E10 Hidden Treasures: What Beautiful Gems Are Buried Inside That Await Discovery?

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer Cudmore (00:58)
Hey, hi everybody. It’s Jennifer with Into the Depths podcast where we talk about identity and purpose. And I wanted to take a kind of a different direction today. So I’ve been talking a lot about ugliness that hides in our souls and mistakes and hindrances and wrong thought patterns. And my husband was mentioning me.

to me the other day that, you know, there are treasures beneath the surface as well, right? Like I was kind of focusing on all the things that we do wrong and obviously that was not my intent. So I thought, this is great opportunity. I can, you know, begin to talk about some of the treasures or the good things that we can find in the depths. So that’s where I’m going today.

there is so much about ourselves that is better than we notice. Like I think as our tendency as humans is to really focus on the negative or focus on the things that we don’t like about ourselves and that’s normal. And I think it’s a learned practice to

begin to notice the good things in us and identify some positive things about ourselves. And so I wanted to kind of go into some ideas or concepts around learning how to highlight and look for the good in us instead of fixating on the bad. I…

Definitely like most of my life. I was very much fixated on all the things I was doing wrong all the things I wanted to be better and so I feel like I have a lot of experience in practice in this and so it is quite a mind chef mind shift to learn how to Stop fixating on the things that we hate in ourselves and begin to Hone in on

on some positive aspects. And so let me dig a little deeper into that. So I think that we don’t give ourselves enough credit, honestly.

One aspect is that we tend to worry that we don’t want, it’s that imposter syndrome. We don’t want to look like we have it all together because we know we don’t or vice versa. We want to make sure we look like we have it all together because we want people to like us. But the catches deep inside, we’re like, well, what if the truth comes out? What if people realize that I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t have it all together? What are they going to think about me?

Am I going to come across as a fraud? You know, those kinds of things. So I just wanted to point out that it’s normal. These kinds of outlooks and thoughts and feelings are normal. Everybody struggles with the imposter syndrome in different areas. And it just takes a little bit of practice in learning to accept ourselves and build up that confidence and begin to notice, oh, OK, here is some good in me. It doesn’t feel natural. doesn’t feel, what’s the right word? doesn’t.

It can just feel really awkward in the beginning when you learn how to, when you’re learning how to be kind to yourself and say nice things to yourself. it just doesn’t seem to fit. like, wait, this, this is odd. This is weird. So we, think it’s just normal for humans to really feel like we don’t have what it takes. And so

I just figured I’d start there. Okay, we’re all normal. all like, we’re all starting at this from the same spot. Okay. And so now comes the, the step of what are we going to do about it? Okay. So, and I think that a lot of times we’re not like, we don’t, we’re not in spaces where talking good about ourselves is normalized. And we certainly don’t want to feel like we’re bragging. We don’t want to be arrogant. That’s the opposite side.

So, you what’s that balance between recognizing, well, yeah, I’m good at this or, you know, I like this trait in my personality. But that balance between thinking too little of ourselves, but then thinking too much of ourselves. And so I think that’s just a lifelong journey of walking that balance.

it’s easy to slip into comparison in that, okay, well, I might be a really good singer, but so-and-so is much better than me. Or I might be good at skateboarding or what is that, BMX bike stuff. I’m just trying to grab examples out of the air here, but so-and-so is better than me. And so we kind of like,

diminish our skill or our gifts because we recognize that other people are so much better in a certain area. And so again, I think that’s a normal tendency, but we need to be able to pull back and say, well, it doesn’t really matter who’s better and who’s not. I’m just recognizing that there are some, you know, this is a positive aspect of who I am. So, and then I think that there another piece of it.

In fact, I was just talking with my pastor the other day about this and one of my sisters

were talking about the concept of self-promotion, especially when you’re an entrepreneur, you own a business, or you’re an influencer, and so you’re the face of a company or something. so our culture nowadays, there’s a lot of people in the limelight, and customers like to feel that personal connection.

