106. Old Ways of Being

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 106 old ways of being 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, what is up everyone? Welcome to the podcast friends. missionaries, RMS missionary moms, missionary dads, Mission presidents love you while sending you so much happiness and goodwill. And love out into the world from my heart to yours, this LDS mission experience, it’s, it’s not an easy thing. I was actually talking to some friends who are headed out to be mission presidents here in July, just in a couple of weeks. And they’re feeling a little overwhelmed. And we talk through lots of good stuff. So there are some good people out there who are interested in mental and emotional health. And I’m one of those and I’m ready to get more help out to more of you. Which is just a reminder that we have some really amazing and cool features coming this fall to Jennie Dildine, coaching and all of the work that we’re doing with missionaries here and I cannot wait to share it with you. I have recently hired a handful of coaches to help me get more tools out to more missionaries. And then this fall, I am going to be hiring returned missionary mentors to work with preparing missionaries, and do some other work in there. And I have so many ideas, so many new ways to really expand this work. And I just want to say I’m so grateful that you’re here, because you are helping me expand this work. Anyway, back to the RM mentors, if you’re interested in that. And that sounds like something that you would love to do, then just shoot me an email Jennie at Jennie dildine.com. Or you can actually just reach out on Instagram or Facebook and just say, Hey, I’m super interested in that RM mentor thing. We’re right now compiling an interest list of RMS who want to be mentors. So that is going to be amazing. And I cannot wait. I’m seriously so excited. Okay. So today, we’re actually going to be talking about old ways of being. And notice that the title of this podcast is not old ways of doing things, meaning old habits. So sometimes, we circle back into old habits. Like, for me right now, I’m not in a super good habit of working out. So an old habit would be like I don’t work out. So I did for a while, and now I don’t. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Because I really do believe that when we change, the way that we’re being that that actually changed is the things that we’re doing. So we’re actually talking today about old ways of being. And this came up because I started noticing it with a few of my clients. So we worked together for a little while. And then they’re really starting to get better at observing their thoughts. They get really amazing at allowing their emotions, they are all done with blaming people, or circumstances for the way that they feel. They’re starting to take real ownership of every experience that they’re having. Which is awesome. And, and it comes sort of like in waves. So they’re they hit this plateau, where everything’s really going amazingly well. And then all of a sudden, they come to me on a call, especially when we’ve been working together for a while and they’re like, oh my gosh, I’m back here. I can’t believe I’m having these same thoughts and feelings again. I can’t believe I’m jealous again. I can’t believe I’m frustrated again. I can’t believe I’m annoyed with my companion again. I can’t believe that I’m resentful towards my parents again. Okay, I can’t believe that I’m blaming everyone for what’s going on in my life again. So what happens is we start to change, and we start to evolve, and we start to show up in the world differently, our way of being is different. And then sometimes we find ourselves getting sucked back into old ways of being. So let’s talk about a few examples of this. So maybe, after listening to this podcast, or maybe you’ve worked with me, you are finally to the point where you notice this thought, I’m a bad missionary, and you just have so much awareness of it, you just are super good at observing that, knowing that thought is just normal, that is totally fine that you think that and we just observe it. And we kind of let it float into our head and then float back on out, we don’t make it mean anything. But now all of a sudden, you’re having day after day after day where you’re like, I’m the worst missionary. And we could apply this to anything, right? Maybe like, for me, it would be me observing, I’ve gotten really good at observing the thought, I’m not good enough, or I’m not a good enough mom. Or I’m not a good enough business owner, or whatever it is. But then I will every once in a while, have a day where I just believe all those thoughts. And then I kind of spiral down into old ways of being. Or maybe you have gotten really good at feeling your feelings, maybe you’ve just been able to when you start to feel anxiety come along, if you go back to episode number three, on the fields, I teach you how to feel your feelings. But maybe you’ve gotten really good at that maybe you’ve gotten really good at allowing the feeling to be there and sitting with the feeling and observing the feeling and describing the feeling. But then all of a sudden, you just notice like oh my gosh, I’m so doing that. Again, I’m so resisting all of it. I’m so fighting against all of my emotions. I’m so just feeling like none of them should be there.

