374. Worth and Worthiness

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 374: Worth and Worthiness.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hey, everybody, we’re going to talk about the word ‘worthy’. And we’re going to talk about human worth. And I want to try to clarify some huge misunderstanding that most people have, especially members of the LDS faith. And understanding this is so critical for yourself and also for the people that you interact with and the way that you message things. So, I’m excited for today’s episode. Make sure you have signed up though for our coaching intensive. I have a coaching intensive coming up and this is something we’re going to offer, the opportunity to attend regularly.

So even if you don’t make it to this one, we’ll have another one down the road. So go to jodymoore.com/intensive, especially if you’re newer to this work or maybe you’re a podcast listener but you’ve never actually gone to the next step of being coached or hearing coaching. That’s what’s going to happen in that coaching intensive. And it’s just a really great way for you to see what coaching is like.

And everybody says to me when they hear coaching, “Oh my goodness, I didn’t realize that there was something so much deeper. I thought that by listening to the podcast I was getting a lot and it was helping me. I didn’t realize how much more powerful it could be.” So that is why I do these coaching intensives, it gives you just a short time commitment, really low financial commitment, 19 bucks to just sort of sample what coaching is and have a really transformative experience. So go to jodymoore.com/intensive and join me there.

Okay, so I want to talk about the difference between human worth, between your worth, your value and worthiness. Worth is something that every human being has. We all have tremendous beyond our capacity to understand, value. We are loved more than we can possibly wrap our heads around, by our heavenly parents, by our savior, Jesus Christ. We are cherished in their eyes. Now, does that mean that the Lord isn’t disappointed by some of the choices we make? No, maybe he is.

But I want you to think about the way you feel about your children. Let’s say you have a child who is making choices that you wish he or she wouldn’t make. You might feel disappointed, you might even be frustrated with that child. You might be worried about that child. But you still love that child. You love that child, doesn’t change. Your love is still there even though maybe you wish that they would make different choices.

And again, I don’t mean to say that our experience is the same as God’s. It’s not. I can’t even wrap my head around what our heavenly parents think or feel about us. But it gives us some glimpse. It helps for me to wrap my head around, okay, God’s not mad at me. He doesn’t love me less even if I make choices that he’s like, “That’s not going to serve you in the long run.” So worth just is. You are just worth, again, an infinite amount. You were born that way. You had nothing to do with it. You didn’t create it. You didn’t earn it. You can’t earn it.

And you can’t negatively impact your worth either. I’ve been watching the housing market closer than I normally do lately and it’s so interesting to see what’s happening right now. I mean it’s kind of unprecedented times. But to notice that this house last year that sold for this amount is now according to the industry experts and whoever appraises that house and what the market’s demanding, it’s now worth double in many cases.

And then in some cases it’s been listed at double and then now they’re lowering their price again because if no one buys it they’re like, “Okay, maybe it’s not worth quite that much. Maybe it’s worth a little bit less.” Housing prices change. Houses, the worth of a house can go up or down based on a lot of different factors. The worth of a human being is not like that. The worth of a human being does not change. You can’t increase your worth, you can’t decrease your worth.

The worth of a human being is more like a $100 bill if we take away inflation and things like that out of the equation. Just let’s simplify it, $100 bill is worth $100. That’s true whether that $100 bill is a brand new crispy fresh out of the ATM $100 bill or if it’s a really old wrinkled up slightly tattered, dirty, has been passed around the world $100 bill, still worth $100. That is how human beings are, that’s is how you are my friend. And God doesn’t love you any less when you don’t do the things that you want to be doing like go to church, read your scriptures, attend the temple etc.

God doesn’t love you any less and God doesn’t love you more when you’re doing it all really, really well. God doesn’t love you less when you sin or do terrible, horrible things. And God doesn’t love you more when you are super giving, and serving, and kind, and doing amazing things. God’s love is constant. It’s a constant, it’s not a variable, it’s a constant. So, if as I say those things your head is like, what? Then I want you to just ponder whether or not I might be right and let yourself wrestle with it a little bit.

But decide what you want to believe. That’s what I believe. I believe that somebody who is doing what we would all agree are terrible things and harming people is still worth the same amount as somebody who, let’s just say Mother Teresa who has given their life over to service and goodness, worth the same amount.

Now, now that we’ve got that out of the way let’s talk about worthiness. This word ‘worthiness’ or ‘worthy’ is something we use in the LDS faith quite a bit and I wish we wouldn’t because it gets highly misinterpreted and misunderstood. And here’s why. It’s the wrong word to describe what we’re trying to describe. For example, in order to attend the temple, to go into the temple and participate in the religious ceremonies that take place there, we have to meet certain requirements and get a temple recommend and they’re just basic requirements, like living the standards of our faith.

So, what we call that is are you worthy to enter the temple? It’s a terrible way to describe it because if you look up the definition of worthy and what just most of us think of when we hear the word ‘worthiness’ is we think about our value. Are you good enough? Are you valuable enough? And that’s not what’s meant by are you worthy to enter the temple. If you go online and look up the definition of worthiness it says things like worthiness is a quality of being suitable or having some kind of value.

