7. How to Overcome Any Challenge

0:00 Hey, what’s up everybody? It’s Jennie the LDS mission coach and you are listening to the LDS mission Podcast, episode number seven, how to overcome any challenge. I’m Jennie, the LDS mission coach and whether you are preparing to serve a mission, currently serving a return 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 than 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’s up, everybody is so excited to be with you today. Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. I love hanging out with you guys every week. And I love helping out the people who are involved in the LDS mission experience. So thanks for being here. Super fun. My July has been crazy, so crazy, packed with lots of adventures like fun summertime adventures. My husband and I went to San Diego last minute for our anniversary. Super fun. 24 years. Happy anniversary to us. Also last week, my family went to Bear Lake for sort of like a reunion situation with my sisters and their kids. My mom and dad, it was a lot of fun. But I do have a side note for you. If you ever rented Airbnb, which I use them quite regularly when we travel. But please, when you go, make sure you check the fine print and find out if there was if there’s air conditioning, okay, we went to Bear Lake in 98 degree. And apparently when we arrived at the Airbnb, there was no air conditioning I kind of like renting Airbnb is sort of like Christmas morning, you think you’ve got it all figured out online. And you’ve looked at the pictures and you’ve looked at the reviews. And apparently there weren’t a ton of reviews because no one said anything about the air conditioning while we kind of cooked. We cooked a lot. We baked inside that house during the day. But lucky for us we went to Bear Lake and had the raspberry shakes. And it all worked out great. But just make sure you find out from now on in the summer. If there’s central air conditioning, and little sidenote at the beginning of this week, my kids went to camp, my older kids two girls camp into high adventure. And I’ll be in Salt Lake here at the end of the month. And this weekend. We’re going to Seaside Oregon. So we’ll go from 100 degree weather which is pretty uncharacteristic for us actually here, we’ll go from 100 degree weather to I think the high end seaside Oregon is 64. So it’s gonna be pretty nice. I’m probably going to be cold. I prefer to be hot rather than cold, but it’ll be a nice break from the heat. And then I’ll be in Salt Lake for a fun, live coaching event with one of my mentors, Jody Moore who I happen to also work in her program now Herpe BOLD Program. So I’m a big fan of Jodi Moore, going to an event there in Salt Lake with her. It’s so fun that we’re doing live events again, or am I right? So fun. Okay, so today, I want to teach you guys how to overcome any challenge. This is one of the things that I pride myself most on in working with my clients, that by the time they are done working with me, they know how to handle literally anything that comes their way. Now, I’m talking about anything that comes their way on the mission, anything that comes their way, after the mission. Once you know these tools, you are set up for life. They’ve been life changing for me. And you can listen to some of my earlier podcast to hear about coaching and these tools and how I first found them and how they’ve changed my life. But they totally have the ability to change your life as well. So the tool

4:48 I use to overcome any challenge is the tool that I use with all of my clients when I coach them. It’s the tool that many of my coaches have used when they can Watch me. And it’s the tool that I teach my clients so that they can coach themselves for the rest of their lives. And this is the tool I use is called the model. It was created by Brooke Castillo, who owns and runs the Life Coach School, which is where I was certified as a life coach. And it’s a powerful tool. What it is, is it’s a tool of awareness, so that we can see what’s going on in our lives, where these challenges are coming from. And then if we want to, we have the ability to overcome those challenges, to solve those problems, and to change the outcomes in our lives. So there’s five components to the model for Castillo’s model. And I’m going to kind of give you a quick overview. And then we’re going to kind of dig into each part of the model each of the five parts, I’ll give you some definitions. And then at the end, I’m going to give you some examples of how this model might apply in your life, so that you can maybe start using it to, to make change, and to get more awareness for why you’re experiencing the challenges that you’re experiencing. Okay, there are five parts of this model. First, we have our circumstances. Now as I go through this model, I want you to picture it’s almost like a list, we’re going to have at the top of the list a letter C with the word circumstance. Underneath that on the list is the letter T. and T stands for thought. And underneath that, we have an F, an F stands for feeling. Underneath that we have an A, it stands for action. And underneath that we have an R with the word result next to it. Now let’s go back one by one and talk about what all of these things are. And what they mean. A circumstance in your life is the facts of your story. It’s all of the things outside of you. They could be proven in a court of law, everybody would agree, there would be no bias in it or opinion in it at all. So I was coaching one client, a preparing missionary, actually. And he told me, one of my best friends live really far away. Now to him, he sort of thought that that was a circumstance that it was a fact. But that can’t be a fact because it has opinion in it. Like how would we know it was the best friend far away is kind of up for debate as well. So in order for it to be a circumstance, I asked him, How many miles away does your friend live. And that is not up for debate. He I don’t remember what he said, we decided it was like 320 miles away, or he eight hours driving away is where his friend lived. That is a circumstance. Another word I have for circumstance is the math of the story. It’s kind of the boring parts. Okay? If we were to write a novel with just only facts or circumstances, it would be very boring. The next part is the T, which stands for thoughts. The way I describe this is thoughts are basically sentences in our mind. Did you know that because we have a higher brain and a lower brain, we can actually observe our thinking. We’re the only species on the planet that can do this. It’s pretty amazing. You can actually notice what you’re thinking about something. Our thoughts are the meaning that we give to our circumstances. So I think of the thought like the juicy stuff, that’s where the good parts of the movie are. That’s where the good parts of our novel are, is all of the meaning. We can also call it drama that we give to the boring circumstances or facts of the story. Moving down in our list, next we have our F which is our feeling. And the way I describe our feeling is simply a vibration in our body.

