34. Lovability

0:00 Hey, what’s up everyone? It’s Jennie, the LDS mission coach and you’re listening to the LDS mission Podcast, episode number 34 lovability.

0:13 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.

0:51 Hey, everyone, and welcome to the podcast. Happy Valentine’s week and weekend. I just hoping that you are full of love this Valentine’s Day. And I’ve been thinking a lot about love and what love is. And I want to share some of that with you today. We are getting ready for my daughter’s Valentine’s Day party at the elementary school, which it’s fun that they get to do that again this year. With COVID It’s been a little strange, right? But what she decided she wanted to do was puppet bracelets. Everyone know what the puppets are those little fidgets. Anyway, that’s what we’re doing is we’re gonna get the puppet bracelets, put them in a plastic bag, and I’m sure we’ll come up with some sort of funny, like meme or something to put on him like, you make my heart pop or something like that. If you have any good ones, send them my way. But I am also we decorated for Valentine’s Day, which I don’t, I don’t know, it’s not my favorite holiday to decorate. Let’s be honest, I really pretty much decorate for Christmas and Christmas. But I do have some Valentine’s Day decorations. My daughter is still in fourth grade. And she was like please, please, please can we put up those decorations. And so we did. Last night we put up all the pink and red hearts all over the place, and the garlands and all the things so she is over the moon excited. She’s also got a little string of heart lights up in her room. So we’re trying to get in the loving spirit here in the Dildine house. So super fun. And it’s just kind of a fun holiday. The other fun thing about when this podcast airs that I love about this time of year is that

2:55 my daughter’s birthday is February top, she’s going to be 15. And she came home from the hospital on Valentine’s Day. So I love that and we I was just going through some stuff and she had these cute little onesie that had little hearts on it. So she was my Valentine’s baby. So much fun. As I was growing up, my mom actually gave me and my sisters, I have two younger sisters, she would give us a little gift. On Valentine’s Day I used to collect the precious moments statues does anyone of my generation talking about. So for Valentine’s Day, I would get one of those and I’ve got them in a box somewhere. I’ve been working with the organizer each week trying to clean out one of my storage rooms. And I bet that in the next couple of weeks, we’re gonna happen upon that box of statues and then I’ll have to decide what to do with them. But what we tend to do for Valentine’s Day is we tend to do a fondue dinner. So usually homemade, and we just cut up all of the stuff and make the cheese and all of that decorate like crazy. And my kids usually get some kind of a red shirt, a red t shirt or a red dress shirt or a red shirt that they can wear to school. So that’s kind of fun. That’s our tradition. I want to mention one more thing about love. If you want to send me some love. What I would love for you to do is to follow this podcast. It would also be awesome if you wanted to leave a review. Or if you could just share this podcast with one other person. We could also we could just get the word out to more people about the mental and emotional tools that I teach to help missionaries in all stages thrive on the mission. Regardless of what’s going on around them more important than ever mental and emotional tools are paramount.

5:00 to our success on the mission, and that’s what I want to do here is get more tools out to more preparing missionaries. In fact, one fun story I heard this week, my son, my oldest son works at the MTC in Provo. And he said that a girl came up to him a new district came in and a girl came up to him and said, Dildine, looked at his nametag and said, Dildine Hey, I’ve been listening to your mom’s podcast. So that was super fun for me, and shout out to that girl. Thanks for listening, thanks to anybody who’s listening. And I really hope that the content that I put on here provides value and helps all of you. And so send me some love, follow the podcast, review the podcast share the podcast, I would love it so much, I would be so grateful. Okay, remember in elementary school, when you would get past a note, and there’s been some songs written about this to a country song that I can think of in particular, you’d get past a note and there would be two checkboxes on the note and it would say, Do you love me? And then it would have a square? And a yes and a square? And then no. And remember how elated we would feel when that note would come back with a check by the Yes. It was like, Oh, my gosh, someone loves me, or someone likes me. But also remember how devastated we would feel when the note would come back with a check by the No. It’s almost like we had this thought, right? What I teach here is that thoughts create feelings. Well, if they don’t love me, then I must not be lovable.

6:47 And today, we’re gonna talk about the difference between being lovable, and your love ability. So many of us tie our worth, into whether we’re getting asked out on our dates, whether we have friends that texts us whether we have a social life, whether our boss likes what we’re doing, whether our mission president likes what we’re doing, whether the members are inviting us over for dinner, whether our MTC teacher gives us good feedback, whether we have a Valentine, maybe if we’re an adult, whether we get a Valentine from the person we think is our Valentine. And we decide whether we’re lovable based on these outside sources. But I am here to set the record straight, my friends, what I want you to know, is the way that someone behaves towards you. Whether that be giving you a Valentine feedback, they give you like feedback that doesn’t feel very good. Never can tell us about how lovable you are. Even the way someone feels about you can never tell us about how lovable you are either.