It’s a normal place that leaders need to show up in order to express their brand well and earn customers. Customers want that personal experience. They want that connection, right? Okay. So, but where’s the balance there in self-

promotion that leads to arrogance. I’m doing this so that I can be seen and noticed because I think I’m pretty amazing. Or is it, you know, the other side of it where there’s so much false humility that you’re like, I can’t be in the limelight at all. Self-promotion is bad. It’s wrong or even ungodly. You know, is a sin. And so I think that there is again, another area in this where we have to be careful with how do we walk in balance.

And I think this is a real concern too, because there are some people that I follow, some leaders that I follow on social media. And I have a really hard time looking at their content. I joined or I chose to follow them because I wanted to glean from them. wanted tidbits of information so that I can grow and be better at whatever that thing is, or just have that community and camaraderie that this person understands me. But when I’m…

Constantly being bombarded with 5,000 images a day of this person’s face. It’s a turn-off to me. I don’t like that I don’t want to follow somebody Who’s gonna constantly be showing their face? Because to me that’s that’s not the point so And and then the other piece of it is maybe not even just arrogance It could be just attention seeking like they’ve always got to be up front and center because they like that validation They like the attention and that’s not great either

So what is the balance between saying, well, here’s something I’m good at or here’s a positive trait that I like about myself versus too much of that that slips into that arrogance or attention seeking behavior. So I don’t know. I think it’s different for each person. We each have our own boundaries. We each have our own kind of like barriers to how that

will look for us, where we’re going to put our limits, where we’re going to set the bar as far as how much we present ourselves. Certainly, we don’t want to go around constantly talking about all the things that we’re good at. But at the same time, to berate ourselves often is not good either. And we’ve talked about that on other episodes. I won’t get into that. I really think that balance is key. And it is in most areas.

of life, not just normal, but I wanted to throw that out there before we get started. thinking of the concept there that there are treasures in the depths, I was thinking that just like pirates, I just wanted to say that word because it’s fun, pirates, just like pirates, God has buried treasure inside of us that it takes time to uncover, but it also takes attention and

we have to actually go looking for it. We have to do some exploring, I think. Most of it doesn’t happen by chance. We don’t recognize these things unless we’re looking for it or unless somebody is pointing it out in us. And even then, we don’t even necessarily accept it or believe it as truth. So, I came up with several areas. There are way more than this, but the first thing on my list that I came up with is,

think that we are stronger than we realize. I think that we are capable of being more confident in different situations than we believe that we can. And the more we push ourselves and the more we practice that, then we can pull back and realize, wait a minute, like I’m stronger than I thought. I am braver than I thought. I can be more courageous than I thought I could be. And even if the worst thing should happen in this situation, I’m gonna be fine. And learning to not be so fearful, but to…

to step forward and push through. And I think that it’s a normal part of our life’s journey to recognize, you know what, I can do hard things. I am capable of doing X, Y, Z. So a few examples I threw out would be like having a tough conversation, a conversation you know that’s gonna be.

confrontational, no matter how you go about it, no matter how sweet you are, the other person’s not going to take it while they’re going to be defensive or whatever. It could be learning something new. I know for me, I’ve talked a couple of times, starting this podcast was a huge challenge. There was a lot of internal struggles of believing in myself versus doubting myself. so on top of that, learning so many new things at one time, I didn’t think that was going to be possible.

I’ve been able to do it. So I’m capable of doing more than I thought I was. I just needed to push myself and actually try. So that is a treasure that I’ve discovered. Another thing being, you know, being willing to do something by yourself. I remember the first time that I took a trip by myself and I had to like…

rent the car by myself and drive places by myself. That was a huge hurdle for me because whenever we would do traveling, we sort of split up the duties. My job was to do all the packing, make sure that we were ready to go. And then my husband would handle all the travel arrangements. So I just had to show up and he would get us where we needed to be and make sure everything was working smoothly. And so having to do that on my own was actually a big deal. And when I got back from that trip and I’ve done it a few times now,

