38. Are You Prepared?

0:00 Hey, what’s up everyone? It’s Jenny, the LDS mission coach and you are listening to the LDS mission Podcast, episode number 38. Are you prepared? I’m Jenny, 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, everyone, and welcome to the podcast, I’m so excited to be hanging out with you today. I just love being able to get on here and talk about some of the things that are on my heart. And talk about some of the things that are on my mind. And being able to share with you lots of tools and strategies for how you can show up more powerfully in your life. Maybe you’re preparing to serve a mission, or maybe you’re on the mission right now and listening through Facebook, maybe you are a returned missionary, and you just can’t figure out which way is up. I’m just now that I’m here for you. And I really do. If you watch any of my Friday stories for missionaries, I do a Friday story on Facebook and Instagram every single week. So if you have if you’re a mom, even listening to this, you can go to friend me on Facebook or follow me on Instagram. And I do kind of some tips every single Friday. And at the end of my Friday story. I always say sending love to the missionaries all over the world, I think about you every single day. And I think I do on the outro of this podcast. And I want you to know that that’s true. I actually do think about like the missionaries and the mission experience every single day and ways that we can improve our mental and emotional well being on the mission, ways that we can make the transition home from the mission more smooth ways that we can come home from the mission and not question like our purpose and not question who we are and not question if we can feel the spirit. None of that is necessary. And so I hope between you and I on this podcast and getting more tools out to more people that we really can spread the word like it doesn’t, you don’t have to suffer on the mission. In fact, you can be completely empowered on the mission preparing for your mission and when you come home. And that’s what this podcast is all about. So thank you so much for being here. If you like this podcast, and if you like what you’re hearing, I would sure appreciate it if you would just share it even if you just shared it with one person. And that’s one more person that maybe can get some mental and emotional tools. When I talk to moms on strategy calls, and sometimes if their son or daughter is on a mission, but they will say to me is I just can’t believe that this is my son is struggling in this way. I never would have expected this I could not see it coming. And so one thing I want to offer to you today before we hop into Are you prepared is whatever emotions you experience before the mission, those emotions are going to be magnified, we can take any, like emotion that we feel whether it’s a little bit of anxiety, whether it’s a little bit of sadness, whether it’s a little bit of stress, the mission and the pressures of the mission, amplify those feelings so it’s just a unique time in LDS you know young adults life where these emotions become even more pronounced you’re our brains are even still kind of developing. And so I just felt really strongly that we can help more missionaries so if you could share even just like take a screenshot and you know tag me, Jenny dot the LDS mission coach, so that I can thank you for sharing. I would love it if you could just share the podcast.

4:52 In other news of the family, we were supposed to have like a band concert tomorrow night. For my son who’s a junior he plays The clarinet and he also plays the alto sax, I’m pretty sure it’s the alto sax in jazz band, but in the Symphonic Band, he plays the clarinet. Anyway, we’re supposed to have a concert tomorrow night, but then the band teachers mom died passed away. So that was super sad. They ended up canceling the concert. Anyway, so that’s one thing going on, just you know, lots of dance classes, lots of piano lessons, lots of choir, we sing in the millennial choirs and orchestra. I don’t know if any of you have heard of that. But it’s a super cool thing. Anyway, so just always fun things happening around the design house. And I’m glad that I get to share a little part of it with you. I hope everything is going well in your world to just say that we don’t have bad days, we definitely have bad days, all of us. All right. Well, I want to hop right into now the topic of this podcast, which is are you prepared? And this is a question that I get quite regularly when I hop on a strategy call with a preparing missionary, or with the mom of a preparing missionary. They tell me like I just don’t know if I’m prepared. And this even though this is a question that I get for preparing missionaries, I want you to be able to think about this a little bit in lots of aspects of your life. So we could think about, are we ready for our next semester? And I’m going to use the word ready and prepared pretty interchangeably here. So both kind of mean the same thing? Are you ready? Are you prepared? So are you ready for the next semester? Are you ready to get engaged? Are you ready to serve a mission? Are you ready to come home from your mission?

