if you’re getting married, make sure you do this. Or if you’re going on your mission, make sure you do this. I actually just saw this phenomenon recently on one of my strategy calls. And on those strategy calls, I get asked a ton of questions like, What should I do if I don’t get along with my companion? What do I do? If I get lonely out there? What if I get to school after my mission? And I don’t find any friends? What do I do, if I decide I don’t love the major that I’m in? What do I do to show up for my first day of college? Now, it makes sense that our brain is curious about the stuff that we do, because it sort of believes that if we do certain things that that is, what gives us the experience or the outcome that we want. But what we learn, and what we’ve been learning here on this podcast, is that the actions don’t necessarily give us the experience that we want, at college or on the mission, what’s far more important, is what we’re thinking and feeling while we take those actions. Okay, so you may have a person when you get home from your mission, and this is probably the most common advice I hear, when you get home from our mission is, you should stay really busy. Now, some people are going to follow that advice, and it’s going to work really well for them. Because they’re going to be thinking the thoughts they want to think. And the feeling that they’re feeling is going to be driving the action of being busy in a useful way. Okay. But for some other people, they’re not going to be thinking those same thoughts, they’re not going to be feeling useful fuel to drive the action of being busy. And it could actually have the opposite effect. So this is why with all of my clients, and then all of these strategy calls, in fact, I had one just this week, and she’s like, well, what would I do if I don’t get along with my companion? And I’m like, Listen, I don’t know what you should do. The goal of my work and helping missionaries and what I want for all of you that are listening, is that you are able to sort out your own thoughts. Create the feelings that you want to have. And once we do that, you will know what to do, you will know what is the next right step for you. And that you’ll give that confidence to yourself. And you’ll be able to to trust yourself to make the next right step. The truth is, there’s absolutely no way for any person on this planet to know what you should do next. Or to know how to handle a specific situation on the mission, or college or a baby or being engaged. And so listen, I’m all for us like getting some information, getting a few different takes from different people. But at the end of the day, this is what’s crazy, is the way that it’s supposed to be done for you. The path that you’re supposed to take, and that you’re going to create hasn’t been created yet. You get to create it. And so even if someone tells you like this is my advice for what I would do when I come home from a mission, no one’s done it before the way that you’re supposed to do it. Or here’s my advice for how to serve a mission and how to show up confidently on a mission. Okay, but no one that’s you has walked that path before they’ve walked it for themselves. But they haven’t walked it being you. So the pathway that you’re creating, you get to create. And there’s absolutely no way to know what to do that would be right for you. What works for one person won’t work for you. Or it might. But the only way to figure that out is if you just do it. So it’s gonna take some experimenting, you’re gonna have to try some stuff, you’re gonna have to try some people’s advice, you’re gonna have to try other people’s advice. But just know that just because it’s worked for one person doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. Or instead of taking other people’s advice, you can go inside and ask yourself, what do I think about this? What do I think would be the next right step? For me? If you were creating your path all along the way, what do you want to try?

9:59 Out was talking to one client today. And I just said, you know, you can’t mess this up, right? And she was like, what? And I was like, You can’t mess it up. You make it up as you go along. And anybody that tells you different is wrong, we’re all making it up as we go along. And sometimes we’re gonna miss up, and sometimes we’re gonna get it right. And when I say, right, I don’t mean Right, right, like choose the right. What I mean is, sometimes it’s gonna go the way we think. But most of the time is gonna go a completely different way. And if it does, all the more growth and learning on the other side of that. So it’s not a secret that I’m fangirling over Taylor Swift right now we went to her concert opening night in Glendale, Arizona, it was amazing, life changing, absolutely inspirational what that woman has created, from the time she was 12, to what she has created now. And I’m not embarrassed to say that I have been watching all our videos. Well, I can’t say all because there’s so many. But I’m watching like videos and tiktoks and reels of her. And if you look at my Explore page on my Instagram, it’s really funny because it’s mostly Taylor Swift videos. And then like a little sprinkle of oak Dorf here and a little sprinkle of President Nelson there and a little sprinkle of other missionary accounts that I follow here and there. But mostly by and large, Taylor Swift, after going to that concert, I was just inspired by what she has created. And in my mind, I’m like, she’s got some stuff figured out. And sometimes I don’t know if you’ve done this, but sometimes I’ll even there are people who will do tick tock lives. And I’ll even tune in to just catch a little glimpse of the concert, if I can. Anyway, in 2002, she was awarded an honorary doctorate doctorate degree from NYU. And because I’ve seen like these tiktoks, and these clips and these reels, I’ve started to see a lot of little clips of this speech she gave there, to accept the degree and to sort of represent the other people who are getting honorary degrees there. And so it kind of piqued my interest, because a couple of the things that she talked about, in her commencement speech at, you know, and representing other people who are getting degrees, and also speaking to all of the people that were graduating that day, a COVID Things really interested me, and really stuck out to me, because listen, she sounded like a life coach. I was like, Oh, my gosh, Taylor Swift knows her stuff. She knows what she’s talking about. So, in honor of this being graduation weekend, and my daughter graduating from elementary school, and many of you have recently graduated. And even if you’re just graduating to the next stage of your life, whether that’s engagement, or whether that’s just, you know, your, I don’t know, just getting to a new transfer on your mission, I want to share some of the stuff that she shared. And then we’re going to talk just a little bit about it. So this is a quote directly from that talk. She said, as a person who started my very public career at the age of 15. It came with a price, and that price was years of unsolicited, unsolicited advice. She said being the youngest person in every room for over a decade, meant that I was constantly being issued warnings from older members of the music industry, media, interviews, executives, and this advice often presented itself as