7:13 Maybe you for a long time, not blamed your companion, not blamed your area, not blamed your district leader for how you feel, and for what you’re able to accomplish. But then all of a sudden, you find yourself back there, like, oh my gosh, I’m so annoyed with the district like, we’re just start blaming again. And maybe for a while, you’ve been really proactive about what you want in your life about getting a job or dating. And you have your own back and you’re really standing up for yourself in your companionship or in your job or in your workplace or with your roommates. And then all of a sudden you find yourself kind of back there where you’re starting to fall back into this idea that you are at the mercy of other people. Maybe for a while you’ve created so much self awareness, you have created so much self awareness that you’ve made a lot of amazing progress towards creating the mission that you want, or the job that you want, or the dating experience that you want. But then all of a sudden, it just feels like it all comes crashing down. And then you start to feel like, Ah, I can’t do any of this. None of it’s working. Let me tell you, Rest assured my friends, that this is okay. I think we sort of believe that when we progress to a certain point or a certain stage of evolution, or a certain stage of transformation, that there’s no going back. But the truth of it is, is that there’s a few things going on here that you may not give yourself enough grace for. Okay, it is not actually wrong. It doesn’t have to be a problem at all, that you’ve kind of gotten stuck in old ways of being. And let me tell you why. First of all, it takes a really long time to re work those neural pathways, I always think of so the neural pathways are the little connection or synapses created in your brain that goes from point A to point B. It’s the thoughts that you think it’s and then those thoughts create emotions in your body. So I always think of those little pathways that are created as a hiking trail and some of those hiking trails are very clear. They’re very easy to go down. There’s no debris, and so the brain will automatically go to those as often as possible. It’s the past path of least resistance. And often if it’s a belief or a thought that we have about ourselves, then that neural pathway actually ends up looking like a six lane highway. Okay, so imagine trying to move a six lane highway from point A. Okay, for the six lane highway is going from point A to point B, and then all of a sudden, we want it to go from point A to point C. That takes some time. And it takes a lot of thought work. And it takes a lot of like dismantling beliefs about things. And that’s okay. Also, another thing is, you are human. So when we’ve evolved, or we’ve changed to a certain point where we’re transforming and taking ownership and creating all this awareness about ourselves, we’re human. And that means that we’re never going to evolve to this person that is unaffected by the human experience. I wish I could tell you that was true. Cuz I’ve been doing this coaching thing for a long time. And I think, at one point, I’m like, oh, and then I’ll just fix myself. So I never have to feel anything. And I never have to worry, and I never have to be sad. And what I’m realizing you guys, and I hope you take this to heart is I’m human, and you are to, you’re never going to evolve to this untouchable person who is unaffected by the human experience, because we wouldn’t want that. Even if it were possible, we wouldn’t want that that would make life so boring, and bland, and vanilla. What we want is we want depth and we want meaning and we want purpose. And we want grit and we want deep feeling experiences. And that’s the fun part of being human. And then here’s the other thing is, life just happens. So it may be the case that if something particularly challenging is going on or you’re in a big time of transition, maybe you just got to the mission, maybe you’re in a new transfer, maybe you just got home, and life is happening your brain because that neural pathway has been so well worn and it’s worked, your brain will want to go back to that because it feels comfortable.