Your value doesn’t go down even if you don’t have a temple recommend. You’re just as valuable. Another definition I found says, having adequate or great merit, character or value. Again, that word ‘value’. Another one says, how suitable someone or something is, the quality of deserving respect or attention. So, I want you to think about this.

If somebody doesn’t have a temple recommend, let’s say they want to go to the temple but they’ve been a lifelong smoker and they’re trying to quit smoking, and they haven’t been able to. Or they just maybe feel like they’ve had some things go on where they’ve been dishonest with people and they feel like they’re still going through a process of cleansing themselves from that and making it right in whatever way they can. And they just feel like I’m just not qualified yet. I don’t think that I’m ready to go to the temple.

Would we say that person is less valuable, less deserving of respect, less good in some way? No, of course not. We all have stuff, we all do and we always will. We’ll never escape our humanness in this lifetime. What we would say is that that person doesn’t meet the eligibility requirements to go to the temple and that’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. Did you guys hear that? Because here’s the truth.

Getting a temple recommend to go to the temple, or going on a mission, or anything else that we use this word in the LDS faith to say you’ve got to be worthy to do this, getting into BYU, being able to go to BYU is another area. It has nothing to do with your value or goodness. It has to do with are you qualified, do you meet the qualifications that we require? The same way if I want to drive a car there are certain qualifications I need to meet. I need to meet whatever my state’s requirements are for getting a driver’s license.

In most states I need to have a certain minimum insurance coverage. If I don’t meet those requirements, let’s say I don’t, like my son right now is working on getting in Washington, you have to have a certain number of hours of driving. So, he’s working on getting his hours in so that he can meet the requirements to drive the car. We wouldn’t look at him and say, “You’re just not as valuable, and good, and deserving of respect as someone who has driven more, and passed the driving test, and has a license.” That’s ridiculous. It’s not true.

They’re just at different places on their journey of becoming a driver. And we are all at different places on our journey of spiritual progression. And being behind someone else, being further behind on the journey doesn’t make you less worthy. And even if you were ahead and then you stepped back etc., doesn’t make you less worthy of a person in terms of deserving of respect. It doesn’t make you less loved or less lovable. It makes you in a different spot on your spiritual journey, having a different experience.

This is so important to know because when we tie our worth, our value, to anything that is like a checklist, it’s a recipe for danger. And this is what the adversary actually wants you to do. Because whatever you believe about who you are, whatever you believe about your level of goodness, or whether or not you’re loved, or whether or not you’re complete and whole. You will look for evidence of that to be true first of all, and then you will operate from that lens and you will make it true because your brain wants to be right about what it believes about you. That is your brain’s job.

If you genuinely believe that you are a healthy person, even if you would say that currently you’re unhealthy for whatever reason, but you genuinely believe you’re a healthy person, you will do the things that are within your control to make yourself healthy. Some would even say that that’s powerful enough that your body can heal itself and become healthy if you genuinely believe it. But even if we don’t go to that extreme you will do the things until you get back to the healthy vision you have of yourself, if you genuinely believe that’s who you are.

Same if you believe that you’re unhealthy, you’ll create that. So, when you believe that you are lacking in some way, that you have a deficit of value, that you’re not as lovable, you’re not as good, there’s a part of your brain that might say, “Okay, well, we’ve got to do something about that and hustle.” But that part of your brain is running on willpower. It’s not sustainable for the long term. It will lose out at some point to the part of your brain that says, “But we’re just not that good. I’m not as good of a person. I’m damaged. I’m flawed, I’m less than.” Your brain will make that true.

You will end up making that true. You will create that in your life. So that is why I believe the adversary wants you to believe that. The adversary uses our own religion and the way that we live our life to hurt us, uses it against us. And it’s as simple as that. So, listen, maybe you disagree with me, maybe you have questions.

Because I know when we talk about topics like this my husband and I have been talking a lot about just really diving into topics like this within our religion. We think it’s fun to explore it, and question it, and try to understand it on a deeper level, not just on the surface. And we listen to a lot of podcasts, and books and things. And sometimes we find ourselves going, “I wish I could ask the person talking this question.” So please feel free to come over and hang out with me. I’m often on Instagram. I am in my DMs a lot.

If you have a question, send it over to me, I’d love to discuss with you a little bit further or post it in the comments thread on the podcast post. We always do a post. And you can find me on Instagram @jodymoorecoaching. Or at my new Instagram page, jodymoorebusiness for all my entrepreneurs. We’re going to start sharing all the business tips and help over there. So anyway, I love you all. Listen, you are of tremendous worth. You are worthy, period.

You may not always qualify for all the things that you want to do in your life but none of that changes your worth. Alright, I love you, thank you for being here, I’ll see you next time, take care, bye.

Hey there, if you enjoy this podcast or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity, or it makes you think, you’re going to love the book that I wrote. It’s called Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking. And it’s available now at Amazon in print or kindle version. Or if you want me to read it to you, head over to audible and grab the audio version. And why not grab a copy for your sister, your best friend, or your mom while you’re there too. Just saying.