8:11 Not ever. So when someone metaphorically checks No, on a piece of paper, and hands it back to us that says I don’t love you.

8:25 That actually doesn’t tell us anything about you. It just tells us about that person, and their ability to love others. It tells us about their love ability, not about their ability to be loved. But about their ability to love others. Being lovable is different than your love ability. And I like to kind of separate those two with a with a dash love, ability. Listen, every single human on this planet is 100% lovable, infinitely lovable. And this includes you. And this is regardless of how you show up. Regardless of how you feel, regardless of what you think you whether you see it or not, or whether you believe it or not, are 100% lovable but every single person has a different level of love, ability, meaning, the capacity they have to feel love. Several years ago in my young adult life, I had this friend and we did a lot of things together. We went on double D eats, we went on girls lunches, we can find it in one another. But what I started to notice is that things started to become a little one sided. Have you ever noticed this? Have you ever noticed that you’re the one that keeps investing, investing, investing, feeling the love and investing, but it starts to feel one sided.

10:24 It seemed like I was always the one texting her. I was always the one inviting her to do things I was bending over backwards to make myself more lovable to her. Which is not a thing. I didn’t realize at the time that I’m 100% lovable, regardless of how she behaves. But what happened is, I soon started to grow weary of the constant effort I was putting into our relationship. And with very little reciprocation, I remember the exact day I was driving around town, and I had this thought come to me, I bet if I never texted this friend again, I would never hear from her again.

11:13 And in my mind, I sort of knew that I would likely never hear from her again. And guess what? I was right. All those years where we were friends, I wondered what was wrong with me? How can I be a better friend? How can I make myself more lovable? But at the time, what I didn’t realize is there’s no such thing as being more lovable. The question was never, whether I could make myself more lovable. It was only what was this friend’s love ability.

11:55 And at that time in her life, she didn’t have the capacity to feel love towards me. And now I understand that it’s totally okay. Because listen, I love me, and I can still choose to love her. Anyway, I am always trying to constantly work on managing my thoughts, to create more love to increase my ability to love others.

12:25 Now, I hope you don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t reach outside of ourselves, or not stretch ourselves to be better people, or to be kind or to text that person that never texts us. Or we should just drop all of our relationships that aren’t reciprocating. But what I am suggesting is that we serve and we stretch, and we do what we do, fueled with the right emotion, which is not obligation, or resentment, or pressure, or guilt. But we do what we do, fueled with love. Do what you do, because you’re working on your capacity to love others because you’re growing your lovability don’t conform, or change yourself because you want to feel more lovable. That’s not even a thing. Remember, your worth doesn’t change. You are always 100% lovable. The day when I decided never to text this friend again. I imagined myself giving her one last chance to tell me she cared by sending her a last ditch metaphorical note like hey, do you love me check yes or no. And her response was a big metaphorical black check on a box labeled? No.

13:55 But I didn’t need her to love me. I loved my self. And I understand now that her lovability has nothing and had nothing to do with me. It only had to do with her capability to love. So what actually is the most fun is not waiting for other people to love us. Or manipulating ourselves to be more lovable, but instead focusing on growing our capacity to love. And there’s a couple of ways that I like to do this. I like to just get really curious about other people. Let’s think about a companion. And a companion maybe behaves in a certain way that we don’t necessarily agree with. And instead of being like, oh my gosh, this is my fault. I shouldn’t have behaved that way. This is all about me. I just like to get curious. I just like to ask myself how I wonder, I wonder what’s going on for my companion, that they’re behaving this way. Now your brain will want to make it about you. But I always redirect. What does their behavior tell me about them. And then the other thing that’s pretty easy for me to do, my mom grew up teaching me just like, give everyone the benefit of the doubt. And the way that I do this is I’m like, Oh, they’re a human, just like me.

15:35 When I really see them, as a human that has a human brain that has thoughts and feelings, and does stuff, has behaviors that sometimes are great and sometimes aren’t so great, then I just love them. I love their effort. I love that they’re showing up and doing the best that they can. And we can do this with our roommates. We can do this with our parents, we can do this with our companions.

16:07 So again, two things, get curious about what’s going on for them, don’t make it about you, and just decide to love their humaneness. It’s sort of also this idea. And I know that this kind of sounds like, like, a quote that you’d see on an Instagram post or something like that. But this thinking of people, as humans, with human brains and human emotions, has allowed me to really think that that, Oh, I see them as God sees them. Now, I’m not perfect at seeing people’s potential, I think only God can really understand that because we have that human brain that’s constantly seeking for negativity, right and searching for all the things that are wrong with us. But I can understand and love and relate to their humaneness as a person who came to this earth and was like, Earth life, let’s go, I’m down. And it can be messy, and it can be hard. And I can love that about a person. Sometimes people’s best, you guys is terrible.