And when I got back, I just remember feeling like so accomplished and so proud of myself and realizing, okay, I can do these difficult things or even I don’t even have to label them difficult because some of it wasn’t even a tough situation. I just assumed it was gonna be tough. So another example would be putting a pet down when they’re sick, when it’s the end of their life, that is a huge tough situation, not only making the decision of when it’s time, but

than the grief process. so, recognizing that we can do hard things and we can do them well, we are strong. We do have the confidence that it will take to try new things. And so that’s a treasure. We can be proud of ourselves for handling a situation. Whether we did an amazing job or whether we just barely skated by, the fact is we made it, we got through it. And that is something to be proud of and that is a treasure. And the more we practice that, the more strong and confident we’re gonna be.

The next thing that is kind of similar, it’s more of like long-term patience, I guess, but the concept of grit or endurance, resilience, fortitude, it’s that it’s being strong over a long period of time in a tough situation. It’s suffering well and coming out on top

maybe it’s just an injury that takes a while. A friend of mine just had surgery on her hand and she’s going to be off work for six weeks and that is a really long time to only be able to do something with your non-dominant hand. I just feel really bad for her.

And so, you know, a lot of family and friends are stepping up to say, hey, what can we do that would make this easier on you? Because she has no choice but to go through it, right? And that’s a long-term situation that’s gonna require some resilience, some endurance, fortitude to not let that get her down or not quit and just simply not do things. So another example could be a strained relationship, like maybe…

you have a family member or a friend and something went wrong and you guys aren’t getting along, you’re not talking. And that can be very stressful. That can be a huge strain, especially if that lasts for months or years. But what do we do? We just, move through it. We try to heal from it. We, we go forward. That takes endurance, grit, resilience, right? It could be a financial burden, like college loans. takes a while to pay those off. I mean, there’s so many different things right now.

Tim and I are down to one car. decided to downsize. And so I was really concerned that because he works outside of the home that, I was going to be stuck at home all the time with no vehicle. I have chosen to be resilient. I’ve chosen to have fortitude. And honestly, because I’m really working hard on my attitude, it hasn’t been that difficult for me.

actually it’s better that I don’t have a vehicle and I’m not tempted to leave the house because then I could put more time and energy into learning how to get this podcast going and doing it well. So just examples of like long-term strength and how that can just make us into a better version of ourselves if we choose to grow from that. Along with that also is the concept of being more grounded. I’ve noticed that over the last few years I am

less emotionally motivated. Like I don’t respond or I should say I don’t react to negative situations as badly as I used to. I used to be very highly emotional, overreact a lot to different circumstances when things didn’t go my way or something happened that I didn’t like, all the things. And I’ve learned that I can choose faith. can believe in a positive outlook more often.

And that has helped me overcome challenges easier. I remember learning the concept of seeing problems as opportunities. this was several years ago when I was doing some leadership training. And I just remember kind of being mind blown by that. You mean, instead of freaking out that this bad thing happened, I can step back and say, wait a minute, what can I learn from this? What door does this open? How can I move forward in a different manner that would be even more successful than what I thought?

it should be. becoming more grounded, being more growing my faith, trusting God, trusting that the situation is going to work out instead of worrying all the time over not getting an outcome that I want. So, and that just takes practice. But as you do that over time, you realize like that really is a treasure inside of me that being grounded, I’m very grateful that I’m not as so emotional as I used to be that I don’t get as angry so quickly and things like that.

I didn’t like being that way. So being more grounded, having more faith as we mature and grow. Another aspect is I think there’s lot of beauty inside us that it takes a while to uncover and recognize.