9:43 So we have a thought, and then that thought triggers a reaction, a chemical, a vibration, a hormone to cycle through our bodies. And I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this because I cover it very in depth in In episode three, which is all the fields, so if you want more information about why I just call it a vibration and what actually happens in your body go listen to that episode. But for now suffice it to say that our feelings are just vibrations in our bodies. Next in line, the fourth component to overcoming any challenge is our actions. Now, our actions are the things that we do or don’t do, it’s when we study for our test is when we don’t study for our test is when we ask that girl out on a date, it’s when we study our scriptures, it’s when we go on the run, sometimes also in our action line, it can be what is going on in our head, like a lot of spinning thoughts, or going to the past or thinking a lot about the future. That is also interaction line. And then the fifth component, the last line of this list is our result. And our result is basically accumulation of all of the things in our list sort of added up, if you thought of it, like a math formula added up, they give us a result in our lives. Some of those results, we’re gonna really like. And some of those results, we’re not gonna like so much, they’re gonna be challenging, and maybe we’re gonna want to change them, or overcome them. So now that I’ve kind of talked you through these, I want to tell you how each of these relate to one another, each of these five components. And then I’m going to give you some examples. So you can see how this works. Our circumstances just happen in the world. They just are happening around us, they’re the facts, like I said, and then we have a thought about those facts. And then that thought creates a vibration in our body. And then that vibration in our body I think of as the fuel that drives our action. So whatever fuel whatever feeling we have, if it’s fear, it’s going to drive one kind of action. If it’s stress, it’s going to drive another kind of action. If it’s overwhelmed, it’s going to drive another kind of action. And then the C plus the T plus the f plus the action that’s being driven, gives us our results in the end the result that we have in our life. So let’s use an example that I hear quite often from preparing missionaries. So if we have a circumstance that a missionary is leaving on September 11, I’ll just pick that day, because that’s when my son left almost two years ago, before COVID. So let’s say we have a date of leaving on September 11. And that is just a fact. It’s what when you’ve been assigned to report to the MTC or to the home MTC, which is just kind of boring information really, until we have a thought about it. And many missionaries, preparing missionaries that I work with have a thought that’s I have so much to do, there’s so much to get done. Now, when they think this thought again, going down this list and your mind when they think this thought then they feel overwhelmed. And then when they feel overwhelmed, if that’s the fuel driving their action, they feel overwhelmed, and then they get stuck. They’re avoiding buying their mission clothes, they’re hiding from the missionary portal, like the videos and stuff, you’re supposed to watch the safety videos, they’re procrastinating. And then the result is we don’t get anything done. Now the crazy thing that I didn’t point out earlier is that our result has always ties back way up to the top of the list, not to the circumstance. But to your original thought this is a physiological phenomenon that happens in our brain is whatever we believe our brain will keep trying to find evidence that it’s true. So our results that we’re getting in our lives, the challenge that we’re facing the challenge we want to overcome, always ties back up to your thought. So in this model, where we have so much to do as our thought the result is we don’t get anything done.

