45. You Can’t Change Your Worth

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 45. You can’t change your worth. 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. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the podcast. I’m so excited that you’re joining me here today. How’s life for you? I know many of you are just wrapping up semesters. I just talked to a bunch of my return missionary clients who said they were wrapping up on finals. One of them is graduating with a physics degrees. So that’s super exciting. I hope that finals are treating you well. I hope that if you’re on the mission, and the mission is treating you well. And you know what, sometimes the mission is not going to treat you so well. That’s okay, too. I hope that you are always no matter what showing yourself love and compassion. I was actually also just messaging with a missionary who told me that they’re going to be coming home soon, he told me that he’s starting to feel a little bit of dread that he’s coming home this summer, which is something I see quite regularly with returned missionaries. It’s sort of like we take our new selves that’s had a lot of new thoughts and a lot of new feelings and a lot of new experiences. We try to plop ourselves back into our old lives. So there’s a lot that kind of comes with that territory. It’s why I created this free resource for return missionaries. If you or someone you love is coming home from the mission, I want to highly encourage you to go grab that free video course at Jennie dildine.com. It’s also Jennie dildine.com, forward slash three tools for our EMS opt in. I know that’s a lot to remember. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to link it in the show notes that you have easily available. If you have not gotten this video series, what are you waiting for? It’s a game changer. So go grab that today. I am really excited to talk to you guys today about worth. And I think that this is something that as a church that we understand on some level. It’s why we grew up singing like I am a child of God. And all of those kinds of things. And why the young women’s theme, at least when I was growing up? Is individual worth was part of that theme. I don’t really I haven’t worked in young women’s for a while I’m not really sure what the theme is. Now, do you guys talk about individual worth? I should totally look that up. But I think this is something that we understand intellectually. But we’re not really sure how to apply it to ourselves. We also I’ve seen a lot understand that other people have worth but we oftentimes have a hard time seeing that worth in ourselves. One of the things I want to talk about today is the self coaching model, which is the model I use for all of my clients to help them see what they are creating in their lives. And I teach it very in depth in my Podcast, episode number seven, how to overcome any challenge. So I’m just gonna go over it briefly here. If you want more of an in depth coverage of what the model looks like, you can go back to episode number seven. But just for now know that every experience that we have, we can categorize in to five different categories, the different aspects of that experience, we can categorize into five different things. So the first one is a circumstance and the way I describe a circumstance is just the things that happen outside of you. It’s the facts. It’s the stuff that’s happened in the past. Basically, it’s a stuff that we could change if we want to but we most of the time can’t change. The second thing that we can categorize part of our experience in is a thought and the way that I describe the word thought. The definition I have for you is just a sentence in your mind.

4:57 We can also categorize an experience into what I would call a feeling. And the definition I have for feeling is just a vibration in your body. So we have a thought, that creates a feeling. And that feeling creates some kind of vibration or sensation that cycles through our body. We can also categorize an experience into also an action that we take. So the action is anything that we do anything that we don’t do. Also the stuff that goes on in our mind, like spinning thoughts or judgment, we can also categorize and experience into this category called a result. So the result is basically the accumulation of all of the things that are happening in our lives. So we have a circumstance, just the stuff that happens outside of us, then we have a thought about that circumstance. And that thought, like I’ve talked many times here on the podcast creates a feeling, that feeling then drives a set of actions like gas in a car, and then that action and the accumulation of all of them gives us the result, or our result that we see in our lives. So again, this is the self coaching model that I use with all of my clients, we don’t use it to judge ourselves or think that we should do it differently, or, like hate on ourselves or anything like that. Ideally, we just use the model to see what we are creating, with our thoughts, feelings, actions, what result do we get in our lives? So the question I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is where does worth go in this model? If we were to categorize it into one of these categories, circumstance, thought, feeling, action, or result? Where does it go? Well, I’ll tell you what I’ve heard from a few of my clients, and one of them will say, I really think that worth is a thought. So we can think of it like I have worth, or I have individual worth, or I am a child of God. So we can have that thought, which I think we could argue is true that worth could just be a thought. We can also maybe argue and I’ve heard clients say I actually feel like worse is a feeling is something that I feel about myself that I’m worthy or that I have worth. What I see most often is people think worth is tied up in our action, that somehow based on what we do. And what we don’t do in our action line creates our worth. Now think about this, how well we manage our time, how much we serve, how much we sacrifice, we sort of pay attention to ourselves, and the way that we’re behaving in our actions and decide if we have worth, I see this a ton on the mission. If we’re getting baptisms, if we’re teaching, if we are feeling motivated, we have worth and we’re like Heavenly Father’s pleased with us. And if not, then we don’t have as much worth even as a missionary, maybe even we start to believe that maybe we’re a bad missionary. And by the way, this is one of the reasons that I see returned, missionaries start to struggle a lot is because on the mission, we start to tie our worth to things outside of us. And then when we get home, and we don’t have those same things, to tie our worth to our worth. And the way we see ourselves starts to kind of plummet a little bit. So we’ve talked about a few options, like maybe worth is a thought, something we think about ourselves, maybe it’s a feeling, it’s a vibration in our body, maybe it’s an action maybe worth is created by what we do and don’t do. But what I want to offer you today is that worth is none of these things, thought feeling or action. Whereas you guys is a circumstance. The idea is, is if it’s a circumstance, it is just a fact.