thinly veiled warnings. See, I was a teenager at the time when our society was absolutely obsessed with the idea of having a perfect young female role model. Do you guys any of you feel like that, especially your missionaries, like you get advice from this person and this advice, and, and I’m obsessed with this idea of being this perfect missionary. She goes on to say it felt like every interview I did, included slight barbs by the interviewer about me one day running off the rails. And that meant a different thing to every person who said it to me. So I became a young adult, while being fed the message that if I didn’t make any mistakes, all the children of America would grow up to be perfect angels. Do you guys feel that pressure as missionaries? And as RMS like, if I don’t if I don’t make a mistake, then everything’s going to be amazing. Then she said, however, I was told that if I did slip up the entire Earth would fall off its axis entirely. And it would be my fault. And I would go to Popstar jail forever and ever. All of this was created around the idea that mistakes equal failure and ultimately the loss of any chance at a happy or rewarding life. Does it feel like that sometimes you guys, like I can’t mess this up. Or I lose all all chance of being happy or being successful. But then she goes on to say, this has not been my experience. My experience has been that my mistakes lead to the very best things in my life. What when I heard her say that I was like, I love you Taylor even more. She said the times I was told no or wasn’t included, wasn’t chosen, didn’t win, didn’t make the cut. Looking back, it really feels like those moments were as important, if not more crucial than the moments I was told. Yes. And I know many of you who’ve been through struggles. Like, one thing that comes to mind is my son who played varsity basketball, he was so skilled at making three pointers. And then for some reason, almost his entire senior year, he couldn’t drain a three pointer. And at the time, you’re like, why is this happening? What’s going on, but I love that she says, Looking back, it feels like those moments were as important if not more crucial than the moments I was told yes, or where she was winning. So I love this so much that mistakes lead to the best things in life. And listen, without those mistakes, we wouldn’t learn or grow. So when people give you advice, maybe feel free to try it if you want to. But let’s have the goal of failing as much as possible, failing as many times as possible. And then all along the way. Be just super proud of yourself for being in the arena at all. Like I’ll talk to a missionary client, they’re like, Oh, I didn’t get up on time. And I’m like, yo, you’re on a mission. That takes so much sacrifice and effort and hard work. Be proud of you for being out there. Or, like, if you get stood up, I was talking to an RM client this weekend who got stood up right before a concert he was supposed to go to. And instead of being like, Oh, I’m the worst I failed. Maybe someone you know, maybe she didn’t like me. Be like, Yo, I’m trying to date here. How amazing is that? That is not easy. Good for me. Go. Me. Let’s not be frustrated. Life’s a huge experiment. You guys, we just try some stuff and then try it again. And then try some stuff. And then try it again. I love this quote too. She said you will inevitably misspeak trust the wrong person under react, overreact, hurt the people who didn’t deserve it. overthink not think at all, self sabotage, create a reality where only your experience exists. Ruin perfectly good moments for yourself and others, deny any wrongdoing, not take the steps to make it right. Feel guilty. Let the guilt eat at you hit rock bottom, finally addressed the pain you caused. Try to do better next time. And then she said rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat you guys rinse and repeat. This is the process of life. And so anybody who’s trying to do it perfectly. Like, it’s it’s okay that it’s not it’s not supposed to be it was never meant to be perfect. And whatever advice you’re getting from people, because you want the experience to be perfect. Guess what it’s never going to be because that was never the way we have to have a human experience with other humans. In middle school, in high school, on the mission, when you get home, your new job. These interactions, these experiences, if they don’t go the way you thought, if you’re irritated with your companion don’t want to be any more. Don’t judge yourself. Just be like let’s do it again. Let’s do it again. Let’s do it again. You can’t do life wrong. And just a reminder that you also can’t mess up God’s plan. Just try to do better next time. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Okay, so this is the last quote I’m going to share with you. There will be times in life where you need to stand up for yourself. Times when the right thing is actually to back down and apologize times when the right thing is to fight times when the right thing is to turn and run times to hold on with all you have and times to let At go with grace.

20:02 Sometimes the right thing to do is to throw out the old schools of thought, in the name of progress and reform. Sometimes the right thing to do is to sit and listen to the wisdom of those who have come before us. She says, how will you know what the right choice is in these crucial moments? And then she says, You won’t make drop, right? Listen, you can take advice from people if you want. But they don’t know what’s best for you. You get to just try some stuff. You get to just try and experiment and try and experiment and keep going. I don’t ever tell my clients what they should do. I help my clients create thoughts that create feelings so that they’ll know what to do. And listen, you guys, I give you permission to throw it all out the window, and then do it again. And then throw it all out the window and do it again and experiment and trust yourself. Through all of it. life really is a big experiment. It’s a lab. Change your mind, try something new. Change your mind again. So what is my very best advice for what’s next? Listen, nobody knows better than you do. And here’s the trick. You won’t know until you do it. So just put one foot in front of the other. Trust yourself, buckle up for the experiment, and enjoy the ride. Everyone have the most amazing week. Congratulations to all the graduates and sending you so much love. Serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints can present a unique set of challenges. And many of those challenges you might not even see coming. So you’re gonna want a unique set of solutions. It’s easier than you think to overcome worry and anxiety, sort of the successful mission you’ve always dreamed of, and navigate your post mission experience with confidence. That is why I created some amazing free goodies that I’m sharing in my show notes. Maybe you’ll want to grab the free training for preparing missionaries might video course for RMS or maybe you and I should hop on a free strategy call. If you’re ready to take your preparedness to serve or your preparedness to come home to the next level. Then go grab one of those freebies. And in the meantime, no matter which part of the mission experience you are involved in. Just know that Jennie, the LDS mission coach is thinking about you every single day.