17:14 And I love that too. I just know, they’re doing the best that they can. Here’s the beautiful thing about thinking about it this way is we get to create love inside of ourselves. And then that love will spill out into all of the people in your life. This is what the Savior did, right? He filled himself with compassion and love. And then that love just overflowed. I think sometimes what we do is we get a little bit trying to control how people see us kind of like I was doing with my friend, I was trying to control how lovable I was or how she saw me, we call this people pleasing. And then we run out of love, we’re just giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, because it just feels kind of fake. And it feels like not authentic. And we’re just going through the motions without feeling it. Or maybe we’re feeling all of those actions with an emotion that’s not useful, like guilt, or overwhelm or pressure. And then we run out of gas. But if we fill ourselves up with thoughts that create love first, then that love will spill out to everybody that you come in contact with. And this is what I teach my clients is that chances are if you’re judging other people, you’re judging yourself. Chances are if you have a hard time loving other people, you’re having a hard time loving yourself. So start with you stop judging you stop not loving you fill yourself with that love and it will spill out. The other thing that we need to talk about here is the idea that you can’t make anyone love you. I tried this with my friend and it doesn’t work.

19:14 We can only create the feeling of love in our bodies. And then that love we can can drive our actions but we can’t make someone else love us. Because their love is created by their thinking. I spent years of my marriage. Trying to I remember just having conversations with my husband late at night like I just need to feel love for you. And he would say I’m trying. I’m trying to make you feel the love that I have for you. And so we’d go over and I’m like what if you picked up the kids more? What if you made their lunches in the morning? What if I had an girls night? What if we went through all of these things but what I never realized It wasn’t even possible for him to make me feel love.

20:09 Love is an emotion created with the way I choose to think. So my husband, it’s not his job is to love me so that I can feel loved. My job is to love myself show up as a whole person, full of love for him. And maybe he does the same. But my job is to love him. It’s kind of like a mind blowing concept to think of it first. But I want to talk about my daughter, Lydia, and our duck. Lydia loves our dog, she has so many thoughts about how he’s cute. And she’ll even say you’re my best friend and all this stuff. And our dog Graham doesn’t reciprocate. He doesn’t need to buy her flowers, he doesn’t need to give her a girls night, he doesn’t need to take out the trash. He doesn’t need to compliment her. That dog is just here for Lydia to love on.

21:15 It’s so much fun to love people and choose thoughts that create love in our bodies, and then that will spill out to our husbands. It’ll spill out to our companions, it’ll spill out to our dog. And it’s just so awesome. People don’t have the ability to make you feel loved. But you have the ability to love as deeply as you want to. Even people who aren’t super nice to you, you can choose to love them with the thoughts that you choose to think. And I will say our marriage now is amazing. Because I don’t rely on him to feel good about me or my husband doesn’t rely on me to feel good about himself. We both just shop full of love hanging out. And it’s so much fun.

22:09 You can totally quit worrying about whether people love you. Your brain wants to fixate on it. It doesn’t matter. You can drop the part where you need to convince people and people please that you are lovable, who just are a lot with my clients, I teach the difference between facts and thoughts. And one of the things I really like doing is knowing that my worth, and my being lovable is a fact. Even if I have a different thought about it, even if I think I’m not lovable, it still doesn’t change the fact that I am you just are. So start by growing your love ability for yourself. And just accepting that fact that you are lovable, then move on to how you want to grow your love ability for others, by getting curious about what’s going on for them, and seeing them as a human. And always choosing those thoughts that create love. In your body. Even if someone doesn’t feel the same towards you. You get to feel the love that emotion in your body and it feels so good. Generating love, from knowing that you are 100% lovable is actually the best feeling in the world. I highly recommend it. So everyone practice that work on your love ability. It’s something that you can grow your ability to love others with the way that you choose to think and then just know you are 100% lovable, everyone have the most amazing week. Happy Valentine’s Day. Take care.

24:03 Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. Listen, if you are learning a lot from this podcast and you like what you’re hearing, you will absolutely love hopping on a free strategy call with me. That’s where you and I meet up one on one and talk specifically about what is going on for you. I love teaching young adults the mental and emotional tools that they need to overcome worry and anxiety serve the successful missions they’ve always dreamed of and navigate their post mission experience with confidence. So go to Jennie dildine.com and click on the work with me link. I would love to meet you. And I would love to get you some helpful tools and strategies to help you fully embrace whatever is next for you. 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