16. The Truth About Your Purpose

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 16. The truth about your purpose. I’m Jennie, the LDS mission coach. And whether you are 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, everybody, thanks for joining me today on the podcast. I’m so excited to be hanging out with you. I love hopping on here and recording these podcasts for you. And today I am talking about something that I’m super passionate about, that I want everyone to hear about. So share this podcast with people you know, especially return missionaries, because I think this is one that they struggle with. But before I get to the goods of the podcast, I’ll give you a little update. There’s been some fun stuff going on around our house as always, it’s my daughter’s birthday this week. I decided at the last minute to throw her a birthday party, like in four days, because that’s how we roll around here sometimes. Anyway, we decided that we do it this weekend. Because if we waited much longer, it might not be till after Halloween. So we’re just doing it a glow in the dark swim party. Sounds pretty awesome, right? Because why not? We did decide we were going to paint all of her friends nails with glow in the dark nail polish. Did you know it’s really hard to find? I found one bottle of glow in the dark nail polish at one Walgreens in this entire valley. I don’t know you think with Halloween coming up. But no, it was very challenging to find everything else I found on Amazon just fine. So it’s gonna be great, super fun. All right. So on to what I wanted to talk about today, which is the truth about your purpose. The reason I love talking about this so much is because so many missionaries return missionaries. This is what I hear the most often from you. I feel like I’ve lost my purpose. Or it’s some other version of this. Like I was talking to a return missionary this week on a strategy call. And what he told me is I’m just not finding as much fulfillment, even in the stuff that he’s trying to do, like read His scriptures, pray, maybe hit the temple, maybe do some service, whatever he’s trying to do. He’s just not feeling as much fulfillment. And this is the story that I hear over and over and over again from return missionaries, especially. Now sometimes this actually happens on the mission, too, that we can be on the mission and the work is not going very well. Or maybe the work is just feeling super easy, or whatever. And we just start to get kind of bored and feel like we don’t have a purpose on the mission. So how could this be true? That we could be on the mission and feel like maybe we don’t have a purpose? Or that we could be off of the mission afterwards and feel like we don’t have a purpose. And we’re going to talk all about this today about why this could possibly be true. But I want to start with a story you guys. I want to tell you and I may have mentioned it on the podcast before about why I started doing what I do to help preparing currently serving and returned missionaries. The reason goes clear back to when my oldest son was serving his mission. And I went out to lunch with one of my friends whose daughter also happened to be serving a mission. And my friend’s daughter was getting close to coming home. And she said to me, she said I’m just going to be so sad when my daughter comes home from her mission because she won’t have a purpose anymore. And I was like wait, what? I my jaw I think I had to like pick it up off of the floor.

4:56 Your purpose you guys did not stop Art on the mission. And your purpose does not end when you get home from the mission, and I have made it my mission to make sure that never ever again, will any of you question your purpose, or be confused about what your purpose is. So what we’re going to talk about today is three things. Number one, your purpose is not lose double. This is the phrase I hear all the time, I feel like I lost my purpose, or my daughter is going to lose her purpose when she gets home from our mission. Number two, your purpose is actually a choice. And number three, you can have more than one purpose. So we’re going to talk about each one of these. So the first thing that I want to do is I want to go ahead and share with you what I think. And the way that I define purpose. The definition I have for purpose is your thoughts about yourself, and your thoughts about your role in the world. So it all comes down to what you think about you, and what you think about your role in the world. Two point number one, your purpose is not lose double, because it happens in your brain. It happens in your thoughts, you guys, you get to formulate thoughts within yourself about what your purpose is, thoughts about you, and thoughts about your role in the world. Now, you might get confused about it. And I’m going to talk a little bit more about that in just a second. But you can’t lose your purpose. unless somehow I guess you lost your brain. Maybe like the scarecrow on the Wizard of Oz. But most of us don’t lose our brains. We have our brains which create those thoughts. This one time I was driving to the store, I was running an errand. I think I was picking up a clarinet book at the music store or something like that. Anyway, I driven all the way up to the music store, I got out of the car to go in and get the clarinet music. And as I got out of the car to lock the car, I couldn’t find the keys. Now I have a keyless key fob. And so it just sits in my purse most of the time. And I don’t even have to pull it out to drive my car. But when I got there and was ready to get out and go into the music store, I was like, oh, no, where’s my keys, they must be lost. And I couldn’t find them. But what was actually true is my keys weren’t lost at all.