7:05 Are you ready to graduate and go live on your own and go to college or work a full time job or whatever it is. So this idea is something that we can apply to many areas of our lives, not just preparing for a mission. So I want you to sort of think about it that way, some of these concepts. We have this scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants that we talk about a lot. And that we like to quote a lot. And it’s in Doctrine and Covenants section 38, where we talk about if you are prepared III shall not fear. We love quoting this Scripture so much, especially when things are a little bit tumultuous, like in the world, like they are right now with the stuff going on in Ukraine. And with you know, the COVID that we’ve dealt with, over the last couple of years. And it’s fascinating because I looked it up and it occurs one time in the scriptures. But the way that we talked about it, you’d think that it was like on every page of scriptures. If you are prepared, you shall not fear. And I did a whole podcast episode about this, like why your fear is totally fine. It’s episode 20. So if you want to go back and check that out, I would highly recommend that. But what happens is, our brains, our lower brains love to ask us tons of questions to keep us stuck and confused. So this question, am I prepared? Is a question our brain likes to ask, which there’s no real way to know the answer to. So it’s not like we could take a blood test to figure out if you’re prepared to get engaged to your boyfriend or girlfriend. Or it’s not like we could take a blood test to know mathematically and scientifically, if you are prepared to go to college, many of us have a list of things that we want to do before we get married, or before we serve a mission or come home from the mission or before we go to college or even if we’re just starting a new job, or starting a master’s program or something like that. And we can make like a mental list of those things or even write them down. But just doing those things in and of themselves may or may not make us feel prepared. So just be on to your brain when it likes to ask you questions. What’s actually true is inherent in the question. Am I prepared or am I ready? He is a thought, that sounds like this, I might not be prepared, or I might not be ready. When we think this thought and you know that I teach on here that our thoughts create our feelings when we think this thought I might not be prepared, how do we feel, we feel this fear that we’re talking about. We feel insecure, we feel nervous, we might feel anxious, we might feel overwhelmed. And none of those emotions are going to help us get more prepared. That’s what’s so fascinating.

10:43 The emotion of fear usually keeps us stuck usually keeps us from moving forward. I’ll never forget one client that I worked with before her mission, and she just couldn’t even make herself go to the mission portal. She couldn’t make herself buy clothes for the mission. She couldn’t make herself do any of those things. Because she just had this question over and over, like, I might not be prepared, I might not be prepared on time, I don’t have enough time to get prepared. And ironically, that thought, was creating the overwhelm that led her to not get prepared. Do you hear me? Does that make sense? So fascinating. I want to go back to this Scripture. And then I definitely want to share with you what I think is the most beneficial way to be prepared, I’m going to definitely share that with you kind of like a hands on tool for that. But I want to go back to this scripture, I actually want to go back to verse 29, the verse before where it talks about this, and it says you hear of wars and far countries. And then you say that there will soon be great wars in our countries, but you know, not the hearts of men in your own land. And I just thought that was super interesting to read this, especially with what’s going on right now. And then in verse 30, it says, I tell you these things because of your prayers. And then it says, treasure up wisdom in your bosoms. Because and I’m kind of paraphrasing, but the wickedness of men, they’re going to speak in a manner in your ears with a voice louder than that will shake the whole earth. And then it says, but if you’re prepared, you shall not fear. How do we prepare ourselves for our missions for engagement for marriage for mission coming home? For college? How do we get so prepared that this loud thunder, of wars and wars in our countries and wicked men and wickedness that we are so prepared that it doesn’t faze us that we are so powerful within ourselves, that we’re not even going to pay attention to this wickedness? Or this voice that is shaking the whole earth? And how do we prepare ourselves to handle a difficult companion, or even be married and be on our own and provide for ourselves financially? How do we prepare ourselves to drop perfectionism and anxiety and not be shaken by the voice that’s so loud at shaking the earth. And to me, the secret is where it says, treasure up wisdom in your bosoms. I think that the most important and powerful tool to keep yourself centered is learning the difference between emotional childhood and emotional adulthood. So I want to be able to explain this to you today. And it’s hopefully something that you can share with someone who’s getting ready to do something or prepared to do something. Or hopefully, it’s a tool that you can start to use in yourself. I think of emotional childhood as sort of like a toddler. A toddler sort of believes that if a friend takes the toy away, that that friend made them sad. But the problem with thinking about it this way is if that’s true, that a friend or a companion or a fiance can make us sad. We’re all doomed. We’re all at the mercy of our lives. And maybe it’s not even like a person. It feels really overwhelming to think that we would be at the mercy of what is going on around us. That when things are going well for us, our emotions will be good and when things are going poorly whereas our emotions will be bad. Instead, what I like to teach is emotional adulthood.