And we learn to like ourselves and we can learn to love ourselves and accept everything about ourselves, even the things that we don’t necessarily like. And I’m speaking more about personality than physical, but I believe the more you get healing on the inside, the more your outside becomes beautiful. The physical package is connected to what’s going on inside you internally. But every human was made in the image of God.

he said his creation was good, that means there’s good in me. So where is this beauty? Where are these good things inside of me? I think our personal growth is a huge deal. And I kind of touched on this a second ago of, you know, looking back of the areas where I used to really struggle and how those things are not quite as much of a struggle anymore as they used to be. And that makes me feel good to know that I’ve grown and that I’ve gotten better in certain areas.

that I am maturing and becoming a better version of myself. For example, when I first became a manager, I was terrible at it. And then I did a lot of training. I really tried to learn how to be better at it. And now I’m much better at resolving conflict and speaking encouragement to people, looking at the strengths and the good in people instead of focusing on the bad. I mean, all sorts of things to that. But…

It’s just, it’s really uplifting and encouraging to recognize the growth in yourself, that those old habits are dying off, that things like people pleasing or overeating. mean, there’s just so many different areas where we had a really tough struggle, but here we are 10 years later, or even a couple of years later, and we can see, whoa, that doesn’t have such a hold on me anymore. I don’t have to, I’m not as controlled by that or enslaved by that type of behavior anymore.

and I’m getting more comfortable in my own skin. I’m learning to accept who I am and what I’m good at and recognize and put more emphasis and more energy into the good aspects of myself instead of feeding the things that are maybe not quite as good.

Another thing that I think is that we are more capable of love and compassion than we recognize. I feel like, and not just for others, but for ourselves too, giving ourselves grace and being gentle with ourselves. We are capable of more of that than we…

than we tend to notice or tend to tap into. So, I mean, you probably know, especially like around Christmas time, like it brings a lot of joy when you’re giving to people. know, Christmas is about giving gifts or serving and helping other people. But we tend to be more on the selfish side where we want things done a certain way and we…

We have a tendency to put ourselves first instead of others first. And so that’s just normal human behavior. We have to learn to train that out of ourselves. But I think that there’s so many areas of life where we make it about us. And we don’t mean to. We’re not trying to be necessarily, at least I don’t think most of us are not. Our goal is not to be selfish, right? But we tend to lean that way where life is.

Our life, our world revolves around us and what we want and what we like. And so the more that we learn to pull back and as the scripture calls it, die to self, the more we put others first, the more that brings joy into our lives. And we see the beauty of giving and we experience the just the good feelings of knowing that we made somebody else’s life better, that it wasn’t about us in that moment. It was about somebody else. And so

That’s beautiful and that makes us a better version of ourselves the more we do that. So another thing too is as we sort of dive into better understanding of who we are, what are our gifts, callings, talents, anointings, all those things, what is our purpose, why are we on this earth, think that we begin to find hidden joys and we begin to find hidden talents. And what I mean by that is that there are people that don’t

Well, I think all of us, honestly, we don’t recognize certain things that bring us a lot of delight or certain things that we might end up actually being good at because we just never tried it or we never thought about it. So this is another reason why I have learned to that the importance of trying new things, going after new experiences. I never thought that I would like being spontaneous or doing ridiculous, adventurous things. And I actually do. I’m starting to enjoy that more.

So somebody that I know had started a business, I think it’s been like a year and a half, two years now, but I remember that as she was kind of getting going, at first I thought, why on earth is she doing this? This is so not like her. This is not normal for who I’ve known for the past 20 years. And it was like, the more she got into it and started building up this business, the more I realized, wow, she is very creative.

And I don’t think she knew that about herself either, but it was like the more she would like push herself to do those things, then she realized, I really enjoy crafting these designs and creating these things. so, yeah, I think there’s a lot of areas in our lives where that can happen. I think of an example of when my son was in high school and he joined the football team and he ended up

tutoring like I don’t know a ton of the the boys on the team and I remember him just really coming home and Seeing how much he enjoyed doing that tutoring doing that teaching and it was like that opportunity The more somebody would come to him the more he would light up and be like yeah This is why this is that way and it was so much fun to see him learn that about himself that hey, I

liked doing teaching in small groups. And so now he’s in the military and part of his job is that he gets to be an instructor for certain things. And he really enjoys that. He excels at that. And so that’s another example of something where I would have never in a million years thought that about him in his younger years. But this was his junior, senior year of high school. And I saw this come out of him. And I was very glad that this showed up because I didn’t