8:09 Because I gotten from my house to the music store, they were somewhere inside the van. So your purpose is the same way. It just is inside of you, keeping you going pointing you in the right direction, giving you momentum towards where you want to go. Those thoughts about you and your thoughts about your role in the world are like my keyless car FOB inside the car, still driving me where I want to go. Turns out my keys, even though I was confused about where my keys were, they weren’t actually lost at all. They were still in the van getting me where I needed to go. Your purpose is not like your phone, or your wallet, it can’t get lost. It’s always there because it’s inside of you. It’s the thoughts that you think. Okay, so on to number two, your purpose is a choice. Now, when you left on your mission, you were actually given a purpose. It was either given to by your mission president or maybe you just went off the one that you found in Preach My Gospel, that missionary purpose which I’m sure you know very well, the one about inviting others to come on to Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ in His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. So this essentially, my friend is a list of thoughts that Preach My Gospel is giving you to think about yourself, and about your role in the world. Now I think we could pretty easily argue that so Mmm. Missionaries really pick up these thoughts and beliefs about themselves and about their role in the world, pick them up and make them their own. Where some other missionaries, maybe don’t do this, they don’t pick up the thoughts and make them their own. So what I want to point out to you here is that it’s a choice. Your purpose is a choice, we get to decide intentionally, yes, I want to believe these things about myself and about my role in the world. Or no, I don’t want to believe these things about myself and my role in the world, it was a choice on your mission, you probably didn’t realize it was a choice, you just assumed that you had to adopt that purpose, but some missionaries don’t. So it was a choice that you made, it was a decision that you made on purpose, and you have that same ability to make a choice today. Now, you may or you may not choose to adopt that those same thoughts about your purpose, right now, it might be the same, or it might be different. But it’s all a choice in what you want to think. So your purpose doesn’t just like magically land upon you. I’ve heard people say, I’m just waiting to figure out what my passion is, or what my purpose is no way, you get to just decide you guys, this is the best news. And by the way, if you want to, you can totally change it later. This could be my purpose today, my thoughts about myself and my role in the world. And tomorrow, it could be different. And six months, it could be different. And in a year, it could be different 10 minutes from now, it could be different. If I wanted to change my thoughts about myself and about my role in the world. Now one thing I want to caution you on here is because it’s a choice, your brain will want to be confused, our brains would much rather us be confused and make a choice and move forward with something that feels hard. So when your brain tells you that you’ve lost your purpose, or you don’t know what to do, this is all just tricks by your K membrane, or that lower brain to keep you stuck and confused and not moving forward. It doesn’t want you to take action towards something that you want. He wants to be lazy. It doesn’t want you to get out there and do the things that you want to do. So don’t be confused. Just pick something and do it. Pick some thoughts that you believe about yourself. Pick some thoughts about what you want your role in the world to be and then do it. That’s it you guys. That’s your purpose you get to choose.

13:09 And then you can change your mind tomorrow. If you want to, don’t be confused, just pick something and go. What do you want to believe about yourself? And what do you want to believe about your role in the world? You totally get to decide best news ever. Now, third thing I want to offer to you guys today is that you can have more than one purpose. I hear phrases like I’m just waiting for my ultimate purpose, or my epic purpose, or my sole purpose to hit me. Well, we can have more than one I totally do. I feel like I have a different, different thoughts about myself and my role in the world as a mother and different thoughts about myself and my role in the world as a coach. And as a human who helps missionaries. I have different thoughts about myself and my role in my word. And the calling that I have there and the calling that I have in my steak have lots of purposes, because I have lots of thoughts. And I have lots of roles. One time I was talking to a missionary who was on his mission, and he told me that he was feeling really confused about what to do because he knew that when he got home from his mission, he was going to be playing baseball for BYU. And so he was feeling conflicted about wanting to work out, wanting to be in shape, wanting to keep his baseball skills honed. Which BYU had asked him to do on his mission, and having his missionary purpose, the one we talked about earlier about inviting others to come into Christ. And what I helped him see is that maybe he had two purposes. In fact, I would venture to say, and maybe it’s possible that Heavenly Father would want him to fulfill both purposes. That he was meant to be an epic, amazing, diligent missionary and an epic, amazing, diligent baseball player for BYU. Our brains totally want it to be all or nothing. It’s like, either I can be a good missionary, or I can get ready to play for BYU. But you guys, it doesn’t have to be either. Or, we can be both. And I highly recommend that we are. The definition that I gave you for purpose is your thoughts plural, about yourself, and your role in the world? I guess we could say roles. Even in the world, you have a lot of thoughts, and you have a lot of roles. And we can embrace all of them. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. So let’s just do a quick recap. Number one, your purpose is not lose a bowl. Okay? It’s always inside you because you have a brain that can think thoughts and create amazing things in your life. Hopefully, you never lose your brain. Because you wouldn’t be alive if you didn’t have a brain. But just know that your purpose can’t get lost. It’s like my keyless fob that was driving my car, just giving me momentum to where I needed to go. Number two, your purpose is a choice, you guys, it doesn’t just like come out of the sky and land on you. When you least expect it, or just like come to you in some sort of sparkling cloud. Your purpose is a choice, you get to decide what you want to think about yourself, and what you want to think about your role in the world. And number three, you can totally have more than one purpose, and I highly suggest that you do. I think as a whole, we need to quit telling return missionaries, that they’ve lost their purpose. It’s not useful to tell return missionaries this. It’s not useful to tell anybody this actually, let’s be honest, I think we can do better. Your purpose did not begin when you went on a mission.

18:10 And it did not stop. Nor will it stop if you’re on a mission. Now. When you come home. It’s highly likely that your thoughts about yourself and about your role will change once you get home. But that doesn’t mean that your purpose is lost. So please, let’s stop telling people and telling ourselves that we’ve lost our purpose. It’s not a thing you guys get intentional and make a choice about what you want to think about yourself and about your role in the world. Don’t be confused. Just choose something. Go for it and fly. Okay, you guys, I hope you have the most amazing week. Get out there. Get intentional and choose your purpose. Everyone take care. Bye bye. 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 Jennie dot the LDS mission coach and Jennie is spelled with an IE. Remember, no matter which part of the mission experience that you’re involved in, just know that Jennie the LDS mission coach is thinking about you every single day.