15:09 And this is where we understand that we are always the creator of our emotions with how we choose to think. No nothing against toddlers, right? Because their brains are not developed enough to really understand what’s going on. But the difference would be is like if the toddler could have the toy taken away, and then tell themselves Listen, I know I’m not sad because of this toy. I know, I’m sad because of what I’m thinking, which is, this is not fair. And then that makes them sad. Or what’s actually true for toddlers, most of the time with their brain development, is they actually think like, I might never get that toy back, then they feel sad. Okay, so they can’t differentiate between the toy being taken away made me sad, or my thought about the toy made me feel sad. This is emotional childhood, and emotional adulthood. I want to share with you a couple examples so that you can see how this works. So for a while, I had some kids at the middle school, which is not very far from my house. And every day, I would pick them up from school, and I would drive home from the school and they would argue, they would fight with each other. And that’s okay, lots of stuff going on, when you’re in school, lots of high emotions and all of that. But at the time, I would get so frustrated. So in this circumstance, emotional childhood sounds like this. My kids are frustrating me they’re fighting is frustrating me. That is emotional childhood. But emotional adulthood sounds like this. I know, my kids have no power to frustrate me. I frustrate myself with the way I’m choosing to think about this. And you know, what the thought was, is my kids shouldn’t fight. And so when they did, I was frustrated. And then at some point, I just decided, you know, what probably middle schoolers should do is they should probably fight sometimes. And then I didn’t have to feel frustrated anymore. Now not to say that I didn’t like, try to teach them with love. But I can’t do that. When I’m in a place of frustration. I can only make positive change, when it’s coming from love, compassion and acceptance. And as soon as I accepted, like, sometimes kids are gonna fight. And then I felt a different emotion, I was able to show up the way I wanted to. But the point I’m trying to teach you here is that emotional childhood sounds like my kids make me frustrated. Emotional adulthood. Sounds like I know, I frustrate myself with my thoughts. Another example I have for you is I was coaching a young adult girl who was dating returned missionary, and she had kind of some frustrations about his behavior, that sometimes he would fall asleep. And she would come to our session, like they’d be together and all of a sudden, she’d notice like, he’s not interested in me. He’s falling asleep. Emotional childhood sounds like this, like I’m so frustrated that it keeps falling asleep. But emotional adulthood sounds like, I know, he can’t make me frustrated just because he’s sleeping. I feel frustrated because of my thought. And what the thought was, is, maybe he doesn’t care as much about me. See how that thought would probably make you frustrated or fearful or sad. But it’s not the sleeping that makes us feel anything ever. So, this tool of emotional childhood and emotional adulthood has the ability to really prepare you for whatever is coming next in your life. Because you’ll be able to look at experiences and the things happening outside of you, and know that they don’t create your emotions, that you create your emotions you create your experience with your heart and with your mind. Now, when I talk about emotional childhood and emotional adulthood, a lot of people think that it’s something like you grow into and like you never go back. So I blame other people for the way I feel and then at some point in the future if I work really hard And then I’ll never blame other people for the way that I feel. It doesn’t really work that way. Because we have remember a higher brain and a lower brain. So we’re gonna go in and out of it