14:41 Alright, let’s take another example. Let’s use one from the mission. Cuz I hear this one a lot too. So our circumstance, the thing outside of us that we can’t control let’s say an investigator that you are teaching tells you he just doesn’t want to hear Any more lessons. In fact, please don’t ever text him again. That is just the thing that happened in the world, it’s outside of us. Which is funny, but it really can’t affect us until we have a thought about it. The investigators text to you or phone call to you is just the math, the boring math of the story. But when we give some meaning to it with the way that we think that’s what makes it a little more interesting, the thought that you might be having is, we must be doing something wrong. It must be my companion and I, we must have gone wrong, some how might be your thought. Now remember, when we have a thought, that creates our feeling? How do you feel when you think I must be doing something wrong for me. And for the missionaries I work with, they feel discouraged, and they feel down. Now, if discouraged and down is the fuel or the feeling driving our action. We don’t try. We worry about ourselves, we start to get unmotivated. We wonder if we’re bad missionaries, and we start judging ourselves. And when we think we must be doing something wrong, we feel discouraged. And then these are the actions we take the result in our lives is we don’t end up doing anything at all. We’re unmotivated. We’re wondering if we’re a bad missionary, we’re judging ourselves. And so we maybe probably tend to stay in the apartment more and just don’t try. So notice that ties back up to our thought, again, if we have the thought we must be doing something wrong. Our result is we don’t do anything at all. Crazy, right? Okay, let’s take an example of maybe a return missionary. So let’s say you have a test a final or a midterm on a certain day. Maybe the semester, this upcoming semester is going to end. We think in December sometime what if you have a test on December 14, let’s say that, that is the fact that could be proven in a court of law, it is just what’s happening outside of you. It’s what your teacher set up for you. Now, the exam itself on December 14, can’t make you feel any certain way. It just is an exam until you have, again, the next component down, which is a thought about it. You might have the thought this test is going to be really hard. Then when you think that that it’s going to generate or create a feeling. How do you feel when you think this is going to be so hard? Probably stressed, right? And then when you feel stressed, that fuel of stress probably dries of set of actions, where you’re steady, but it’s very frantic, you might avoid studying altogether, you’re procrastinating, you’re looking for other things to do, like oh, it might be really good to deep clean the apartment today, instead of studying, right? Or you’re not focused, I had one girl that I was coaching was like, and then I cry because I’m so stressed. But the result of all of these things, with this thought that creates the feeling which drives the action. The result is I make it really hard on myself. So notice how that does. It ties back to our original thought, which is this is going to be really hard. And when we think that our brains make it true. And our result is I make it really hard on myself. Because I’m frantic and avoiding studying and procrastinating and looking for other things to do and I’m not focused. The model is a tool that we can use to gain awareness of what’s going on in our lives and how we end up creating our own challenges. But here’s the magic. If we want a different result, or a different outcome, or if we want our challenges to change. Most of the world just thinks we change what we’re doing. For the pre missionary we’d probably tell them if we were giving them advice like just go buy the clothes, what are you waiting for? Hop on the portal or for the missionary on the mission

19:41 we would just be like quit worrying about yourself go out and work harder. Or further return missionary would be like would you just buckle down and study already? Most of the world things to get what we want and to overcome challenges we just do more stuff That’s not how it works. We can do more stuff for a while, but it only gets us so far. Until we start at the top of our model until we start with our thought, because our thought always gives us our result every time. So what you do is not near as partisan, not even close to as important is what you are thinking in the first place, which creates your emotion. And that emotion drives your action. This model is life changing, because we can always change our circumstance. If I had you right in front of me right now, and on the board, I had at the top our circumstances, below it our thoughts, which create our feelings, which drive our actions, which then give us our results, I would put a line right under circumstance, a big black line. And everything above that line, we can’t always control. We can’t control. When we go into the MTC, we can’t control whether our investigators ghost us, we can’t control the date of our final that our professor pics. But everything below that big black line our thoughts, feelings, actions and results, we can control Isn’t this amazing? This model takes the power out of your circumstances hands and puts it back in your hands, you are the creator of your outcomes and your life with the way you choose to think about it. We can’t always change our circumstances. But we can always change our perception of those circumstances. And in doing so, we change our lives. By the way, this is how I do my self coaching as well. And I invite you to just try it sit down and on a piece of paper, if you have a challenge you’re going through, write it down a C and then you put your circumstance at the top. A T What is your thought about that circumstance? And F? How do you feel when you think that that an A? What actions are you taking from that emotion that emotion is driving a set of actions? And then what is your result and reminder, it will always point backup to your thought. I do this all the time for myself. It works. And if you want some help you just hop on a strategy call with me and I will show you exactly how this works. You can go to my Instagram page at Jenny dot the LDS mission coach and sign up for a free strategy session. If you’re like, I don’t get it. How do I overcome my challenge? Get on that call. I’ll show you exactly how to do it, and how to overcome any challenge and we can apply all of it to specifically what’s going on for you. Because I know it feels a little overwhelming like life is just happening to you. But it doesn’t have to feel that way I can totally help. If you want to overcome any challenge you got to change your thinking first and I love this quote from President Luke Dorf. He posted this on Instagram in November of 2019. And I love it so much because you go look at that post in November of 2019. And he has written on his paper, thoughts, feelings, actions. It’s like a part of the model that I just taught you on this podcast. And this is what his caption said.

24:12 Elder Obrador said recently, some young friends asked me what it means to be successful. I believe it’s quite simple. He said, Success in the Lord’s way means for me doing well those things over and over, of which we have control. And he says, and what are the things over which we have control our thoughts, our feelings, our actions. He said, be successful with these three things, by orienting them toward the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and the Lord will magnify your efforts. Elder OOP Dorf is the man. Such a cool guy. I love it so much. You guys go give this model a try. Thank you so much. Brooke Castillo for creating it. It is changing lives and I think it can change your life to have an amazing day. We’ll talk to you again soon. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. If you want to learn more about what I do, you can go to Jennie dildine.com. Or just come hang out with me on Instagram at Jenny dot the LDS mission coach and Jennie is spelled with an I II and remember, no matter which part of the mission experience that you are involved in, just know that Jennie the LDS mission coach is thinking about you every single day.