12:29 And so it totally makes sense. All of this makes so much sense that the old way of being, if your brain goes back to that if your experience goes back to that it’s not wrong, we see this too, right with people who break up with maybe a boyfriend or a girlfriend that isn’t as good for them. It’s like just easier to go back to that old way of being no need to beat yourself up about it, though, don’t emotionally think that you’re the worst place on the planet, the worst person on the planet, just decide some of these things, it takes a long time to rework those neural pathways. You are human. So you’re subject to the human experience. And life happens. It might be interesting for you to notice, like, do I this is one thing I’ve noticed about me is I’ve started taking note of the patterns of when I go back to the old ways of being. But just know that it all makes so much sense. And here’s two analogies I want to share with you that I hope will give you a little bit of an ability to create more compassion and more understanding for yourself. When you go back into this old way of being. Okay, where you start believing things again, like I’m a bad missionary, or you start to feel anxious and resist all of it or you start blaming everybody or you’re not as proactive or you’re not as self aware. It’s all totally fine. And so here’s the tell two analogies I want to share with you. Number one, the toothpaste analogy. There’s no such thing as wasted transformation and wasted evolvement. okay, it’s sort of like a tube of toothpaste. Okay, so we’re squeezing out a new version of you. This is kind of a silly analogy, but it works for me in my mind is there’s no such thing as wasted time or wasted space. Okay, or wasted energy or wasted transformation, that once we’ve squeezed all of that out of the out of life that we’re living, all of that experience, all of that learning all of that growth. There’s no putting it back into the two pace tube, it just already exists. Your transformation, your evolvement, your new version of you, there’s no going backwards. And I understand our brain tries to does Oh, we’re back at square one, there’s just no such thing. You are constantly changing and moving and evolving and growing. And that’s a good thing. And so we can’t shove the toothpaste back into the bottle. So just give yourself so much grace. When you’re in your, if you find yourself in an old way of being, you’re like, Oh, I see what this is. I see what’s going on here. Doesn’t mean that I’m at square one, does it mean like, got to put the all the toothpaste is back in the tube, we’re starting over? No, it’s just your brain. Okay, this is one of my favorite analogies. And I actually share this a lot with my clients, I get the little whiteboard, I mirror the whiteboard on Zoom. And I draw if you can imagine in your mind, like a mountain, and I learned this actually from one of my coaches, Amber Smith, who’s amazing. But she taught me this analogy, and I love it so much. And so I’ve been using it with my clients a lot, is let’s say, if you can picture there’s this mountain, and there’s a path that kind of spirals all the way up that mountain. Now in truth, that that mountain is like an eternal mountain, it’s always going to be going up and up and up and up forever. Okay, so there no is no end point for change and evolution. There is no arrival point. But I also want you to picture maybe on four different points on the mountain, that there’s a line that just goes straight up to the top. So there’s the curving line that goes around and around and around the path. And then there’s four spots on the mountain that are just a straight up line from the bottom to the top, they go to straight up the face of that cone, or mountain. Now, this is something I noticed in myself, I was like, as I started started to evolve and change. It’s like, oh, this thing with my family is so hard. And then I get coached on that. And then I’d figure it out. And then I would go down the path a little bit on the mountain. And then I’d be like, Oh, my self worth, I just don’t even like myself right now, I got to figure out how to believe in myself more, right, and then I go up the mountain a little bit more. And maybe I get coached on my beliefs about money. And then on the fourth little line that goes totally up the mountain, just straight up the mountain. I get coached on let’s say my relationship with my husband, okay. And so we sort of think and I’ve seen this so many times with my clients, they’re like, Oh, I can’t believe I’m here. Again. I can’t believe I’m getting coached about my kid or I can’t believe that I’m getting coached about my companion again, or I can’t believe that I’m getting coached about my OCD thoughts again, or I can’t believe that I’m getting coached about my anxiety again.

18:28 But when we understand that we’re in a constant, upward path of evolvement, and transformation, we’re always going to come back around the mountain, you’re going to always hit that one spot where even though life looks different, even everything around us is different. It’s going to be caused for us to get coached again, on family stuff, and then get coached again, on our relationship with our companion, and then get coached again, on our beliefs about earning money and getting a job and then we’re gonna get coached again, on our beliefs about ourselves. And we’re gonna go round and round and round the mountain. But all the while, if you know if you notice, actually that you’re coming back to it. What you could observe is that it is different this time. I’ve been working a long time on this belief that I’m weak. I think I talk about it almost every podcast and in my belief in myself to accomplish big things. So every time I come around the mountain even though it is the same, even though I’m still getting coached on my self worth my belief in myself, it is different that checkpoint is different if I were to observe it closely. It’ll be slightly flavored differently. And so you can actually look at that and be like, Oh, I’m getting coached on myself. Fourth, again, I must be evolving, I must have done another rotation on that path around the mountain. So none of it is lost, none of it is wasted. If you find yourself in old ways of being, instead of being like, I don’t like thought I didn’t, like, I used to be like that. And I don’t want to be like that anymore. Just remember, it’s not wrong. It takes time to rework those neural pathways. You’re human, totally, you’re, you’re never going to evolve to this untouchable person that doesn’t feel anything or experience life. And also, that life does happen. And you’re gonna come back around that mountain, and then you’re gonna go on your mission, and you’re gonna come around the mountain again, and then you’re going to move to a new transfer, and you’re gonna come around the mountain again, and have to re evaluate at each of those checkpoints along the path. And then you’re gonna come home and you’re gonna have to reevaluate, and then you’re gonna dating and you’re gonna have to hit all of those checkpoints around the mountain, every time. And that’s what makes life fun. That’s why we’re here, right? Not to eliminate any of these experiences. But to just keep going, keep changing, keep evolving, keep becoming the version of us that were meant to be, which is super fun. All right. Okay, you guys keep going around the mountain. It’s okay that you hit those checkpoints over and over and over. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Everyone have the most amazing week and we will talk to you next time.

21:54 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, serve the successful mission you’ve always dreamed up 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 were involved in just now that Jenny the LDS mission coach is thinking about you every single day.