9:37 We can’t change it, no matter how much we try. Now when I teach this model, I draw kind of a squiggly line below the circumstance and then I stuck them thought feeling action result, but there’s a squiggly line under the circumstance and what I was showing my clients and what I want to show you today is everything above this squiggly line. You You don’t have power over. Sometimes we do. But most of the time, not. Everything below this line is where our agency lies our thought, feeling and action. So what I’m saying to you is that your worth, your value is a circumstance, it is a fact it’s above the squiggly line. And what this means is, if you even have the thought, I don’t have any worth today, or I don’t like myself today, or I’m not doing a good job today, even if we have that thought, that worth is still a fact. Even if we can’t see it, our worth does not change. Let’s say we have a day where we’re feeling something we’re feeling a lot of self doubt, maybe we’re feeling some self loathing, maybe we’re feeling some insecurity. Maybe we’re feeling some annoyance or frustration or disappointment in ourselves. Even on those days, my friends, your worth does not change. It is a fact. What I’m also saying is that if you have a day where you get nothing done on your to do list, if you have a day where you don’t make any street contacts on the mission, if you have a day where you forget to read your scriptures, or you don’t get out of bed on time. Or you have a day where all you could do was just like get up, brush your teeth, get back in bed and watch Netflix. If the day just felt like too much. Again, your worth is above the squiggly line, it’s a circumstance, it’s a fact. Listen, there is nothing you can do to change your worth. Like we can’t make it go up. And we can’t make it go down. It just is. You are as valuable and worthy. And whole as the day you were born. And there’s nothing you can do or not do about it. Just like every other human on this planet. So when you go around on the mission, telling everyone that they have worth that applies to you, too. It’s a circumstance, it’s a fact you cannot change it. We’ve been studying the last couple of weeks and come follow me about Moses. And I’ve been watching the 10 commandments. I think I mentioned this on the podcast already. Since I was a young girl, I love the 10 commandments. And I was watching it recently when I was in Utah with my parents because my dad has an amazing like theater room down in the basement. So it was fun to watch it on that. But here’s something that has really stuck out to me the last little bit is Moses is up there and he gets all the commandments and whatnot. And I won’t remember the order of all of it exactly. But basically, the Lord is like, go back down and tell the children of Israel, what just happened? And Moses is like, okay, yeah, I’m down to do that. But what should I tell him? That your name is? And what’s super interesting is, the Lord says, I am. Like, that’s what he says is his name. Just I am He says I Am that I Am. Now notice how he didn’t he doesn’t say like, I My thoughts are i My feelings are I’m the actions that I take. And sometimes we we really like to hyper focus on this. That we want to emulate Christ because of the way he thought or the way that he felt or the way that he behaved. And all of that is good and amazing. But when he described to Moses, who he was, he didn’t say any of those things. He said, I am just a fat just a circumstance.

14:31 He also in different parts of the Scriptures says I’m the beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega, meaning I don’t change, I’m a fact. And what I want to offer to you is that that is true of you, too. You are not your thoughts. I mean you have thoughts your brain offers you thoughts, but your worth isn’t tied up in what you think If your worth is not what you feel you’re worth isn’t tied up in what you do, you just are, by virtue of the fact that you are a living, breathing human on this planet. Kind of good news, right? You get to just be. And just because you are just because I am, I have worth, I have value. And I’m as whole as the day I was born. This is true whether you baptize nations, or whether you don’t teach it all on the mission. This is true whether you get married, or whether you stay single the rest of your life, my friends, you can’t change, you’re worth it, study it. It’s a fact. It’s unchangeable. I have loved thinking about it this way. I hope it helps you to think about it this way. I hope it takes off some of the pressure that you feel, to think a certain way to feel a certain way and to behave a certain way. You just are my friend. And that’s all you need to be. Everyone have the most amazing week, thinking about you every single day. 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 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 Jenny the LDS mission coach is thinking about you every single day