You can’t foster it if you don’t see it, right? So another example is I just happened to be talking to a friend the other day about sobriety and she was like just hit, I don’t know, I think she’s about almost to her fourth, four month mark of being sober. And she was telling me how she had gone to a karaoke night and she was just surprised at how much that she loved that doing it.

without being under the influence of alcohol. She, you we should put that away. And so she realized that there are, you know, you can still have a lot of fun when you’re not drinking and how that did, that was a surprise to her. And I thought this, there’s so many different areas in our life where we have limited ourselves and not given ourselves opportunity and we’re missing out and we don’t realize it. So that’s another.

treasure that could be hidden below the surface. So what are those things in yourself that you haven’t found yet, that you don’t recognize yet, that you’re going to really enjoy and that you’re going to be really good at? You might have a natural skill or talent about something. So just some things to spark you thinking. One last thing we are more capable of conquering fear than we believe in ourselves. And so

I’ve already told you a few stories like when I was petting Reggie the tiger down in my, when we went down under to Australia. And I’ve shared a few stories about fear and I, you know, sometimes it’s a choice, but I think that also sometimes life forces us to deal with fear. And the more we take those risks and the more we look back and go, wait, I overcame that. I did that thing even though I was afraid.

And look, it turned out okay. So it kind of bolsters our confidence that, maybe I don’t need to be afraid so much. Maybe there are some things that I am capable of, some things that are not as scary as I thought they were gonna be. conquering fear is a huge treasure that we can find as we dig deeper. The more we take risks, the less we’re gonna be afraid of the world. And I think also as we get older,

We just naturally have a tendency to face more fears and face more risks, or I should say take more risks. But then also another part of that being when it comes to being afraid of people’s opinions of us and wanting to make sure that we earn the approval of other people, I think that

As we get older and we mature, we realize that the opinions of others don’t matter so much and it doesn’t bother us so much when there’s a negative response or a negative outcome. And so I think some of it we have to choose, but then some of it I think just naturally comes with age. So just some things to think about, where are there some treasures inside of you that are waiting to be uncovered, are just gonna take a little exploration.

And I do think that if we have that attitude of looking and seeking and trying to go after that better quality of life, we’re gonna uncover these pretty easily. And then we just have to learn how to foster it and grow it and all of that. So as we go about the week, let’s explore the depths of this final thought. What treasures might be hiding below the surface of your life and what hidden gems did God

place inside of you that he is waiting for you to go find. So there’s your challenge. Real quick though, before we go, I wanted to make sure that I let you know I finally got an Instagram account up and going a couple of weeks ago and I’m learning how to get around in there and learning how to use it. So thanks to your patience on that. But I would love it if you would go check it out and follow me. And then also I’ve been working on some resources and worksheets. Specifically, the one I’m almost done with is

I’m calling the 3Ls worksheet. So it’s just a tool to help you identify and eradicate the lies, labels, and limitations that we have talked about in previous episodes. So I wanted to make sure that I tell you that resource is going to be available hopefully in the next week. So stay tuned. Keep following and paying attention. I’ve got more things to come. All right. Thanks, everybody. Have a great week.

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Self-improvement, personal growth, self-compassion, confidence building, overcoming fear, imposter syndrome, resilience, grit, endurance, self-acceptance, emotional growth, overcoming negative thoughts, self-promotion, authenticity, personal development, overcoming challenges, exploring hidden talents, self-reflection, discovering personal strengths, life balance, positive mindset, finding joy, overcoming adversity, accepting imperfection, emotional intelligence, building self-esteem, overcoming obstacles, and spiritual growth. personal empowerment, growth, overcoming negative self-talk, and discovering one’s inner strengths, self-help, motivation, and personal development topics.