20:08 all the time. Sometimes I’m gonna think my kids are making me crazy. And then I’m like, Oh, wait, no, remember, I made myself crazy with the way I’m thinking about this. And sometimes you’re gonna have a companion that’s, you’re like, my companion is making me so frustrated. And then you’re gonna be like, Oh, wait, no, I frustrate myself with my thoughts. Oh, yeah. And sometimes we’re gonna think I didn’t get invited to that thing. And so I feel so lonely. No, oh, wait, I’m actually lonely because of what I’m thinking. It’s the best news you guys, because then we become empowered to create the experience of our lives and of our missions, and of our marriages and of our college experience that we want. And not to say that sometimes we’re going to be an emotional childhood. And we might even want to, and blame other people for the way that we feel it’s fine, like nothing wrong with that, that’s just your lower brain. But when you’re ready, you can step into this emotional adulthood, which is like, I’m always 100%, in charge of my experience, and the way that I want to feel. So going back to the scripture, and Doctrine and Covenants, I love this little line where it says treasure up wisdom in your bosoms. That’s kind of the recipe at saying, for being prepared and not fearing treasure up wisdom, which I think of is your mind, in your bosoms, which I think of as your heart. So you get to be in charge of your brain, and your heart. And if you know that you are in charge of your brain and your thoughts, and your heart and your feelings. Guess what? You’re prepared for anything. Really, like Isn’t that so cool, because we take the power off from everything else going on outside of us. And we just take it back to our selves. The other last thing that I want to mention here, which is just a little side, tangent, is also preparedness is a thought. Like I mentioned before, we can’t take a blood tests for preparedness. So preparedness is not an observation. It’s not something that is just true. It’s a way that we choose to see ourselves. There’s absolutely nothing outside of us that can tell us that we are ready for our next step. Sometimes I’ll ask a client, when they come on, they’ll be like, I don’t know if I’m ready for that. And I asked them, how would we know if you’re ready? And they’re like, I don’t know, well, if I got this thing checked off, and I got this thing checked off, and I got this thing done, or if I read my scriptures more, or whatever it is. And I say none of that will tell us if you’re ready. Because readiness has to do with the way you think about yourself with your wisdom with your thoughts. So you have the ability to just decide, right now that you’re prepared. I love this thought that heavenly father gave you every single thing that you need to serve a mission to come home from a mission. And it’s not stuff outside of you. It’s your mind and your heart. I love this scripture too. Like if you have desires to serve, you’re called to the work desire I like to think of as a feeling something that happens in your bosom. But if it happens in your heart, and if it’s a feeling it’s also created by a thought. Desire is an emotion created by thoughts like this is what I want. I’m willing to move forward with this.

24:29 This is the next right step for me. I’m ready to become a new version of me. I can handle whatever comes those thoughts my friends create desire. This thought I am prepared creates confidence, nothing outside of you. One of the things that always comes to my mind when I talk about preparedness with on strategy calls and with my clients is the children’s songbook. Song. My Heavenly Father loves me. And the line that always sticks out to me is he gave me my life. My mind, my heart. I think him reverently. Seriously, you guys. That is all you need. Isn’t it incredible to think that heavenly father sent you down here to this earth with everything you need to be prepared to be ready and to be successful. And it’s all right here in your mind and in your heart. He gave you your life, your mind and your heart. Isn’t that incredible? Listen, you’re totally ready. Whatever it is you’re doing next. You’re ready. You’re totally prepared. Let’s just decide that right now. Okay. All right, you guys. It was so fun to be hanging out with you. I hope you have the most amazing week and we will catch up with you again next time. Take care. 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 orient 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 Jenny, the LDS mission coach is thinking about you every single day.